When the Game Was Ours

by Larry Bird

  "He couldn't beat people off the dribble, so he was a spot shooter," Bird said. "I started thinking, 'If I can add that kind of shooting with the movement and the drives and the rebounding and the other stuff I'm doing, I might be pretty good.'"

  Although IU star Kent Benson pointedly ignored him during the pickup games at Assembly Hall, Bird hardly felt like an outcast. His school work was difficult, but he knew once the basketball season started he'd have tutors available to assist him. The classes were large, in some cases over 100 students, but Bird minimized his initial sense of feeling overwhelmed by sitting in the front.

  "For the most part, everything was cool," he said. "I just didn't have any money. At night, if the guys wanted to go get something to eat, I had no money to do it. I couldn't buy a pair of pants or a shirt. Jimmy was pretty nice. He let me wear whatever I wanted of his. But it started to get to me, just never having any money."

  Two weeks into school, Bird started to rethink his strategy. Maybe he should withdraw from IU, get a job, then try again when he had some financial security. He didn't share his concerns with any of his new friends on campus or his parents back home. The few times he called, Georgia could sense he was homesick, but she encouraged him to study hard and stick with it. Bird's interaction with Knight was minimal, particularly since the team's workouts had not yet officially begun. He occasionally bumped into Knight at the gym, but the coach was an intimidating figure, and Bird was not one to initiate a conversation.

  Bird might have made it if not for the night he broke his toe during a pickup game on the outdoor courts after another player landed on his foot.

  The injury was painful and left Bird limping all over campus. He got up 40 minutes earlier in the morning so he'd make it to his first class on time, but was consistently late getting to the next one.

  "I'm sitting there saying to myself, 'I'm hurt, I can't work, I'm going to be in trouble for being late to class, I don't have any money, and they won't let me play in any of the games,'" Bird said. "'Time to go home.'"

  After 24 days on campus, Bird packed up his duffle bag, closed his dormitory room door, and hitchhiked back to French Lick. He did not tell anyone of his plans—not even the coach who had recruited him.

  When Larry walked into his house, his mother, who had just finished her waitress shift, was washing dishes at the sink.

  "What are you doing home?" asked Georgia Bird.

  "I'm done. I'm not going back," her son answered. "I'm going to work."

  Georgia Bird's voice cracked. She was a strong, proud woman, but this news crushed her. "I thought you were going to be the first one to graduate college," she said. "This was a great opportunity for you. Don't you understand? I'm so disappointed."

  "Mom," Bird said, "I don't have any money. I can't do the stuff everyone else is doing."

  "You never had any money before, and you've always managed," she snapped.

  "But this is different," Bird said. "I can't make this work until I get a job and earn some pay."

  "You were going to be the first one," Georgia Bird said bitterly as she turned her back on her son.

  Bird's mother said nothing more. She did not speak to Larry for nearly a month and a half. Bird moved in with his grandmother Lizzie Kerns and avoided Georgia completely. By then his parents were divorced, and while Joe Bird was not happy with his son's decision either, he advised him, "If you are leaving school to work, then you better get on that job—now."

  Ten days after he left the IU campus, Bird borrowed Amos Kerns's car, corralled his childhood friend Beezer Carnes, and drove back to Bloomington to officially withdraw from class. He did not stop in to speak with Knight, Jim Wisman, or the other guys who would have been his teammates. He simply left as quietly as he came.

  "I have no clue when Coach Knight even realized I was gone," Bird said. "I never heard from him. They had a great team. I'm sure he was thinking, 'The hell with Bird.' I can't say I blame him."

  Word of Bird's departure from Bloomington spread quickly in the small towns of French Lick and West Baden. He had not just disappointed his family; the letdown reverberated throughout the entire community. He was pressured into briefly enrolling in Northwood Institute, but after two weeks of practicing with their team and finding the competition underwhelming, Bird withdrew from there as well.

  He took a job working for the town of French Lick cutting trees, painting street signs, sweeping the roads, collecting garbage, and unplugging the sewers. He later worked for a company delivering mobile homes.

