How the Clippers Ended Up Owning Larry Bird’s Draft Rights

During one brief moment in the summer of 1978, the Buffalo Braves (now the LA Clippers) owned Larry Bird’s draft rights.

How this highly improbable circumstance came to be involves a Hollywood mogul, some legal technicalities, and the only franchise swap in NBA history.

This is the story.

The Origin of Bird Rights

A controversial current rule that allows teams to offer their restricted free agents larger contracts than any other team, has its origin in its namesake – Larry Joe Bird.

In June 1978 the Boston Celtics drafted a sweet-shooting hick with a Mr. Potato Head face from Indiana State University. However, NBA contracts weren’t as lucrative as they are today and Bird decided to return to school for his senior year.

Under league rules at the time, the C’s held Bird’s rights until the 1979 draft and had until then to officially sign him or he would re-enter the 1979 draft. However, Larry’s agent Bob Woolf with two o’s was driving a hard bargain and no one knew what was going to happen.

As all this was playing out, Celtics owner Irv Levin, a California-based film producer of such titles as To Kill A Clown and The Stepford Wives, desperately wanted to own a team in his adopted home state of Cali.

Knowing full well he would never ever be allowed to re-locate the historic Boston Celtics, he struck a deal with John Y. Brown, the owner of the far less revered Buffalo Braves franchise to swap teams like regular guys swap wives at a swinger’s club.

The Braves are the Clippers are the Celtics

Former NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik once admitted to the New York Times that “in a strictly legal sense, the Clippers are the successor of the Boston Celtics.”

How did this all come to be?

On July 7, 1978, the league’s board of governors approved both the team swap between Levin and Brown and the Brave’s relocation to sunny San Diego in one fell swoop.

So if you’ve been following along, this means the legal business entity that owned the Boston Celtics moved to San Diego, and the entity that owned the Buffalo Braves packed up and headed to Boston.

As for player rosters, personnel, and the like, the teams immediately swapped these too after the franchise exchange was complete.

But for one shining, albeit brief moment, Larry Bird was a San Diego Clipper. At least on paper.

Get your official Larry Bird merch from the NBA Store, no Clippers jersey🙅

Irv Levin has subsequently said he “absolutely could have had Bird if he really wanted”, but he never pressed the issue since he didn’t know if he’d be willing to sign with him.

Of course, we all know how this movie ends – Bird went on to sign the richest rookie contract in sports history at the time, a five-year, $3.25 million contract with the Celtics, win three championships, and become a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.

The Clippers meanwhile missed the playoffs all six seasons they were in San Diego and Levin eventually sold the team to Donald Sterling in 1984, who somehow managed to make them even worse.

They remain the oldest NBA franchise to never play in the Finals😔

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