When the Game Was Ours (37 page)

Christine Johnson and Earvin Johnson Sr., watching from the stands, finally exhaled. Like Cookie, they had been unsure how their son's illness would be received. The pregame murmurs from the crowd were mixed. For every fan who appeared delighted to witness Magic's return there was another casting doubt on his decision to play in Orlando.

Johnson's dramatic three-pointer in the final seconds was a perfect ending—except that now the game, and his career, was over. As Magic drove to the airport with Rosen, he told his agent what an arena filled to capacity with basketball fans in Florida already knew: he didn't want to stop.

***

While Magic pondered whether he should resume his career, Bird was back in Boston debating whether he should end his own remarkable run. He too had been voted in as an All-Star starter but was unable to make the trip to Florida. His back was so horribly damaged that he spent much of his downtime in a fiberglass body brace that extended from his chest down to his hips. Bird hated the brace so much that when doctors told him he no longer needed it, he took it out behind his home in Indiana and blasted it to pieces with a shotgun.

By 1992, his back injuries were the cumulative result of years of diving into the stands, trading elbows with seven-footers, and repeatedly hurling his body onto the parquet after loose balls. The L-4 vertebra on Bird's back was compressed and twisted on the L-5 vertebra, and a nerve was trapped in between the two. The condition left Bird with unstable bones pushed into the nerves, and a piercing, burning pain shooting down his leg. Physical therapist Dan Dyrek, who spent most of the year attempting to manipulate Bird's spine to relieve some of the pressure of bone on nerve, begged him to retire.

"I had genuine concerns about what it would mean for the rest of his life," Dyrek said.

Bird had already undergone back surgery in the summer of 1991 to shave down a problematic disc and widen the canal where the nerves led to the spinal cord. The afternoon after the procedure, he walked six miles with minimal discomfort. He was elated—and, he thought, cured.

Two months later, while executing a routine cut in practice, he experienced the telltale shooting pain in his leg. He missed 37 games in 1991–92, his final season, but even more frustrating, he was unable to participate in the team practices.

"I've always said practice is what makes you great," he said. "I needed that repetition. Without it, I didn't feel like the same player."

The rigors of the team's travel schedule were counterproductive to his recovery, particularly since the team flew commercially, so
Bird did not accompany the Celtics on their annual February swing to the West Coast.

But against his doctor's advice, he jetted to Los Angeles for the February 16, 1992, game against the Lakers. Magic's number 32 was being retired at halftime, and he had asked Bird to be part of the ceremony. It was only seven days since Johnson had brought down the house in Orlando with his dramatic All-Star performance, and legendary Lakers announcer Chick Hearn proclaimed, "Let's make this an afternoon the world will never forget."

Magic wore a chocolate brown suit and the expression of an emotionally torn man. He could not bring himself to smile when Hearn introduced him or when Hearn highlighted his legacy with the Lakers. The first glint of a grin came when Hearn welcomed Bird to step up to the podium. As Boston's franchise forward made his way to the microphone, the Forum regulars greeted him with a warm reception that lasted several minutes. Bird tried twice to begin reading his prepared script, but the applause did not subside before he finally chastised the crowd, "Hey, I'm not the one retiring here."

"When are you going to?" shouted a good-natured heckler.

"Pretty soon," Bird replied wistfully.

He presented Magic with a piece of the Boston Garden parquet, recited the accolades prepared for him, then departed from the script as he finished, saying, "Magic's not done yet. We're going to Barcelona to bring home the gold."

Although Bird had agreed to be part of Magic's ceremony, he truthfully would have preferred to skip it. He felt uncomfortable, misplaced.

"The whole time I was thinking, 'What the hell am I doing here, hanging with all these Lakers, when my own team is standing right over there?'" he admitted.

As Bird listened to Kareem thank Magic for teaching him how to enjoy the game, he began reflecting on his own teammates, who were standing court-side, in uniform, watching the tribute. Bird glanced over at McHale, Parish, and D.J. He wondered what it would be like to say goodbye to them. He knew he'd be doing it soon—sooner than anyone realized.