  Through it all, he continued to play basketball in pickup games, summer leagues, and AAU tournaments. Although he was no longer part of the mainstream of college basketball, recruiters kept calling. Bill Hodges, the persistent Indiana State assistant, was among the suitors. Hodges repeatedly showed up, unannounced, at Bird's home, the local laundromat, and the Villager, one of the restaurants where Georgia Bird waited on tables.

  One night both Hodges and Indiana State head coach Bob King appeared at one of Bird's AAU games in Mitchell, Indiana. The opponent was an Indiana All-Star team that included future Celtics guard Jerry Sichting. Bird had put up 1,300 bales of hay that week and barely made it to the game on time. He left the fields and changed into his uniform in the car while his brother drove him 25 miles to Mitchell. When Bird arrived, King immediately guessed the source of the scratches up and down Bird's arms.

  "Have you been putting up hay?" King asked.

  "Yes, sir," Bird replied.

  "I bet your arms are pretty tired," King said.

  "I can barely lift them," Bird admitted.

  King was noncommittal about his interest in Bird before the game, but after the supposedly exhausted forward dropped 43 points and 25 rebounds on the state of Indiana's finest players, King's approach changed considerably.

  "Hey, Larry," he said when the game ended. "We need to get you up to Terre Haute."

  Hodges arranged for Bird and Beezer's brother, Kevin Carnes, to make a visit to Indiana State. Mark Bird also came along, and the three young men worked out for the coaches in jeans and tennis sneakers.

  "This is how we play at home," said Bird when he refused the offer of gym shorts and basketball shoes.

  Bird enrolled at ISU that fall and was required to sit out the season to be eligible under NCAA guidelines. He faithfully attended practice every day, tormenting the ISU players with his arsenal of basketball weapons.

  The Sycamores were working on a defensive drill in which they would put three seconds on the clock and have their starters defend the last-second shot. Six times in a row, Bird beat the buzzer with an improbable bomb. The next day, when the starters were working on their full-court press, Bird took the ball to the middle and began shredding it.

  "Bird!" King said. "Sit down!"

  Larry was confused. Why was his coach so angry with him? He was putting on a show out there. No team in their right mind would press them with him handling the ball. It took him several minutes on the sidelines before it dawned on him why King was so irritated. Bird was making his team look bad.

  He grabbed his sweats and marched out of the gym. Hodges, the assistant coach, followed after him and confirmed Bird's suspicions.

  "Larry," Hodges said, "you're killing their confidence. We're losing them because of it."

  "Well, I gotta go home and think about this," Bird replied. "I'm here to play ball. I need to play ball."

  Hodges explained that his presence was demoralizing to the starters, who posted a 13–12 record that season. They were intimidated by him. Bird countered that practices were his games until he was eligible and his future teammates needed to toughen up.

  "After that, I practiced all the time," he said.

  Almost a year after watching, and waiting, Bird scored 31 points and grabbed 18 rebounds in his college debut against Chicago State. He was heartened to see nearly 5,000 people in the stands, especially since his teammates had forecasted a low turnout. Fan support in Terre Haute was often lackluste
r. It wasn't until after the game that Bird discovered why the crowd was so robust: free furniture was being given away at halftime.

  The basketball climate in Terre Haute was about to change. Word of Bird's exceptional skills spread quickly. The team went 25–3 in 1976–77, his first season. I'm a Bird Watcher T-shirts sprang up all over campus. The tipping point was on November 28, 1977, when he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated surrounded by two cheerleaders whispering "Ssssh" so as not to reveal "College Basketball's Secret Weapon." The cover transformed Bird into an overnight celebrity on the college basketball circuit. The avalanche of attention was an unwelcome development for a shy, understated country kid who preferred not to be noticed at all.

  "That cover changed my life," Bird said. "People were all over me. There were some days I wished I had never been on it."

  Magic Johnson, a freshman at Michigan State the day Bird became a cover boy, thumbed through the pages of Sports Illustrated in search of the story. He couldn't afford his own subscription, so every Thursday after practice at Michigan State he'd run into the coaches' lounge and pilfer their copy to see who was featured that week.

