Editor’s note: All interviews for this story were completed prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
During the third episode of the second season of HBO’s Winning Time, Larry Bird plays an intense basketball scrimmage while wearing blue jeans.
While the show was criticized for inaccuracies by some of the real-life individuals portrayed in the show (including Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson), this scene was actually based on true events that happened before Bird was drafted in the NBA.
Here is how the story goes: Bird was originally on scholarship to play basketball at Indiana University for head coach Bob Knight. But he dropped out of college after a month and returned to his hometown. He was then recruited by Bill Hodges, an assistant coach at Indiana State, to play for the Sycamores.
Hodges eventually convinced Bird to come scrimmage against the varsity team. Bird eventually agreed and even though it was the summer, he insisted on wearing denim.
“That scene, in particular, I was very excited to shoot,” Small told For The Win.
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They got Larry Bird dropping 40 in the gym while wearing flannel shirt and jeans on Winning Time pic.twitter.com/NqqqbCzJU2
— Ahmed/The Ears/IG: BigBizTheGod 🇸🇴 (@big_business_) August 21, 2023
“I had read about that in my research about him going to Indiana State and Bill Hodges literally asking him if he wanted basketball shorts and he was like, no, I play better in this. His brother actually told Bill Hodges: He does play better in this outfit than in actual basketball clothes.”
This small detail added some fantastic background about Bird, who would eventually play three successful seasons at Indiana State and become a main rival to Magic Johnson.
Bird is the main villain in this series about Johnson and the Lakers. But in this second season, showrunner Max Borenstein explained that they wanted to go a bit deeper than just a cartoonish antagonist.
“One thing that is really out there is the way that this season is able to explore Larry Bird in a way that peels back a layer of him as a human being,” Borenstein said.
“In the first season, he’s Magic’s rival and we see him from that perspective,” Borenstein continued. “This season, we get to know a little bit of who he is as a person and it turns out that he’s a human being every bit as nuanced and fascinating and challenging as Magic and any other character.”
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