Bird Watching
Chapter One
On Retirement
On August 18, 1992, I announced my retirement from the Boston
Celtics. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
You have to understand how screwed up my back was at that point. I
had been playing through back problems for almost ten years, and I
just couldn't take it anymore. The pain was relentless. No matter
what I did-whether I was standing up, sitting down, lying down,
leaning over-I couldn't escape it. It had completely taken over my
life. There were some days I couldn't even bend over to pick up a
basketball, never mind try to shoot one. Some nights, I had to eat
dinner sitting on the floor. Even lifting up my son, Conner, hurt so
much that I had to stop doing it. When I'm hurting, and not able to
play the way I want, I can be a pretty miserable person to be
around. I don't know how my wife, Dinah, lasted through that last
season of my career, because I was in pain all the time, which meant
I was in a bad mood all the time too.
Maybe that's why when I walked up to the podium at my press
conference in the Boards and Blades Club at Boston Garden and
finally said ... read full excerpt from Bird Watching ebook
