18th
Boston Celtics Locker Room
Celtics have just won the NBA Finals. The team is hooting and hollering as they celebrate with champagne. Newspaper and television reporters are also in the locker room taking interviews from the players.
Bob Lobel, sportscaster for WBZ-TV in Boston is interviewing MVP Larry Bird. He scribbles in his notepad frantically after Bird, who clutches a large bottle of champagne, occasionally taking pulls from it, answers his questions.
Lobel: (yelling over the racket) Larry, the team has just won the NBA Finals, how does it feel to be the best?
Bird: Once you are labeled ‘the best’ you want to stay up there, and you can’t do it by loafing around. If I don’t keep changing. I’m history.
Lobel: The Lakers are a quick, physical team. How did the defense change to combat that?
Bird: I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.
Lobel: Magic tried to rally several times in the fourth, how did you shut him down?
Bird: Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final buzzer sounds.
Kevin McHale interrupts the interview. He dumps champagne all over Bird’s head.
McHale: (screaming and waving arms like wings) Birdman! Birdman!
Bird jumps up and down with McHale. They toast each other.
Bird and McHale: Yeaaaaaaaaaaahhh!
The players chug the rest of the champagne from their bottles. They both laugh and scream again. Robert Parrish yells at them. He’s ten feet away near his locker giving in interview. Next to him is the laundry basket. He points at it and looks to Bird and McHale.
Parrish: Five hundred bucks, you make that!
Bird and McHale look to each other then back to Parrish.
McHale: You’re on, Parrish!
McHale shoots his champagne bottle first. He makes it. He screams, high-fives Bird, runs over to Parrish for a high-five and then gets another bottle of champagne, which is sitting on a table near the laundry basket. McHale pops open the bottle, sprays Parrish and then takes a pull. They look back to Bird.
McHale and Parrish: Birdman!
Bird: (to Lobel) That’s wild. That is really wild.
Bird spots up and shoots. He’s a little wobbly and the shot is wide of the laundry basket. The bottle strikes a locker and shatters. The team and reporters, who’ve been watching, go silent for a second and then begin to roar with laughter. McHale and Parrish walk over to Bird, still laughing, put their hands on his shoulder in mock condolence. Bird takes the champagne from McHale.
Bird: I’m doing an interview!
McHale and Parrish laugh louder and then join their other teammates in celebration. Bird, after taking another large swig from the bottle, turns back to Lobel.
Lobel: Larry, you’re mother was here for the game. How—-
Bird: If there was a payment to the bank due, and we needed shoes, she’d get the shoes, and then deal with them guys at the bank. I don’t mean she wouldn’t pay the bank, but the children always came first.
Lobel is a little confused. He writes down the comment regardless and goes to the next question.
Lobel: 24 points per game, 12 rebounds, 8—-
Bird: I got a question, Bob: What’s better? Dogs or broomsticks? I mean will the world really ever know?
Lobel, even more confused, can’t help laughing. Before he can move to the next question, they are interrupted by the coach who throws a cigar in Bird’s mouth and lights it up. Lobel takes the opportunity to ask the coach a question.
Lobel: Coach? You’ve taught this team—-
Bird in the middle of another swig, stops to interrupt.
Bird: While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use, he who has learned to trust nature finds need for ever fewer external directions. He will discard formula after formula, until he reaches the conclusion: Let nature take its course.
Lobel looks to the coach. They laugh. The coach puts his arm around Bird, who’s taking a puff of his cigar.
Bird: I’ve been around a while. I kinda know these things.
Lobel realizes his interview is shot. He puts away the notepad, grabs some champagne and celebrates with the team.