  The day Bird graced the cover there was no accompanying feature. Larry had declined to be interviewed. Still, Magic found the brief blurb on the forward's hardscrabble life to be as eye-popping as his basketball numbers.

  "Are you kidding me?" he said to Heathcote. "This guy is averaging 30 points a game, but before that he took a year off and told everybody, 'I'd be okay working the rest of my life.' Then he decides, 'Okay, well maybe I'll play after all.' Who does that?

  "Unbelievable. I'm telling you, man, this guy is one interesting cat."

  Magic identified with the pressure Bird felt to play basketball in his home state. Johnson had also narrowed his college choices to a larger, more prestigious university (Michigan) and the state school (Michigan State) preferred by his family. And like Bird, he had a multitude of other options: Maryland, Notre Dame, North Carolina State, and Indiana, to name a few. Each day dozens of schools inundated the Johnson family with letters, phone calls, and "coincidental" interactions. Finally, Earvin Johnson Sr. changed the phone number.

  One cold winter morning, Detroit coach Dick Vitale showed up in Lansing just after 6 A.M. He knocked on the door of Magic's house and was told politely by Christine Johnson that her son had already left. He was up the street, shooting jump shots in the snow before school.

  It was a common occurrence for recruiters to show up at odd hours of the day or night. NCAA regulations regarding contact with a student-athlete were far more lenient then, and Magic often waited at the bus stop for school in the morning with three or four suitors. When he went to lunch at Burger King, the assistant coach from Maryland loitered in the parking lot, hoping for a "chance" encounter with him.

  Johnson was particularly flattered when he was contacted by UCLA coach Larry Farmer, and he bragged to his friends about "going Hollywood."

  But Magic soon experienced the downside of big-time recruiting. Shortly after he cleared his schedule to fly out to Los Angeles, Farmer called back and told him to hold off. The Bruins were in hot pursuit of Albert King of Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, New York, who had been rated the top prep player in the country, ahead of both Magic and another top senior, Gene Banks.

  For the first time in his young life, Magic was relegated to second-class status. He moped around the house, cursing the Bruins, vowing to make them pay for snubbing him. When Farmer called back and tried to rekindle his relationship with Magic after King chose Maryland, the proud young point guard told him he was no longer interested in UCLA.

  Another West Coast school, the University of Southern California, also invited Johnson out for a visit, but at the last minute Magic decided against making the trip. There was only one problem: he neglected to tell the USC coaches about his change of heart. When the plane arrived with no Magic on it, they frantically searched for their prize recruit in the Los Angeles airport before they reached his family and were informed that he was at home on Middle Street in Lansing, eating a sandwich.

  Johnson visited Minnesota even though the school was on probation for recruiting violations, mostly because he was intrigued by their star, Mychal Thompson. The two connected immediately. They went to a party on campus, and by the end of the evening Johnson was surrounded by students, entertaining them with jokes and stories.

  "It was like he was already enrolled there," Thompson said. "He made me feel great. It was almost like he was recruiting me.

  "When he left, I told our coaches, 'We've got him. He's coming here. We're going undefeated next year!'"

  Two weeks later, Thompson was stunned to learn that while Johnson rated Minnesota as his favorite recruiting trip, he couldn't possibly go anywhere in the Big Ten except Michigan or Michigan State.

  Magic's mother and father favored him remaining in their hometown of Lansing, even though Michigan's campus in Ann Arbor was just 53 miles away. They weren't the only ones. Magic's teacher Greta Dart and her husband Jim, who were very close to the Johnson family and had no children of their own, were also MSU alums and pushing Spartan green.

  The residents of East Lansing, desperate to keep their native son in the fold, signed a petition in the spring of his senior year of high school urging him to play for Michigan State. The petition had more than 5,000 signatures.

  "I should have gone to Michigan," Johnson said. "It was the better basketball school and the better school academically. But it wasn't as simple as that. I had grown up around Michigan State. I had gone to all the games since I was a little boy."

