With all the obligatory talk of draft lottery conspiracies and good-luck charms, Larry Bird was asked if he had anything in his pocket to heighten his Indiana Pacers’ chances of a mathematical miracle in the N.B.A.’s annual game show production on Tuesday night.
Sitting on the edge of a stage where, 30 years after Patrick Ewing, fate’s index finger moments earlier had turned fickle on the Knicks, Bird said, “Yeah, my car keys, so I can get home.”
It is doubtful that Bird, the Pacers’ president, was driving back to Indianapolis, to where he would be taking the No.