teamfreak16's Full Review: Larry Bird, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Jackie MacMull...
As sports fans, we love our rivalries, the more intense, the better. Ali had Frazier, the Red Sox have the Yankees, and then there was Magic and Bird. Together, Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson accounted for 39,498 career points, 15,836 assists, 15,533 rebounds, 3,280 steals, eight NBA championships, and six MVP awards. Their heated rivalry helped save the then-floundering National Basketball Association, which was undergoing major drug problems. Somewhere along the way, Magic and Bird morphed from bitter, nasty rivals into close friends. Jackie MacMullan’s (Boston Globe, ESPN) When the Game was Ours chronicles the forever intertwined careers of the former foes and is an entertaining read for most sports fans.
The Bird/Magic rivalry was epic—East vs. West, Showtime vs. grit and determination, even black against white. For many, it all began in the 1979 NCAA Tournament Final, where Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores 75-64—which became the highest-rated televised Finals game of all time.
Prior to that, though, Bird and Magic were teammates—second-stringers on a college all-star team in the World Invitational Tournament, where both rode the bench behind a University of Kentucky-laden lineup. They were benchwarmers despite the fact that both of them regularly outplayed the starters. As the two players lamented, it was the first time in their lives that a coach had ever ignored them. As befitting their upcoming rivalry, they spoke occasionally but the relationship didn’t grow past that.
That’s just one of the tidbits MacMullan reveals in When the Game was Ours as she documents Magic and Bird’s rise to NBA dominance, the Olympic Dream Team, and their post-playing careers. Along the way MacMullan tosses in biographical information that illustrates how alike the two enemies were, despite their glaring differences.
Both grew up in poor families and learned their unyielding work ethics from their fathers. Both had paper routes as kids, and both grew up dreaming of basketball greatness. On the other hand, Magic was all glitter and glamour, while Bird eschewed the limelight for a lunch bucket attitude (while the other players took a month or two off, Bird once started working out the day after a Celtics championship in order to “get ready for next year.”) As fits that Bird tale, coaches told both youths that they would need to work even harder, because “somewhere out there is a guy working as hard as you are,” with both players thinking that they’d "sure like to meet that guy.” Magic even doubted that “that guy” existed. The meat of When the Game was Ours, of course, is the legendary 1980’s matchups between Bird’s Boston Celtics and Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers. It was an odd personal rivalry—hell, Magic and Bird didn’t guard each other, and Johnson wasn’t even his team’s captain. But the two players were obsessed with topping each other. Every morning, each would check the box scores in the newspapers (remember, this was before Sportscenter) solely to see what numbers the other had put up the night before. As Bird said, “he was the one I had to beat.”
It was a burning rivalry that often bordered on hatred, and MacMullan makes sure to provide plenty of coverage from key moments in those heated finals games: Kevin McHale’s clothesline tackle of the Lakers’ Kurt Rambis (the turning point of the 1984 series;) Magic’s baby hook that put the proverbial dagger in the Celtic’s hearts in 1987; and Bird’s legendary trash talk—he once told an injured Johnson “now you just sit there and relax. I’m going to put on a show for you.” As a fan, it’s fun to re-live, vicariously, all those tense moments, and already knowing the outcome doesn’t make the book any less enjoyable.
Although the credit for the book is to Larry Bird and Earvin Magic Johnson with Jackie MacMullan, make no mistake, it is her book, with input from the two stars. MacMullan wrote in a manner that, although the formatting is as a regular novel, When the Game was Ours reads like a documentary. The writer certainly did her research, and she doles out lots of history followed by quotes from Magic and Bird, as well as players such as James Worthy and McHale, and Coaches Pat Riley and K.C. Jones.
Let’s face it. If you were an NBA fan in the 1980’s, there was Bird and Magic, and then came everyone else. Their story is a compelling, fun read, a must for any sports fan.
With intimate, fly-on-the-wall detail, When the Game Was Ours transports readers to an electric era of basketball and reveals for the first time the i...More at Buy.com
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