If you want to get the attention of Boston Celtics fans ahead of an NBA draft, tell the media you are a fan of Larry Bird’s game. If you want to get the attention of the Celtics’ front office ahead of an NBA draft, spend your entire career as a basketball player molding yourself in the image of the Hick From French Lick.
Utah State’s Taylor Funk has done the latter since a young age, his family’s interest in the sport (and one of the greatest to play it) helping to shape him into the player he is today. That player is a very solid prospect known as much for his passing as his shooting, qualities which have got Funk in the door to work out with Bird’s storied ball club. And he shares Bird’s near-maniacal dedication to his craft as well.
“I was home-schooled my entire life,” said Funk in an interview with Utah State Athletics’ Patrick Mayhorn. “The decision of me being homeschooled was so I could train more than the average player.”
Even Funk’s origin story with the sport reads like he was taking a page out of the West Baden native’s past, learning his trade with bruising adults while he was wire-thin and still growing.
“Every day around lunchtime, my father would take me to play pick-up against grown men,” shared Funk. “When I was in middle school, these guys had 150 pounds on me. I had to learn how to pass and shoot, catch and shoot. How to play basketball the right way.”
Around the same age, a young Larry used to play pickup with adult hotel workers in his neighborhood, according to the man himself in an interview with Andscape’s Marc Spears.
“When I showed up, if somebody needed a break, they’d throw me right in there and I’d be in there the rest of the day,” related Larry Legend.
“I would study Larry Bird, Pistol Pete, Magic Johnson… it wasn’t just about them when they were playing,” explained Funk, who leaned heavily on the history of the league to shape his modern game. “It’s about everyone else, and it comes back to them. That old-school basketball is how I learned.”
Bird’s influence is reportedly quite apparent in Funk’s approach to the sport, but he also mixes in aspects of players from the modern NBA into his play as well.
Miami Heat shooter Duncan Robinson, for example, is a player Funk has cribbed from. But Bird is the anchor that ties it all together for the Utah State prospect.
“I studied Larry Bird,” Funk continued, emphasizing the import of Bird to shaping the player he is now, one on the precipice of joining the Hall of Fame small forward’s league — or perhaps even team.
“I don’t think there’s a YouTube video of Larry Bird that I have not seen. In previous years, I watched more Duncan Robinson – being able to spin off screens, catch off the inside foot and get a shot up. I pretty much played last year modeling my game around Duncan.”
“A little mix between both of them is the player I like to be,” suggests Funk.
Hopefully a bit more Bird and less Robinson, but he is a prospect to keep an eye on for Boston after working out with the Celtics ahead of the 2023 NBA draft.
And probably not because of the Duncan Robinson approach to defense.
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Story originally appeared on Celtics Wire