Larry Bird Talks Magic Johnson, Paul George, Trades

Larry Bird, the Pacers’ president of basketball operations, had planned to call longtime rival and friend Magic Johnson after the trade deadline to congratulate him on being named to the same role with the Lakers, according to Tania Ganguli of The Los Angeles Times. However, as Ganguli details, Johnson beat Bird to the punch by a couple days, placing a call to the Pacers executive prior to the deadline.

That phone call sparked a series of rumors about Paul George, who reportedly has interest in signing with the Lakers as a free agent in 2018 if he doesn’t re-up with the Pacers. According to Bird though, the discussion lasted less than five minutes, and he downplayed the idea that George was the subject of the conversation.

In addition to weighing in on that phone call with his old friend, Bird also offered some advice to the new Lakers president of basketball operations and provided some perspective on how often he expects to do business with Johnson. Here are those highlights from his conversation with Ganguli:

On the pre-deadline phone call with Johnson, and the idea that they discussed George:

“I wasn’t motivated to move Paul George at the deadline. I can’t remember if it was even brought up or not. I don’t think it was. It’s all fake news anyway. You know that. Somebody’s gonna start it and [it] just was a snowball effect. [The phone call] was not about Paul George.”

On his advice for Johnson on running an NBA franchise:

“You can put a team together, what you think is gonna be a pretty solid team on paper, and then when they get out there they don’t mesh well. I’m sort of going through that this year. We thought we had a decent team that we thought could compete for the fourth or fifth seed. We haven’t played as well as I thought we would all year. That’s the growing pains. That’s the frustration about it.”

On the odds that he and Magic will make trades with any frequency:

“I’ve been here for, I don’t know how many years, 12, 13, and I haven’t made a deal with [Celtics GM] Danny Ainge yet. That should tell you something. I’ve always been closer with Danny, because I played with him for all them years, than Earvin. … Talked to Danny about a lot of trades, but never did one. I just feel it’s gotta be a fair deal for both sides and we never got there. Maybe he thought it was fair, but I didn’t think so.”

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