The two words that first come to mind when someone mentions the name "Michael Cooper" are "defense" and "skinny."
The Los Angeles Lakers' defensive specialist, who allegedly weighed in at 170 pounds but always looked to be at least 15 pounds lighter, may have redefined the way players like himself operated in the NBA. Defense was always about effort and positioning, but Cooper added study to the art, as he outlined in an interview last week.
Cooper's least favorite homework subject, it turns out, was the Celtics' Larry Bird.
"I used to study games of his," Cooper told Brian Kamenetzky of ESPN. "It would be a month before we would play the Celtics, but I was getting ready for him, watching him play. What did he do on out-of-bounds passes? What did he do going around picks? … Larry was naturally born left-handed, and taught himself how to shoot right-handed. He was very ambidextrous, so you couldn't force him one way or the other, because he was just as good going to his left as he was to his right.
"The only tendencies I [could] pick up with him was how he came off of picks, how he set you up to come off a pick."
Check out the video below from Cooper's playing days to hear more on how he approached defending Bird, with a hat tip to Celtics Town to finding the video.
