‘Heartland’ by author Keith O’Brien chronicles the Larry Bird origin story

Many books have been written about Larry Bird. The most recent one, by Keith O’Brien, provides new details and additional context about the basketball legend.

Heartland: A Forgotten Place, an Impossible Dream, and the Miracle of Larry Bird explores how Bird, who dropped out of Indiana University, ended up at Indiana State, where he led a remarkable run to the 1979 national championship game. While most people may be familiar with the story’s main points, Heartland offers information you may not know.

We caught up with O’Brien to discuss his new book.

Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Awful Announcing: Why should someone buy your book?

Keith O’Brien: “This is the Larry Bird story like it’s never been told before. Every time people have come to this story in the past 50 years, they always end up telling it the same way. We always tell the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson story, and I get it. I understand why, as a storyteller, we would do that. Bird and Magic do play against each other in that epic championship game in March 1979, and then they will go on to save the NBA and spark a generational rivalry. But the reality is, in the 1970s, they barely knew each other. They had only met one time before that epic championship game in 1979. And in that one time, they’d hardly spoken.”

What makes Heartland different?

“What you get is a completely different story, and maybe more importantly, a different cast of characters. These characters in my book were around Bird during those years. They do form, shape, and change, and at times, they save him. That’s the story that I’m telling here in this book. If you’re a fan of Larry Bird, even if you’re the biggest Boston Celtics fan ever born, you don’t know this story.”

Why did you choose to write about Bird?

“My last book was about the rise and fall of Pete Rose. For that book. I returned to my roots. I was born and raised in Cincinnati, in the Midwest. I spent a great deal of time back in the Midwest. I was just looking around and thinking about other Midwestern stories. I started to think about Bird. The first thing I thought of was the Indiana State team in 1979. I just started to go down the rabbit hole.

“From the beginning. I was not interested in writing a Bird-Magic book. I was not interested in writing a full Larry Bird biography. I was just curious about that Indiana State team.”

What do you think is the most interesting detail in your book?

“Lots of sports fans know the general outlines of the Larry Bird story. Bird briefly enrolls at Indiana University. He has signed to play for Bobby Knight in Bloomington. I think what we don’t know is just how dark it gets. He leaves Bloomington, again, sports fans will know the general outlines. Bird works on a garbage truck. For a while, that is true, but it’s way darker than that. In that winter of ’74-’75, Larry Bird nearly slips away forever.”

How so?

“He returns home to French Lick. He briefly enrolls at a vocational school in West Baden Springs and plays on the basketball team. He drops out. He gets a job working for the city of French Lick on a trash truck. It’s in the middle of that winter that his father Larry’s father takes his own life. In the wake of Larry’s father’s suicide, Bird tells his mother in the spring of ‘75 that he’s not going back to college. She’s to run off any college recruiter who comes looking for him, and Georgia Bird does that. Were it not for a man named Bill Hodges, a down-on-his-luck assistant coach at Indiana State, who comes down to French Lick determined to find Larry, I think this whole story is different.”

@obrienstory HEARTLAND is available today wherever they sell books. Pick up your copy today to read one of the greatest underdog stories of all time. #basketball #marchmaddness #indiana #celtics #heartland ♬ original sound – Keith O’Brien

How did Bill Hodges manage to persuade Bird to go to Indiana State?

“It really comes down to a personal connection. Bill Hodges is from a rural community called Rosston, outside of Zionsville. He grew up poor. He grew up baling hay. He grew up in a house that had no indoor plumbing. Larry understands rural Indiana. He understands kids who grow up in rural Indiana, kids like Larry Bird. He’s also as stubborn as Larry. Hodges was known as a straight shooter. I interviewed many people who were recruited by Bill Hodges in the 1970s. They all agreed that he was different. He wouldn’t come in telling kids what they wanted to hear. He would be honest with them.”

Were you able to discover any new details about why Bird left Indiana University?

“I did unearth one specific story: his last pickup game in Bloomington. Remember, this is August and September of ‘74, Bobby Knight can’t run practices. He’s not out there coaching them. After one of these games in mid-September ’74, they’re in the locker room, done for the night. Some guys are in the showers, and Larry was upset. He was upset because the guys hadn’t passed him the ball or played him at all. He’s openly complaining about that.

“One of the other guys turns to Larry and says, ‘Tell us again, Larry. Where are you from?’ The point was clear: Larry was a nobody; he was from nowhere. He was from French Lick. He was from Springs Valley High School. This was not a basketball powerhouse; he was not considered to be a great recruit. Based on my reporting. That’s the last pickup game that Larry Bird ever played in Bloomington.”

How special was that Indiana State team?

“Indiana State was a miracle team. They were unranked to start the season, picked to finish third or fourth in the Missouri Valley Conference by so-called experts who thought teams like Creighton and Southern Illinois would be better. Nobody believed in them. Then they put together this miracle run. And there are a few games along the way that were true miracles, miracles on the level of that UConn-Duke game from a week ago.”

@obrienstory Let me show you one reason why libraries are cool. And if you like this, maybe you’d like my new book HEARTLAND. It’s available today wherever books are sold! 📚🏀🙌 #marchmadness #bracket #basketball #librarytiktok #library ♬ original sound – Keith O’Brien

How much cooperation did you get from Larry Bird?

“He declined to speak to me. During the course of reporting my book, I became close to the people closest to Larry. Some of his best friends today. I know they tried to approach Larry about talking to me, but he declined again. But I’ve learned over the years that you can often get a more accurate portrait of a person by talking to 15, 40,60 people around that person.”

What’s a key message people should take away from your book?

“I think the story is bigger than Larry Bird. It is the story of a team, a time, a place, a moment. And this moment was so big that it doesn’t just change Larry Bird. It doesn’t just change Magic Johnson. It doesn’t just change the NCAA tournament and the NBA. It fundamentally changes the people who were around Larry in those days. It really moves across the landscape like this furious tide, and it picks everybody up, and it propels them to places they didn’t think they would ever go. That to me is the most compelling part about this book.”