"I remember Larry and I going out the night we won in '84 and I figured you [celebrate] for a couple days," said ex-Celtics guard Quinn Buckner. "I go to his house the next day and knock on the door and his girlfriend then, now wife, Dinah, said he was out running.
"When he came back, I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'I'm getting ready for next year.' This is like the day after, and he was already getting ready.
"We didn't have enough people that thought like that, and honestly, I hadn't thought like that. That's really the philosophy you had to have if you want to succeed.
"What Larry knew, which I hadn't put into consideration, was that you had to start right away because of the shortened summer. We needed to get back into it. I don't know that we had enough people that took that into consideration. I know I didn't. I wasn't nearly as important as Larry, Kevin [McHale], and those guys.
"But I'm not sure anybody other than Larry did that. I'll always remember that."
Bird won three NBA titles with the Celtics, though none in succession. In fact, the Celtics have not been a repeat cham pion since 1969. The NBA hasn't had a repeat champion since the Lakers in 2003.
Short offseason. Injuries. An even bigger bull's-eye. Better opponents. In hopes of repeating, NBA champions have a lot of hurdles to overcome.
So what will this season's Celtics be up against after winning their first title in 22 years?
"Will everybody have the same mind-set that they had when they were chasing a championship?" said Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, who won five NBA titles with the Lakers. "That's the key.
"You had a lot of guys that had never won a championship on the team. You only had two guys that had ever won, [James] Posey and [Sam] Cassell. But now would they have that same hunger and same feeling that they had when they were chasing that first championship?"
The Celtics were relatively healthy last season, with the biggest concern coming when Kevin Garnett missed nine games before the All-Star break with an abdominal injury.
Other than Kendrick Perkins missing the playoff finale with a shoulder injury, they also were very healthy in the postseason.
