Deep amongst the stacks of the NBA archives, a bearded Germanic giant, brow furrowed in concentration, was hunched beside piles of exceedingly old, musty documents. The knowledge he sought was near; he could sense it, but not with any of the traditional senses. As if a divine presence controlled his hands, he carefully paged through the NBA’s endless minutia; decades-old box scores, records of contract negotiations, janitor bills for practice gyms, and much more of even lesser import. Some of the papers were faded to the point of illegibility; others would crumble at the slightest whisper of a breeze or the lightest brush of a fingertip.
Abruptly, after glancing for a split second at a list of Pacers season ticket holders from 1994, the thing he sought was in his hands. He was certain of this fact in the same way he was certain of the championship ring which adorned his finger. Delicately, oh so delicately, he lifted the singular sheet of yellowed paper from its place. The handwritten script was tight and neat, seemingly untouched by the interminable passing of time. One unheard word passed breathily from the man’s bearded mouth: “Yes.” He read:
“To whoever finds this,
Congratulations. Your perseverance is admirable, but perseverance alone did not bring you to this message. Only the most talented and stout-hearted basketball player would feel the, as I call them, “vibrations” which guided you to this out-of-the-way place. A player truly able to follow in my footsteps, a player to carry on my legacy. A player who has met both success and failure, a player who knows and loves the game so deeply as to know that in order to achieve one, the other must also be experienced.
I have no secret to basketball success. The one who finds this already possesses the ability necessary to take victory as his own. But by your discovery of this innocuous sheet of paper, tucked among the unending bureaucracy of the NBA, you may find that there is a force pushing you when you feel that you can be pushed no longer, granting you strength when your own vast reserve of it has dwindled to nil. A spiritual Gatorade, if you will, to replenish the electrolytes of your very being.
I have been playing coy. I know who will find this letter. Hello, Dirk. This is Larry Bird.
June 8th, 1986.”
Dirk roared in primal victory as he felt himself joined with the Eternal One. There would be no stopping The Mountain Man.