David West on Larry Bird’s Press Conference: ‘You Just Don’t Do People Like That’
By Jared Wade
David West said that some of the comments Larry Bird made while canning Frank Vogel were out of bounds. “You just don’t do people like that,” he told the San Antonio Express-News.
Even before the press conference in which Larry Bird dismissed Frank Vogel, I was on record saying the Indiana Pacers president of operations had been handling things poorly.
Another 8 Points, 9 Seconds editor, Ben Gibson, took umbrage with things that were said in the press conference.
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Jeff Van Gundy felt similarly, noting that Larry Bird was disrespectful to the coach by telling him he no longer had a job over the phone instead of face to face.
“I completely disagreed with that decision,” said the former Knicks and Rockets coach on air during an ESPN broadcast. “The rationale that Larry Bird gave that all good coaches have to leave after three years was absurd. And the way [the news] was delivered — on the phone — to me, instead of doing it in person with Frank Vogel, is disrespectful to the greatness that he brought to the Indiana Pacers.”
Now David West has also weighed in.
And West’s issue with what Bird said is that he revealed private information about the firing that the public did not need to know, as reported by Jabari Young and Tom Orshorn of the San Antonio Express-News.
"“Frank is a pretty good coach,” West said. “It could have been handled a little bit differently, give him a little more respect.”West said Bird shouldn’t have revealed that Vogel asked to keep his job.“He probably should’ve been treated a little bit better,” West said. “Some of those other things, it just wasn’t necessary for people to know. You just don’t do people like that.”"
I imagine plenty of coaches, when getting fired, just don’t say anything. I imagine others are very emotional. And I imagine the the typical response is somewhere in the middle.
When it comes to Frank Vogel, I now know that when Bird called him, Vogel tried to talk the GM out of it and even asked to come down to the arena and convince him to reconsider.
And I should not know that information.
I only do because Larry Bird thought it necessary to tell the global news media.