In June of 1978, the Boston Celtics selected Larry Bird with the sixth overall pick in the NBA Draft. Fifty-four selections later, near the end of the third round, the Los Angeles Lakers took a player out of the University of New Mexico who would end up checking Bird in three NBA finals: Michael Cooper.

The Laker great won five championships and was named to eight All-Defensive teams in his 12-year career, spent entirely in Los Angeles. Before he chatted with basketball fans and signed autographs Thursday as part of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame's 60 Days of Summer event series, Cooper sat down with MassLive for a brief conversation.

MassLive: I want to start with Larry Bird. He's said before that you were the toughest player to defend him. Was he the best player you ever had to defend?

Cooper: He was the toughest in the sense that anytime Larry was on the floor, you had to be aware of his presence because he was going to make something good happen. I played against George Gervin, Andrew Toney, Dr. J., a young Michael Jordan, some of the best players that have ever played this game, but Larry would have to be the best. You knew if Jordan had the ball, once he gave it up, you were okay with that. Larry could go get offensive rebounds. He could make a great pass. He was the ultimate offensive threat. Anytime he was on the offensive side of the floor you had to defend him. To me, that makes him the best I've ever played against.

MassLive: Larry was a notorious chirper as well. He would do anything he could to get in a defender's head. How did you stop him from playing that mental game with you?

Cooper: You put it very lightly that he was a notorious chirper. No, he was a big-time s---talker. But I think at that point, when he played us (in the finals), he wasn't just playing one individual he was playing the Lakers. He knew instead of running his mouth he had to let his game do the talking for him. There were some times he said different little things on the floor, but most of the time he was so focused on what they had to do offensively and defensively against us, there wasn't time to talk. He had to play.

MassLive: When I think of the Showtime Lakers, I think of James Worthy throwing down a transition dunk, Magic running the floor or Kareem's sky-hook. I think offense. Do you think the team gets enough credit for its defense?

Cooper: The NBA is about offense. It's about scoring, dunking and points. But if you look at the championship teams, they're teams that play good defense. Even though we were a Showtime team, we were a very good defensive team. Obviously a lot of that label fell to me, but I would not be the defensive player I became if I didn't have support from my teammates. There were times Larry got by me, but Magic, Worthy or Kareem rotated over and helped me get back into the play, enabling me to do a good job defensively.

Look at the San Antonio Spurs, people make so much about the offense they ran, but that team is a very good defensive team. People have a tendency to lose the concept of defense and what it means to the game because offense is put out there so much. It was nice for us to be known as the Showtime team, that’s what sold tickets and put people in the stands, but in order to win a championship you have to be a solid defensive team.

MassLive: You were a third-round draft pick who, at one point, played with four number one overall picks on the same team (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Mychal Thompson, Magic Johnson and James Worthy). Jeff Pearlman wrote in his book Showtime that you could at times be "paranoid" and insecure about whether you'd be back with the team. How did that mentality help you as a player?

Cooper: I was always very concerned about my place on the team. That concern kept me motivated, kept me intense, kept my senses heightened so I would come out every year and try to improve my game, get a little bit better and help our team win. That was a scary thing of mine, because who would know a kid from Pasadena, California would get to play for his hometown team? I wanted to play there my whole career.

Once my 12 years were up, I had opportunities to go to Boston, to San Antonio, to Philadelphia, but after everything I had built up with the Lakers over those years, it didn’t make sense to me to go to another team at the end of my career for money or anything else and tear all that down. That’s one reason I truly wanted to be a Laker. It’s very rare a player comes into the league and plays for one organization his entire career. I wanted to do that.