On the great Celtics podcast On the Parquet, host Adam Himmelsbach sat down with famed Boston sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy to talk about the time Shaughnessy challenged an in-his-prime Larry Bird to a shooting contest, with an obvious caveat because sportswriters aren’t prone to just burning money.

As the story goes (and you should go listen to the podcast because it contains more gems), Bird had been in a bar fight near Faneuil Hall during the playoffs and was taping up his shooting hand in a fashion that Shaughnessy found to be ridiculous. He told Bird there was no way he could play in the Conference Finals against the Hawks with such an injury and Bird, the ever-competitive, trash-talk loving son of Indiana started his hustle, saying he could make more shots with his hand fully wrapped than Shaughnessy could make normally. (The sportswriter says he wasn’t a good high-school player but was the designated free-throw shooter and could make a fair amount.) Bird’s hand was taped “like a boxing glove” and the shooting contest began at $5 a shot.

He was just shoving the ball off that hand like a shot put. And he made 6 out of 10, first round. I made 6 out of 10, so we’re even. And then the second round, I was rebounding for him and he said ‘Oh, I’ve got this figured out.’ And he did. He made an adjustment, and he knew. And he made like 8 or 9 out of 10. And of course I step up and I’m starting to see $5 bills fly through the air every time I let go, and I was choking, and he beat me by $160. I think it was 88-62 or whatever it was, but I owed him $160. So I went to the ATM, got him his eight 20s He totally took the money, stuck it in his sneaker. And, gross, he played with my eight $20 bills in his shoe the whole night and lit up the 76ers.

Bird took the money, not content having taught the sportswriter a lesson (would you expect anything less?) and told a tale about his wife’s suggestion that he give Shaughnessy back his losings. But it didn’t turn out all bad for the Globe sportswriter, who was able to expense the whole thing through some creative accounting.

It’s a great tale. Read the whole thing.