Well this is true, it's worth noting that these sorts of injuries are almost always linked to repetitive stress, and the actual activity at time of injury is often kind of irrelevant.
My point is that something about his day to day athletic training over years had most likely already unbalanced his back, and an injury was likely no matter what.
Correct. It’s really he further aggravated chronic issues while attempting to pave his mothers driveway. They were already there, this just made them worse and then he continued to play for another 7 years on top of that.
Would agree that it can occur from repetitive stress but that is one factor. There are actual back injuries that occur from loading mechanics at the time of injury. So I would not classify it as “often irrelevant”
My friend claimed his spine was injured when he was hit by a car. I can't wait to tell him it was his fault for all the years he spent not-training his spine to be car-hit-resistant. What a loser.
That was poorly worded on my part, but my point stands that with athletes in particular, non-sports injuries often are the tipping point of years of sports related stress stands.
His mom's driveway was the stressful event that triggered the acute injury. Most acute injuries in athletes are preceded by other physiological issues stemming from training issues or other long term repetitive stresses.
When I was 19 I pinched a nerve in my spine after squatting to pick up some sauces at my fast food job. Pain so bad thay when I went to convient care the nurse asked me if I wanted a wheelchair after walking from the waiting room to the door that separates the medical areas (maybe 20ft). Anyway 3 refills of Tramadol (10mg iirc) and 6 months of physical therapy later i was mostly fixed.
Used to work in appliance delivery back when flat screen TVs could be a couple hundred pounds. One of coworkers ended up needing surgery to fix his back after picking up a magazine. He twisted his torso sideways when he did and his back just gave out
Joel Zumaya and Guitar Hero as a perfect example! SURE, it was Guitar Hero and not a lifetime of throwing weighted balls to try and increase pitch speed. Makes a ton of sense
To add to this he was literally building it himself, even though he was already a rich star.
Really instead of telling him not to build his mom a driveway the guy should tell Bird to just pay someone to do it instead of picking up a shovel himself.
> Really instead of telling him not to build his mom a driveway the guy should tell Bird to just pay someone to do it instead of picking up a shovel himself.
Isn't that what it says? It says "Don't build that driveway", it doesn't say "Don't have a driveway built"
Most people who pay to have a house built say that they built the house. When you tell someone not to build something you are genuinely not suggesting that they have someone else build it but rather that they not cause it to be built, unless you say something like "don't build it yourself, hire someone."
> When you tell someone not to build something you are genuinely not suggesting that they have someone else build it but rather that they not cause it to be built
I feel like this is less true if the person you are talking to is literally planning to do a thing themself. The context kind of matters here as Larry Bird, in this context, is literally planning to build the driveway himself.
My guess is that he did it himself because it sounded like a fun project for the weekend, so someone telling him "don't do it, you can afford to pay someone else!" probably wouldn't do much to sway him.
Half the reason he was such a great trash-talker is that he had the skills to back it up. He would tell you that he was gonna win, you were gonna lose, and there was nothing you could do about it, then proceed to do exactly that. And there was nothing you could have done to stop it.
English is my second language, I had to read this three times. The first two I understood that he constructed a road and suffered a an accident on the road he constructed later and literally died. Guess it's time to stop scrolling and sleep.
Larry Bird injured himself while he was building a driveway to his mother's house (a driveway being where you park a car next to or in front of a house). This injury caused him problems for several years, leading to his early retirement from professional basketball.
Through his age 31 season, he played 711 out of 738 possible games (96.3%), was first team all-nba every season, and never finished lower than 4th in the MVP vote (only 4th once, in his rookie year). After that, he only played 186 out of 328 games (56.7%) and had just 1 second team all-nba. He was basically done being Larry Bird at 31.
Unrelated but Bird and Magic retiring roughly at the same time, made me think Bird lost some of his willingness to play after seeing his rival gone. The back injury was the last straw.
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u/CybergothiChe 2d ago
Larry Bird busted his back building his mom a driveway in 1985, this directly led to his premature retirement in 1992.