Larry Legend

In this article, Josh Levin looks at the interesting question of why people tend to call every good, tall, white basketball player the next Larry Bird. The next Bird in question this time is Adam Morrison, the Gonzaga forward who is a joy to watch any time he steps on the floor. This man is an offensive machine. Is he Larry Bird? No one is Bird, so it's a silly comparison, as Levin points out. In addition, he is still only a senior in college, so he's got a long way to go before any meaningful comparison could be made.

There is something I would like to quibble with Levin on, however. Levin mentions the fact that once players fail as the "next Bird," they are never fairly compared to other players. But he also talks about how when "next Jordan" players fail, there are many other players to compare them to. But this never happens either. When Harold Miner fell off the face of the Earth, no one called him the next Dominique Wilkins.