If you’re still working up to Jerry Springer, but like many of the rest of us prefer instead to receive your recommended daily allowance of mayhem from NBA basketball, you already know that Larry Joe Bird is the nearly unanimous choice as the league’s coach of the year. No argument there: Pundits and pencilheads (if it’s not redundant to use those terms together) agree.

I’m here to argue another case. Larry Bird (it says rahcheer) should be the focus of management school curriculae everywhere. His name should be revered by every starch-sniffing M.B.A. candidate.

And while we’re at it, forget Al “Bucks Dharma” Gore in 2000. Forget Lamar. Forget the Newtzis. Larry Bird should be our next president.

Now, if you’re one of these Brie-nibbling, jock-hating hoity-toits who’d sooner be interrogated by the Bolivian military than display a painting of dogs playing poker, you may suspect that we’re embarking on another quixotic crusade on behalf of the proposition that sports imitate life. Well, you can peel yourself a grape, baby. You win the set of Samsonites.

My fellow Americans, I’m here to tell you that Larry Bird should become your new national role model, even if you personally couldn’t hit a tobacco barn with a basketball.

You might say, any coach who figures out how to harness the energy in Reggie Miller’s mouth deserves to be the leader of the free world. But it goes beyond that.

It goes all the way back to last summer, when many of our leading Media Geniuses loudly wondered whether Larry Legend could even cipher to 20 without removing his shoes—much less transform the aging, underachieving Indiana Pacers into a championship contender.

Bird had never coached before, the pundits reminded everyone.

And besides, didn’t you know that superstar players seldom become great coaches? And besides that, no one had pegged Bird to be the valedictorian of this NBA coaching group. After all, this was the native Indiana whom Writerly Types originally nicknamed “The Hick From French Lick.” And, with all due respect to our Hoosier friends, Indiana ain’t exactly known for producing Atlases of politics and the intellect (if you know what I mean, and I think you do). Do the names Dan Quayle and Dan Burton ring any bells?

And on top of all that, in televised interviews, Bird lacks the grammatical polish of Michael Jordan (although at least, unlike Magic Johnson, he never used “shouldn’t have tooken” as a verb phrase on national TV). Some folks also suggest that Bird looks goofy, especially in a suit on the sidelines.

And yet here he is, the NBA’s Coach of the Year.

And here are the Pacers, one of the most oddly matched casts of castaways since the S.S. Minnow beached on Gilligan’s Island: a streaky, trash-talking scorer; a pain-wracked seven-footer who can’t jump; a funk-prone guard who likes to post up; an escapee from Latrell Sprewell’s team; and, to enliven the proceedings, a couple of bulked-up bouncers as power forwards.

Nevertheless, Indiana came close to surpassing Chicago’s record during the regular season. They even thunked da Bulls once on their home court.

The difference this year clearly is Bird, who’s not just a breath but a veritable hurricane of fresh air. In a league where the benches are largely populated by fidgety suits who equate discipline with their own narrow ways, Bird sometimes comes across as if he’s campaigning to be the patron saint of laid-backness.

In fairness to the suits, it’s difficult not to be dictatorial when your roster isn’t just populated with mollycoddled millionaires but might also include players who’ll lock you in a choke-hold (like Sprewell) or who suddenly decide it’s time to take the girlfriend to Lake Havasu City (like ex-Laker Cedric Ceballos) or who are apt to show up for games in pink chiffon (Rodman).

Bird also has one overwhelming advantage as a coach: He was a better player than anyone else on the Indiana roster (or anyone on most current NBA rosters). The players respect him. And, as any coach of professional athletes will tell you, earning the players’ respect is half the job.

Nevertheless, the major reason for Bird’s success is his style, not his reputation. Though he’d probably never use the word himself, Bird is a believer in what, these days, is voguishly termed “empowerment.”

Before the season began, the new coach reviewed hours of film from the previous season and concluded that the Pacers weren’t adequately conditioned to win close games in the fourth quarter. So he ran them mercilessly in practices, and the training has paid huge dividends.

Once the game starts, however, Bird isn’t afraid to delegate some of the decision-making to his players.

One example from a game this season is especially revealing. With less than 30 seconds to play, the Pacers trailed by one point and needed to get the ball back.

During a timeout, Bird called for a set play when Indiana regained possession. Reggie Miller, whose only customary shooting restriction is to wait until the national anthem concludes, instead proposed a play that would allow him to take the final shot.

Instead of rigidly asserting his authority—as many coaches surely would have—Bird offered a counterproposal: If Miller helped make a defensive stop, he could run his own play. Reggie, with the eager, leering resolve of a little boy preparing to drop a frog in a girl’s lap, fairly skipped back onto the floor. His uncharacteristically intense defensive play helped the Pacers get the ball; then at the other end, he calmly ran his play and drilled the game-winner.

The lesson was not lost on the rest of the team. Their coach trusts them to accomplish the job. He actually listens to their suggestions and sometimes implements their ideas. As a result, the players have more confidence. They play harder. They win more.

Bird’s approach doesn’t rely on any great human insight. It’s mostly just common sense. That’s what makes it so radical and threatening to so many American institutions.

Already, it’s bound to be making things a tad uncomfortable for control-freaky puppetmasters like P.J. Carlesimo and Don Nelson and Larry Brown (Bird’s predecessor at Indiana), each of whom attempt to rule their teams as if he were the caliph of Baghdad.

Beyond basketball, though, can you imagine what would happen to corporate America if Bird’s heretical approach became orthodoxy?

Instead of merely paying lip service to employee empowerment, companies would actually decentralize decision-making. Bean-counters and string-pullers at managerial levels would become pariahs. Productivity would rise.

Management schools would be packed with students eager to unlearn all the jabberwock and hooey they’d picked up earlier at those same institutions. Even white shirts and suspenders might become extinct. It would be great.

Now I ask you: If the Bird influence can bring common sense to American business (a task that even Hercules wasn’t asked to perform among his labors), imagine what Larry could do for American politics. No more micromanagement by bureaucracies. No more hidden agendas. The No. 1 news network would be ESPN. President Bird could publicly humiliate Jesse Helms in a three-point shooting contest.

There’d be a chicken in every pot and a hoop in every driveway. Now there’s a vision of the Great Society.