NBA: Bird hops back on board with Pacers

Larry Bird agreed Wednesday (Thursday, PHL time) to return to the Indiana Pacers after taking a year off to deal with health concerns, USA Today reported.

The Pacers scheduled a news conference for Thursday morning (Thursday evening, PHL time) to make a formal announcement.

Bird, 56, will return to his role as president in the organization. General manager Kevin Pritchard will remain on the staff and Donnie Walsh will become a consultant.

"He's got plenty of rings of his own, now I want him to win one for me," Pacers owner Herb Simon told USA Today. "He's got his energy back, his health back and he's raring to go."

Bird is not participating in the the Pacers' preparations for the NBA Draft on Thursday night though, as Walsh and Pritchard are in charge of that.

Bird played a key role in building the team that advanced to the Eastern Conference finals this season and lost in seven games to the Miami Heat. He had served as a Pacers executive from 2003 until 2013 and coached the team from 1997 until 2000.

"First of all, we all realize he's done a pretty good job with the team," Simon said. "He left because of physical reasons. It was always contemplated that when he straightened out his medical issues he would come back. The only thing is we didn't know if it would take a year or more for him to feel strong enough to get back and apparently he had a good year and is ready to come back."

Simon said the Pacers weren't sure when and if Bird would decide to come back to the Pacers, but they're glad the Hall of Famer did.

"Larry does what he does when he wants to do it and everybody is sort of happy with the outcome," Simon said. "Everybody, including Donnie and Kevin, wanted him to finish the job he started." - Reuters