Glen "Big Baby" Davis is only 23 years old, and as his nickname implies, he's not the most mature of the Celtics. However, is what he did anything new? Not according to Dan Shaughnessy. 

According to Dan the Man, Big Baby is nothing special. Athletes have been acting their age for years, and even his holiness Larry Joe had an ill advised adventure in amateur late night pugilism.

Per Shaughnessy's article:

t’s not a good situation. But let’s not throw Big Baby out with the bathwater. This stuff is as old as dirt. Young athletes have been doing goofy things at odd hours since before the days of the original Big Baby, George Herman Ruth.

It even happened to Larry Bird.

That’s right.

Larry Bird.

On the night of May 16, 1985, in the middle of the Eastern Conference finals between the Celtics and Sixers, Bird was involved in a scuffle that started at a now-defunct bar called Chelsea’s and spilled out to the corner of State Street and Merchant’s Row. After the altercation, Mike Harlow, a bartender/former Colgate football player, claimed he was sucker-punched by Bird. Nick Harris, a man who was with Bird and Quinn Buckner on the night of the incident, was treated at Massachusetts General Hospital’s emergency room that night.

There was a lawsuit and a settlement. The Celtics told Bird to stay away from Harris. None of the parties ever talked about it.

Ever.

First of all, if Larry Bird punched you in the mug, the correct response is 'thank you sir, may I have another'. If this thing called a 'Mike Harlow' would have had the foresight to make a cast of the four knuckle imprints on his face, he could have parlayed his late night encounter into a lucrative career as a novelties salesman, but that's neither here nor there.

Shaughnessy isn't just relying on a 'Mike Harlow" either. He's got a fairly famous source in the article.

In MacMullan’s new book, Bird says, "Max was out of shape when he came back. He didn’t do the rehab the way they asked. I was so pissed at him, because he was so good . . . He got his money, and he quit. I like Max, but that’s the bottom line.’’

"So it was all me?’’ Max said before the Celtics’ home opener Wednesday. "We got four Hall of Famers on the team, but the reason we didn’t win was all my fault? I must have been a beast!’’

He was laughing, but he was serious.

"Hey, we got a guy who gets his hand busted up in a barroom fight. That wasn’t me. But I’m never going to win this one. He’s Larry Bird!’’

Max has a point. Bird’s right index finger was badly swollen in the days after the fight. He claimed he injured it May 18 in a game at Philadelphia, two days after the fight. He shot 46 percent in the ’85 playoffs. In his other two MVP seasons, when the Celtics won the championship, he shot 52 percent each year.

So where does all this leave us? Let's assume the story is true as told, but where does it leave us? Baby was out at 4 am with his buddy, who was intoxicated. They got into a fight and now Baby is deep in the doghouse.

Bird gets into a bar-fight (well technically it's an 'out of bar fight') and the team settles and moves on. The team loses in the finals that year while Bird suffers through below par shooting and a supposedly (according to Danny Boy) swollen finger on his shooting hand. Bird gets a wrap from the newspaper on the nose and the team pays out to keep it quiet. Baby gets a broken finger (allegedly from the fight, but we all know Wyc did it in a fit of rage) and dragged through the papers, and apparently he is facing suspension. What can we learn from all this?

Well we can learn that first and foremost teams take care of their superstars. If Garnett had thrown a right hook at someone for saying salacious sentences about his lady, the team would rally behind him. Wyc would really behind him, because he's part of the face of the franchise, because he's Kevin Garnett, and the Kevin Garnett we all know from the TV commercials doesn't party until 4am and get in fights.

But there is a second lesson here which I think ought to be just as important. This isn't 1985. In 1985 the NBA wasn't clean cut. Compared to today's league, and the expectations from managment as well as fans regarding players' conduct, the league back then was a loosely organizated assortmant of ruffians and vagabonds. Go ahead and youtube "Mchale Rambis"..then youtube "rondo miller". You have to watch closely, the difference is subtle.

Thanks in part to public friendly (and image conscious or more likely image managed) players like Larry Bird, Majic Johnson, or Micheal Jordan, NBA players are expected to just be better. Better athletes, better looking, heck just overall better people.

So I guess before we get all rilied up about how Glen Davis was "only being 23", or how "Larry Bird even did it, let's not over react", maybe we ought to keep in mind that times have changed. It shouldn't surprise anyone that someone named "Basketball Jesus" could get away with a sucker punch in the wee hours of the morning over 20 years ago, but in the age of blogs, and face-space and my-book and that god foresaken thing called twitter, it shouldn't surprise us that Big Baby getting in a fight at 4am and sidelining himself for months is a big freakin deal.