When the Game Was Ours (9 page)

Bird had his reasons for snubbing the Michigan State players. He was angry to see both Kelser and Johnson representing the Spartans. His sidekick, Carl Nicks, was back in the locker room instead of sitting with him, a slight he knew bothered his teammate deeply.

"They had two guys up there," Bird said. "Why couldn't we?"

When Kelser and Magic arrived back at their hotel, Kelser gathered the team together and told them to start locking into their game assignments.

"This Bird guy is really serious," Kelser reported. "He's already got his game face on."

Heathcote spent his entire practice before the championship game devising ways to slow Bird. His frustration grew as one after another of his subs impersonated number 33, yet failed to duplicate the kind of offensive firepower Heathcote knew was coming.

"This isn't working," Heathcote said. "You guys don't play anything like Bird. Earvin, you be Larry—you play just like him, only he has a jump shot."

Magic bristled, grabbed the ball, and said, "You want the real Larry Bird? Just watch me."

Johnson began launching 15- and 20-foot shots, which were well beyond his normal range. He hit fallaways in the post, long baseline jumpers, and turnarounds in the key.

"I was loving it," Magic said. "I think I hit about 15 in a row."

Now Heathcote was agitated with his defense. "Play him like he's Larry Bird!" he admonished them. "Are you going to give Larry Bird all those shots?"

After Magic buried his 10th in a row, Heathcote, his face crimson, blew the whistle and waved it off.

"I was so far out, my foot was out of bounds," said Magic.

The evening before the championship game, Johnson organized a team trip to the movies. When the Spartans arrived at the theater, they spread out in different rows to watch the film. As the lights came up, they were chagrined to discover that some of them had been sitting near players from the Indiana State team.

"We heard a lot of comments," Nicks reported. "Things like, 'It's on, man. You're going down.'"

Nicks reported these developments to Bird, who had not accompanied the Sycamores to the theater.

"Who cares what they say?" Bird asked Nicks.

"Larry didn't care, but some of our other guys were intimidated," Nicks said. "It seemed to me we had some guys who weren't feeling good about our chances."

In the hours preceding the championship game, two college stars bunked down in the same city but in separate hotels, wrestling with their bed sheets and obsessing over the other one's talent.

Bird could not eliminate the image of Johnson prancing up the court and setting up Kelser for one of his thunderous acrobatic alley-oop slams. He tried to visualize how his team could prevent the Spartans from running them off the floor. The problem, he quickly determined, was that Magic was too big for Nicks to guard and too quick for Miley to guard. And if the Sycamores resorted to a double team, either Kelser or Vincent was apt to exploit it.

Magic kept replaying Bird's offensive arsenal against DePaul in his mind and worrying about the versatile ways in which he was able to hurt them. Most of the other top college players they faced had one particular signature move.

"The problem with Larry was he could score from anywhere," Magic said. "It was the first time in my life I was scared of another player."

While Bird experienced his share of trepidation over Magic, he was equally concerned about the shortcomings of his own team. Two of their starters, Brad Miley (50 percent) and Alex Gilbert (28 percent) were horrendous foul shooters, and Bird knew that sooner or later it was going to catch up with them.

His concern about free throws proved to be prophetic. ISU would hit only 10 of 22 from the line in the championship game, while Bird, who went on to be a career 88.5 percent free throw shooter in the NBA, would hit only 5 of his 8 free throws.

On game day, Bird and Heaton sat side by side on adjacent training tables, minutes before the tip-off. As Behnke taped Bird's thumb, Heaton asked, "Larry, how you feeling?"

"I feel sick, like I always do before every game," Bird answered. "I just want to get out there. The waiting is killing me."

Hodges chose the 6-foot-8 Miley to guard Magic instead of Nicks, who had been making noise all week about wanting a piece of the Michigan State star.

Just 15 seconds into the game, Magic upfaked once and easily drove left past Miley. Magic tripped over Miley's feet, stumbled awkwardly, and was called for a travel, but he knew he was on to something.

"I'm thinking, 'Okay, I'm going to have my way with this guy,'" Magic said.

