Larry Bird: 'I knew I wasn't going to last long'

The image echoes through basketball's eternity -- confidence, accuracy and excellence all epitomized by a single finger aimed at the heavens. The multicolored ball hung in the middle of its arc, en route to its iron home, when Larry Bird looked away, still wearing his warm-up jacket, because not even that could slow down arguably the greatest shooter the game has ever known.

A heartbeat earlier, "Larry Legend" had hoisted his final shot in the 1988 3-point contest, an event he had won the previous two years, and he knew as soon as the ball departed from his fingertips that he had won it again. He raised his right index finger and walked toward midcourt, while the ball continued along its…