As Johnson embraced Abdul-Jabbar, sobbing as he pulled the Hall of Fame center closer, Bird felt a lump catch in his throat.

"I was sitting there wondering how long it would be before he was gone," Bird said.

When Magic finally took the microphone, he thanked his family and his teammates. Then he turned to his lifelong rival and embraced him.

"It's sort of too bad Larry and I couldn't go on forever," Magic told the crowd. "I enjoyed so many of those battles, whether we won or lost, because you got a chance to play at your highest level when you played the Celtics and Larry.

"I want to thank Larry Bird personally for bringing out the best of Magic Johnson because, without you, I could have never risen to the top."

Johnson ended his own retirement ceremony by telling the fans he hoped they wouldn't be too mad if he decided to come back and do it all over again. The crowd cheered; Jerry West blanched.

Later that winter, Johnson and Rosen went on a business trip to New York. The Knicks were playing that night, and Magic called ahead to Riley to see if he could work out at Madison Square Garden in between the two teams' shoot-arounds.

Riley met his former point guard at the gym and put him through a rigorous workout. For more than an hour, Riley ran Magic through wind sprints, dribbling drills, and shooting repetitions. Riley normally adhered to a strict pregame routine that included watching film and reviewing his notes of the opponent, but for one afternoon he abandoned all of it. On this day, his only focus was on rebounding for a friend. Just before tip-off of the game between the Knicks and the Lakers, the Madison Square Garden scoreboard ran a video highlight of the career of Earvin Johnson to the tune of "Do You Believe in Magic?"

"It was," said Magic, "the nicest thing anyone did for me during that time."

When Magic returned to Los Angeles and resumed his workouts, he discovered that he had company during off-hours at the Forum. Miami Heat center Rony Seikaly, who was rehabilitating an injury,
could often be found shooting down at the far end of the court. One afternoon he called down, "Want to play?"

Johnson looked around. He had no personal relationship with Seikaly and wasn't sure if the center was talking to him.

"Magic," Seikaly said. "C'mon, let's get some work in."

It was a small gesture, yet one that Magic grew to cherish during a tumultuous time in his life. It gave him hope that someday he would regain his place in the NBA. It was a baby step toward resuming his life as he had known it.

I
T BEGAN
as a friendly game of pool.

Magic Johnson awaited his turn while Michael Jordan, a premium Cuban stogie dangling from his mouth, lined up his shot in the game room of the Ambassador Hotel in Barcelona, Spain, a cordoned-off area on the second floor designated as a sanctuary for the members of the U.S. Olympic basketball team.

It was a welcome and needed hideaway. This traveling troupe of basketball legends, whom coach Chuck Daly likened to a band of rock stars, caused a near-stampede simply by arriving. Spectators grappled with one another for a glimpse of Michael and Magic and Larry as they exited the team bus and checked into the hotel. As fans clamored to photograph this historic sports moment, the unruly crowd surged forward. Bird, skittish in large gatherings since he was a child, held his breath. The mob made him anxious.

An arm's length away, Magic surveyed the maze of faces and also held his breath. He found their energy to be exciting, exhilarating.

"Isn't this amazing?" he said to Bird.

"Are you kidding me? I want to get the hell out of here," Bird answered.

The "Dream Team" needed buffers, for their privacy and their safety. During their 16 days in Barcelona, the Ambassador's game room served as an exclusive club where the players could shoot pool, play cards, enjoy a beer, and invent occasions to compete with one another.

By day the room was littered with books, toys, movies, and video games, a haven for the players' families. Earvin Johnson III, barely eight weeks old, sat wide-eyed in his bouncy seat, intently following the movements of the older children. Conner Bird, a toddler who kept his mother and father awake half the nights during the Olympic Games, loved to jump on the leather couches and throw balls from the pool table down the hotel's elegant marble steps.

On the night of August 7, little Conner and baby E.J. were already asleep. Their daddies were wide awake, embroiled in an emotional debate over a simple question posed by Bird: which NBA team was the greatest of all time?

"Obviously one of our Laker teams," answered Magic, leaning on his pool stick. "We won five championships. More than all of you."