Johnson was shocked that Nicks didn't draw the assignment. After watching several hours of film on Nicks pressuring guards, he had braced himself for an assault of full-court pressure. With Miley guarding him, he knew that was no longer a worry.

Steve Reed drew first blood for Indiana State with a jumper from the top of the foul circle, thereby negating the "early knockout" punch Magic and Heathcote were seeking.

"But I didn't care about that basket," Johnson said. "It wasn't Larry that took it."

Bird swished a long corner jumper to give Indiana State an 8–7 edge. Although he couldn't have known it at the time, it was the last lead Bird's team would have in the game.

Heathcote angrily called for a time-out even though the game was still in its infancy. "We played the whole season to get here, and we went over the game plan again and again, and you guys are blowing it," Heathcote bellowed. "Now do what I told you! Get in Bird's face!"

Michigan State responded with a 9–1 spurt, and when Heathcote went to a bigger lineup of Kelser, Magic, Brkovich, Vincent, and Charles, the Spartans threatened to blow the game open.

"I knew when they started getting 4-on-1 fast breaks, we had problems," Heaton confessed. "No one had done that to us before."

Michigan State led 30–19 when Magic picked up his third foul angling for an offensive rebound. Johnson sat the final three and a half minutes of the half, but Michigan State still jogged off with a 37–28 advantage at the intermission.

Bird was somber as his team limped to their locker room. Michigan State was doing a masterful job of not only limiting his shots but also sealing off his passing lanes. And every time he tried to put the ball on the floor, two defenders choked off the lane.

"I knew we were in trouble right away," Bird conceded. "Things weren't going right. Their quickness, their defense ... and our guys were tensed up more than any other time we played."

Michigan State's strategy was to work as fervently to prevent Bird from passing as they did to limit his shooting. That left Nicks as ISU's best hope at generating some offense. With Bird struggling, Nicks admitted, he found himself forcing the issue.

"I rushed too many shots," Nicks said. "What scared me to death was Larry couldn't hardly get anything off. He couldn't find a way, and I had never seen that before. I was thinking, 'This is bad.'"

On the other end of the court, Bird also struggled to contain the quicker, more athletic Kelser, who drove on him repeatedly in hopes of exploiting him defensively.

Michigan State was ahead 44–28 and on the verge of breaking the game open when Kelser received the ball on the right side of the key and tried to take Bird to the middle off the dribble. Bird jumped in the passing lane and drew contact. It was a clever maneuver by a player who was at a disadvantage athletically but one step ahead of the play mentally.

Kelser was whistled for his offensive foul, his fourth, which sent him to the bench and provided the Sycamores with one final flicker of hope.

"I'm thinking, 'Oh no, Greg,'" Magic said. "The only chance they had was if one of the two of us were out and we couldn't spread the floor and beat them with our speed."

In the ISU huddle, as Hodges called on his club to pick up the Spartans in a full-court press, Bird implored his teammates, "C'mon, one more run at 'em."

Nicks, Heaton, and Staley each came up with big baskets, but Michigan State's steady Terry Donnelly matched each of them with clutch perimeter jumpers. He would finish the game a perfect 5-of-5 from the floor.

Just as Bird feared, errant free throws hurt Indiana State down the stretch. Bird missed a key free throw after forcing Brkovich into a turnover, and after a Bird fallaway cut the deficit to nine points, Nicks went to the line with a chance to shave it to seven. Instead, he missed both.

The Sycamores would never get closer than six points. With less than five minutes to play, Magic orchestrated a textbook backdoor cut, received the ball from Kelser, and jammed it over the outstretched arms of Heaton. Not only was Johnson credited with the basket, but he was also awarded two free throws for a flagrant foul, a dubious call that even Heathcote concedes could have gone either way.

The image of Magic soaring over Heaton appeared on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
a few days later, declaring Michigan State the national champions.

In the final four minutes, without a 24-second clock to limit their time of possession, MSU went to a spread offense and ticked off as much time as they could by passing the ball around the perimeter. Bird, frustrated by their stall tactics, swatted the ball out of Magic's hands as he was inbounding it, then laid it in for two. The basket was waved off, and Bird was called for a technical. He did not react to the call; he merely turned and ran back down the floor, his blond head bowed.

