New Delhi, July 27 -- BOSTON - The sadness in Larry Bird's words, written nearly three decades ago, has only deepened with time.

"The one I hate to see go without a ring is Patrick Ewing," Bird wrote in his 1999 memoir Bird Watching, as Yahoo Sports reported, reflecting on a generation of Hall of Famers who retired without the championship that defines basketball's ultimate measure. "It's sad for me to watch some of the older players come to the end of their careers."

What made the tribute striking was its source. Bird and Ewing had spent most of the 1980s and early 1990s as authentic enemies - their teams, the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks, locked in one of basketball's fiercest geographical and ideological rivalries. Ewing, for h...