Pressure not in Bird’s vocabulary

The question brought back the competitive streak in this NBA legend.

Tight-lipped in previous interviews with the local media, a stone-faced Larry Bird routinely fielded questions during a 15-minute press conference yesterday.

Until the Inquirer asked him whether he feels more pressure as a player or as the Indiana Pacers president for basketball operations.

The question cracked up the entire room and drew a hint of smile from the Boston Celtics icon.

“Pressure? I don’t know what that is,” Bird quickly replied as the room rocked with laughter.  “Obviously, you haven’t seen me play.”

“We haven’t seen Larry Bird like that since he played,” one journalist commented as Bird, for a brief moment, snapped out of his serious mien.

Indeed, even with a white-collar corporate role two decades after the end of his phenomenal playing career, Bird doesn’t seem to know what pressure means.

“It’s always tough to win a championship,” said Bird, who helped assemble a team of rising stars, led by Paul George and Roy Hibbert, that reached last sea     son’s Eastern Conference finals before losing to the eventual NBA champion Miami Heat.

“What we’re trying to do is build a team that can compete on a higher level. There’s great competition. We have to continue to get better. We have a lot of young players.”

But Bird said the team he’s building is nowhere near his old Celtics team that won three NBA championships and rewarded him with as many Most Valuable Player, a couple of Finals MVP and a slew of other honors. He was inducted to the NBA Hall of Fame in 1998.

“I don’t compare this team to the Celtics team because it is a completely different style that we play,” said Bird. “But I do think we [Indiana] are good enough and deep enough to compete for a championship. Our goal is to make it to the Finals and try to win the whole thing.”