Once the buzzer sounded and Michigan State's 75–64 victory was officially in the books, Bird quickly located Johnson, shook his hand, and congratulated him for having the better team.

Bird checked out with mortal numbers: 19 points on 7 of 21 shooting attempts with 13 rebounds and 2 assists. Yet what haunts him to this day are the missed free throws.

"It's the one thing I'll never get over," Bird said.

Magic was too busy celebrating with his teammates to notice the anguish of his opponent. It wasn't until later, with his arm draped around a young announcer named Bryant Gumbel, that Magic noticed Bird sitting on his bench, his face buried in a towel. Johnson had just been named the game's Most Outstanding Player on the strength of his 24 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists, but suddenly he felt a pang of sympathy for his rival.

"I spent all week wanting to beat Bird in the worst way, but when it happened, I found myself feeling kind of bad," Magic said. "I knew how much it meant to Larry. I cried the year before when we lost to Kentucky."

Bird declined to attend the postgame press conference. He remained, head down, choking back tears in that towel for several minutes after the game ended.

"What hit me most was it was all over," Bird said. "I didn't know where I was going. I hadn't signed with the Celtics yet, and I had no clue what was next. And it was just killing me we were out there playing so hard and no matter what we did, it wasn't going to happen."

In subsequent years, as the stature of Bird and Magic increased, the championship game was rehashed and rescrutinized hundreds of times. Bird conceded that, if the two teams played again, Michigan State would beat Indiana State nine times out of ten.

"Maybe even ten out of ten," he admitted.

Their epic game sparked an interest in college basketball that exploded in subsequent years. Three decades later, the NCAA basketball tournament was one of the most hyped and eagerly anticipated events in sports, its roots firmly planted in the drama of Magic and Larry.

After their showdown, both players went home to a hero's welcome. The Spartans were treated to a ticker-tape parade featuring Magic lounging in a convertible, waving to his adoring public.

The Sycamores were greeted by more than 10,000 smitten fans upon their return to Terre Haute, and Bird was later presented with a key to the city.

Heathcote spent 16 more seasons at Michigan State, earning legendary status for guiding the team to the first title in school history.
Hodges was dismissed from Indiana State three seasons later and never given another opportunity to coach a major college program.

Bird and Magic moved on to professional basketball—together, of course.

Whenever Hodges ran into Heathcote, he'd whack his rival on the back and say, "Remember, Jud, you're the one who ruined my life."

Bird vowed to make sure he would never have to say the same to Magic Johnson.

T
HE ROOKIE WAS SITTING
in the captain's seat.

Usually only veterans claimed dibs on the roomier bulkhead rows on the commercial airlines, which were not designed to comfortably transport athletes with an average height of 6-foot-6 across the country.

Had Lakers captain and perennial All-Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar been on board, he would have assumed his customary spot on the bulkhead aisle. But Abdul-Jabbar was back in Los Angeles nursing a badly sprained ankle, and the timing of the injury couldn't have been worse. The Lakers were playing the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1980 NBA Finals, and as they headed east for Game 6, they were forced to depart without Kareem, the epicenter of the Lakers offense, a towering combination of skill and finesse with a trademark skyhook that was one of the most effective weapons in the league.

The notion of playing without Abdul-Jabbar at the most critical point of the season, with LA ahead 3–2 in games and on the cusp of winning it all, was momentarily paralyzing.

Lakers coach Paul Westhead announced in practice he would plug Kareem's hole with Earvin "Magic" Johnson, the precocious rookie who had skipped into training camp as the number-one pick in the 1979 draft. Westhead's strategy puzzled some of his veterans. Magic was a point guard accustomed to running the show. Now, it appeared, he
would
be the show.

"I wasn't sure what Westhead's intent was," confessed veteran Jamaal Wilkes. "I guess he was saying, 'We just lost our best player, but we have this young, charismatic phenom who is going to make it all right.'"

If there was any question whether that young phenom was up to the task, Magic eliminated all doubt when he boldly walked past his more seasoned teammates and settled in Kareem's premium seat for the flight to Philadelphia. As the 20-year-old turned around, he flashed his pearly whites and declared, "Never fear. E.J. is here!"