McHale: Playing with Bird, Celtics was fun

Their teams may be on opposing sides in Thursday's NBA Global Games preseason match between the Houston Rockets and Indiana Pacers at the Mall of Asia Arena, but Rockets coach Kevin McHale will always have fond memories of his championship years with Indiana Pacers president Larry Bird when both played for the Boston Celtics in the 1980s.

McHale and Bird formed two-thirds of the Celtics' original Big Three (the other being center Robert Parish) that won three NBA titles, and for McHale, those years were some of the best of his life.

"I ran into him (Bird) [Tuesday]," McHale told Yahoo Philippines. "We talked for a while. It was fun. We had a great team and we had a lot of good guys and we all got along. It was one of those unique situations where everybody's skill level really complemented each other. It was just fun. We had a lot of fun playing basketball. It wasn't like it is now. It wasn't a huge global game. It was us versus the other team. It was a great time, if you ask me, to be playing in the NBA. The game just started to explode stateside.

"I've often said it's a blessing to play in the NBA. When someone pays you a lot of money to do something you'd do for free, it's not a bad job."

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While McHale has been gracious with the local media, Bird has avoided the spotlight and has numerous interview requests. He left the Mall of Asia Arena as soon as the Pacers' practice session ended.

Twenty-seven years after their last championship together, the two former Celtics find themselves a part of this historic preseason game in the Philippines, and McHale sees the match as a good gauge of where they are.

"It's gonna be a really good test for us," he said. "The Pacers are a little bit ahead of us. They're where we want to go. They were in the Eastern Conference Finals last year, and bringing back the whole team. Everybody's accustomed with each other. We have a lot of new faces that we have to get into our lineup. We've got to figure out who's gonna be in our starting lineup and who's gonna be our back-up.

"We're gonna play our guys. I imagine our main guys will play 25 to 30 minutes. Normally they play 35 to 40 minutes. But we plan on playing them."

The Rockets' biggest off-season acquisition, All-Star center Dwight Howard, will be one of the game's main attractions, and McHale expects a lot from the athletic big man this coming season.

"I told him I wanted him again to be the top center in the league, which he's been many times in our league. He's been the most dominant force on both sides of the ball, in the paint. He's been first team all-defense, he's been defensive player of the year, he's been first team all-pro. I said, 'Dwight, you've just gotta go back and do what you've done before.'"

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In his prime, McHale possessed some of the best post moves the game has ever seen, and he's eager to impart some of these to his young center.

"We worked on stuff," he revealed. "Right now we haven't worked much in camp because he's trying to grasp all the team stuff, but we worked this summer on stuff and I see him incorporating that. I see him working on some of the stuff that we taught him. He'll get more comfortable. Between Hakeem Olajuwon and myself, we probably showed him eight or nine different things we want him to try. If he can incorporate two or three of those, that's a huge difference. He's not going to turn into Hakeem Olajuwon. He's gonna be Dwight Howard. But can he add a couple of things to his game? And I think he will."

McHale also doesn't see any problem getting Howard to play with James Harden, the Rockets' leading scorer last season.

"If you want to win in our league, you gotta play with other players who are very good. They'll get accustomed to each other. I don't think it's a big challenge. Chemistry is something that grows as you play more together, you get more accustomed to how guys play. I think they're gonna make a very, very dynamic duo. We have a lot of things to work on on our team, but I don't think James-Dwight will be an issue at all."

As for the loaded Western Conference, while McHale mentioned the LA Clippers, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the San Antonio Spurs as their biggest rivals next season, he said ultimately their biggest opponents will be themselves.

"There's a lot of teams out there. But I don't worry about them. I worry about us. We're just gonna have to keep on playing and getting better."