"No, it's the great Celtics teams with my man Bill Russell," said center Patrick Ewing, who played for the New York Knicks but was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "He won 11 rings."

"You're forgetting the '86 Celtics, with the best front line in the history of basketball, including this guy right here," added NBC commentator Ahmad Rashad, pointing to Bird.

"That Celtics front line was brutal," agreed Charles Barkley.

Jordan, refusing to allow the chatter to disrupt his concentration, knocked his ball into the corner pocket and puffed on his cigar. He was 29 years old and had just won his second straight championship and his sixth consecutive scoring title. His counterparts in the room were decorated NBA veterans, yet their body of work was nearly complete. The maestro of the Bulls was only just beginning to add new strokes to his championship canvas.

"You haven't even seen the best NBA team of all time yet," Jordan announced. "I'm just getting started. I'm going to win more championships than all of you guys. Tell you what. Let's have this conversation after I'm done playing."

"You aren't winning five championships," Magic protested.

"Michael, I'm going to steal at least one of them from you," Barkley shot back.

The flurry of protests continued, with five of the greatest players in NBA history sparring over their own place in basketball history. Magic was indignant at the suggestion that the best team could be
anyone
other than his 1987 Lakers, the team he had determined was the finest of his title years.

"Put me with Kareem, James Worthy, Coop, and Byron Scott, and we'd dominate your Bulls team," Magic claimed.

Barkley was about to chime in again, but Bird, taking a slug of his beer, shot his hand up.

"Quiet," Bird said. "Charles, you ain't won nothing. You're out of this discussion. Ahmad, same thing. You're gone. Patrick, you don't have any championships either, so you need to shut up and sit down right here and learn some things."

Barkley, subdued by the unfortunate reality of his basketball résumé, wandered off. Ewing, who had once considered Bird a bitter adversary but would develop an unusual kinship with him during their Olympic experience, dutifully sat on the bench next to his new friend. Rashad lingered also, fascinated by the banter between these elite basketball stars, each of whom at some juncture of his career could have argued that he was the best player in the game.

Jordan insisted that his Chicago teams belonged in the conversation about the all-time greats; Bird reminded Jordan that he used to torture Scottie Pippen regularly before his back betrayed him.

"I feel sorry for you," Magic told Jordan. "You will never have what Larry and I had. We went two weeks without sleep knowing, if we made one mistake, the other guy was going to take it and use it to beat us. Who do you measure yourself against?"

The conversation lurched on with no resolution until the topic switched to the inevitable follow-up: who was the best 1-on-1 player of all time?

"Gentlemen," said Jordan, "give it up. You've got no chance on this one. Larry, you don't have the speed to stay with me. Magic, I can guard you, but you could never guard me. Neither one of you guys can play defense the way I can. And neither one of you can score like me."

"I don't know about that," Magic retorted. "I could have scored more if I wanted to. It would have been a good one."

Jordan's face darkened. He had been uncommonly conciliatory in Barcelona, stepping aside as Bird and Magic shared the title of captain and revered elder statesman. Jordan deferred to Magic, allowed him to become the face of the Dream Team, even though Jordan was the reigning back-to-back league MVP. He did so because he understood that Magic's career was at an end and this was his final basketball indulgence.

"I didn't want to burst his bubble," Jordan said.

But now Jordan expected Magic to acknowledge the obvious: that Michael Jordan was the best player in the world. He turned to Magic, plucked the cigar out of his mouth, and approached his fellow future Hall of Famer with his voice rising.

"You better give it up," Jordan told Magic. "I'll come into your gym and drop 60 on you. I've already done it to the Celtics. Ask your friend Larry. You and Bird were great players. You did some amazing things. But it's over. This is my game now."

"Michael, don't you forget," Magic said. "Larry and I turned this league around. We
are
the NBA."

"Well, I've taken it to a new level," Jordan replied. "And it's not your league anymore."

"You're not there yet," Magic insisted.

Bird watched silently as the debate between Magic and Michael escalated. He detected a swagger in Jordan that he hadn't seen before. Bird recognized that strain of confidence, bordering on arrogance. It was exactly how he had felt when he was on top of the basketball world.