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didn’t know which one was my final game, because they didn’t get to say goodbye, but they did. The Celtics held a retirement night for me, and it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever experienced. It was Dave Gavitt’s idea. At first I didn’t want any part of it. The way the Celtics usually retire jerseys is at halftime of a game, but Dave said it would be almost impossible to get the ceremony done in such a short time, and it would be disruptive to the game. His idea was to sell tickets to a Larry Bird Night, and donate all the proceeds to charity. The way he envisioned it was to have me onstage, in uniform, and have various people who were important throughout my career come up and talk with me. He also wanted to fly in Magic Johnson from L.A. to be there, which I thought was a great idea, because the two of us were so closely connected throughout our careers. Dave thought Magic should be in his Lakers warm-ups, and I should be in my Celtics warm-ups. I fought him a little on that, but I finally gave in. Dave also thought I should take one last shot, but there was no way I’d agree to that. I told him, “Dave, I’ve already taken all the shots I’m going to take.”
    Anyhow, once I said yes to this Larry Bird Night, I got concerned about it. Who would come? There wasn’t any game being played. But once it was announced, it sold out in a matter of minutes. Everyone got pretty excited about it. Mark Lev, who worked in the marketing department for Boston, came up with the idea of selling 1,033 limited edition Leroy Neiman prints, signed by both Neiman and me, for $1,033 each, with that money going to charity as well. (The additional 33 was for my uniform number.)
    The night itself is one I’ll never forget. I still can’t get over all those people showing up, just to cheer for me. When they cheer for you in a game, you never know if it’s because of the play the whole team just made, or because they love the Celtics, or what. But that night, I really appreciated their applause. Bob Costas, who agreed to fly in and be the emcee at no charge, was great. Magic was his usual charming self. My mom made a rare appearance in Boston to attend, and my son, Conner, who was just a baby, helped me raise my number to the rafters.
    We raised over $1 million for thirty-three different charities. We gave money to everyone from Celtics Wives Save Lives (to benefit breast cancer research) to Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. It wasn’t easy choosing where the money should go, because there were so many worthy causes. I remember that at the time, Conner loved the show
Barney,
so I asked that we give something to the public television station that aired it. I wanted to make a donation to the Colonel Daniel Marr Boys and Girls Club, because I had seen for myself all the good they had done, and I wanted to make sure we gave a new van to a homeless shelter in town called Rosie’s Place. Some of the donations involved personal connections too. We gave money to an Alzheimer’s foundation named after M. L. Carr’s father, who died of the disease, as well as to the Red Auer-bach Youth Foundation. I also wanted New England Baptist Hospital, whose staff had taken care of me all those years, to receive a donation.
    People ask me all the time if I regret playing through all that pain, and if I would do it over again, knowing what I know now. When I list all of the things that went wrong with my body, it sounds like I’m whining about my injuries, and I hate that. That’s why you didn’t hear me talking about them when I was playing. It was the
last
thing I wanted to talk about.
    I will say this: I should have retired after my first back surgery. I wish I had. But the mentality of our team was to play through anything, to do whatever it takes, and most of us did that. Like when Kevin had that broken foot. We knew it was bad, and if he had decided he couldn’t play, we would have lived with it. We would have understood. But