Kevin Durant and Larry Bird

December 7, 2012 is Larry Bird's 56th birthday.   I have a tribute and several videos on Celtics Green in honor of Larry Legend's birthday.   So, you might ask why I am mentioning him here in connection with Kevin Durant.  USA Today has an excellent article on Durant and in it he discusses the player he patterned his game after.  That player is none other than Larry Joe Bird. 

"Larry Bird is a guy I like watching," Durant said with a smile. "I watch film on him all the time. I like his approach to the game when he was playing. When I first started playing the game, my Godfather Taras Brown – who taught me how to play – he always was a Larry Bird guy, always used to look up his stats.

"So of course as I got older and started to watch NBATV, Legends games, and of course you here the stories about the rivalries with him and the Lakers and him and Magic, so I like his competitiveness, how low-maintenance he was, how he just went out there and did his job. He played hard. He played for the love of the game, and that's what I've got."

Durant has a goal of achieving one of Bird's milestones and that is to have a 50-40-90 season like Bird had in the 1986-87 and 1987-88 seasons. That is shooting 50% from the field, 40% from three-point range and 90% from the line. I have no doubt that KD will accomplish this at least once in his career.

So,now there are two connections between my beloved Celtics and the Thunder, who I am loving more every day. First and foremost, Perk is on the Thunder. And, KD is a big Larry Bird fan and is patterning his game after his. Of course there's the fact that Larry wasn't athletic, couldn't jump and wasn't fast. All of which KD is. Can you imagine Bird with KD's athleticism? Maybe he wouldn't have been as good because then he wouldn't have had to work as hard. But with Kendrick Perkins, who works harder than just about anyone in the league, as a teammate and Larry Bird as a role model, the sky is the limit for Kevin Durant.