  Johnson was genuinely torn. He liked Michigan coach Johnny Orr and his assistant, Bill Frieder, who had been attentive and persuasive throughout the process. Unwilling to disappoint either school, Magic attended Saturday afternoon Michigan games wearing their trademark blue and yellow colors, then changed his sweatshirt to Spartan green before showing up at the MSU games on Saturday nights.

  Just before Magic's senior year of high school, Michigan State fired head coach Gus Ganakas. His replacement was Heathcote, a gruff taskmaster who had no qualms about berating his players if they made a mistake on the floor. Just as he had been with Indiana's Coach Knight, Johnson was wary of playing for such a volatile personality.

  Heathcote assured Magic that even though he was growing taller, he still envisioned him as a point guard who would run the offense. Johnson liked that idea. His decision was cemented once longtime MSU assistant Vernon Payne endorsed Heathcote even though Payne was moving on to Wayne State.

  Magic's mother was relieved that her son chose State. Christine Johnson was a Seventh-Day Adventist, and her Sabbath ran from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Had her son gone to Michigan, she would have missed all of his Saturday afternoon home games. Earvin Johnson Sr. was happy because his son would be playing right up the street and the games wouldn't cut too much into his work hours. When Earvin Jr. announced his decision to attend Michigan State, he proclaimed at his press conference, "I was born to be a Spartan."

  In his first season, the freshman helped turn a program that had gone 12–15 the previous season into a 25–5 powerhouse. Magic developed remarkable chemistry with Greg Kelser, an athletic forward who could run the floor and loved to slam home Johnson's carefully lobbed alley-oop passes. The Spartans advanced all the way to the Mideast Regional Final against Kentucky. The winner would go to the Final Four; the loser would go home.

  The Spartans were up by 5 points at halftime and led by 7 with 19 minutes to go, but Kentucky, playing zone, swarmed Magic, forcing him away from the basket. He picked up his fourth foul with 9:19 left and began playing cautiously.

  "Earvin changed his demeanor, and our team changed its demeanor along with him," Heathcote said.

  Magic's shooting was off (2 for 10), his passes were ineffective (6 turnovers), and his team was in foul trouble. Michigan State ended up losing 52–49 in one of Johnson's worst games as a collegiate player. Kentuck
y's success stemmed in part from using Robey to set high post screens and lure MSU into foul trouble.

  Johnson remained convinced that the Spartans lost because they stopped pushing the ball. As he and Kelser reviewed the film in the coach's office, they made a pact to play transition basketball on every possible possession the following season.

  But first Magic planned to showcase his talents in the World Invitational Tournament, an opportunity, he felt, to show the country—and Joe B. Hall—that he belonged among the elite. When he looked down the roster, he was surprised and pleased to see Bird's name on the list. The Sports Illustrated cover had aroused his curiosity, and he figured he'd spend some time getting to know this Indiana State star.

  Bird was aware of Magic's success but hadn't followed him closely, since Michigan State was neither in Indiana State's conference nor on their schedule. "I was more interested in what the Purdue guys were doing," he said.

  The one name on the roster Bird was thankful to see was James Bailey, the Rutgers star whom he had toured with the previous summer in Sofia, Bulgaria. That U.S. team was coached by Crum, Bird's old H-O-R-S-E opponent, and they played four international opponents, including the Cuban national team. The U.S. team wound up in a bench-clearing melee against the Cubans, with fans spilling out of the stands and players punching and shoving each other.

  Bailey was attempting to extricate himself from the mob when a security guard screamed to him, "Duck!"

  He turned just in time to see his attacker heave a broken bottle at his head. Bailey punched the man in self-defense, but the bottle caught his elbow and ripped it open. He would require 54 stitches in all—34 to repair the gash on his arm, and another 20 to sew up the wound on his right hand from the man's teeth.

  The Bulgarian police, dressed in riot gear and toting rifles, finally separated the two teams. Bird, who had ducked for cover under the scorer's table, looked over at Bailey and asked, "What happened?"