When the Game Was Ours (11 page)

"I looked down," Bird said, "and my finger was all the way over to the other side of my hand."

Bird's mangled finger was so grotesque that his brother Mike nearly vomited when he examined it. Bird's girlfriend, Dinah Mattingly, rushed him to a nearby hospital where emergency room personnel took x-rays and immobilized his finger in a splint.

He slept fitfully that night, with his throbbing finger robbing him of any prolonged sleep. Bird's alarm was set for an early morning wake-up call to go mushroom hunting, and he was hell-bent on sticking to his plans. There is a six-week period each year when rare morel mushrooms grow in Indiana. They range in size and color, depending on the month, and they are extremely difficult to find. Bird had been hunting mushrooms for years and was annoyed that his aching finger threatened to ruin his day. It never once occurred to him that it also might ruin the upcoming season of the Boston Celtics.

He popped a couple of aspirin and went hunting anyhow. After emerging from the woods just before dark, his brother informed him, "There's a doctor looking for you. He checked your x-rays, and you need to get to Indianapolis right away."

The news was alarming: Bird's knuckle was shattered, and he needed surgery to remove bone chips and insert several pins to stabilize the finger.

"How long is it going to take before it's healed?" Bird asked the surgeon.

"Healed?" the surgeon replied. "Son, I'm not sure it will."

After the procedure, the doctor attempted to immobilize the finger by putting a clip behind Bird's fingernail. Then he attached a mechanism running the length of his wrist to hold the finger in place. One evening, while Bird was watching television, the clip gave way and the fingernail ripped off, leaving Bird yelping in pain and splattered with his own blood.

He had not yet signed a contract with the Celtics, nor had he informed them of his injury. When Auerbach learned of his draft pick's surgery, he summoned Bird to Boston. By then, the forward was working out again, yet he still visited the godfather of Celtics basketball with some uneasiness.

"I just didn't have the same feel for the ball as I did before," Bird said. "I was sure Red would notice."

Team physician Dr. Thomas Silva didn't like what he saw. He told Auerbach that the knuckle would never repair completely and Bird would not have the same range of motion. In his estimation, the young forward was damaged goods. The Celtics boss listened, then directed Bird out to the court. He threw him the ball and told him, "Shoot it."

Bird buried one jumper. Then another. Then another. Although his feel wasn't the same, his range was intact. So Auerbach threw him a bounce pass, then a chest pass, then an overhead pass. Bird nimbly caught them all.

"If he was in pain," Auerbach said, "he did a pretty good job of disguising it. He was one tough kid."

The general manager put his arm around his young forward. "I'm not worried about this," Red said.

For the first time since he arrived in Boston, Bird exhaled.

As time went on, Bird's finger built up calcium deposits and became grossly disfigured. Once, while Bird was posing for a cover shot for
Sports Illustrated,
the photographer told Bird to hold up his finger to signify that he—and the Celtics—were number one. But when Bird held up his ghastly digit, it looked more like "We're number ten." The photographer shot him using his opposite hand instead.

Although he still went on to bury some of the biggest shots in NBA history, Bird concedes nearly 30 years after the fact that Dr. Silva's diagnosis was correct. "I never could shoot as well again," he said.

Magic Johnson spent the better part of August 1979 working solely on his own perimeter game. Dr. Charles Tucker, a school counselor from Lansing and a former ballplayer who became Magic's agent, warned him that teams would sag off him and double-team Kareem until the kid proved he could stroke the jumper.

"No one is going to sag off me without paying for it," Magic grunted in between sessions.

He signed a five-year, $2.3 million contract with a $175,000 signing bonus, and he couldn't imagine what he'd do with all that money. Buss asked him to move to Los Angeles to get acclimated to his new home, and Johnson happily obliged.

Magic was 19 years old. He didn't know anyone and was overwhelmed by the sprawling, glittery city and its daunting freeways. His new teammates were much older, and many of them were married with families. His first month in his new city he was completely alone.

Buss owned an apartment complex in Culver City and suggested the rookie move in there since it was near the practice facility, the airport, and the Forum. Johnson bought himself a new color television and spent his days watching
Perry Mason
and dialing home.
He missed the chaos of his house in Lansing, which always seemed too small, too loud, and too cluttered but now seemed so inviting. On Sunday nights, he'd call and ask his sister Pearl to describe what his mother Christine was cooking. Then he'd hang up and order takeout—again.

One morning, Buss called to check on him.

"Do you like football?" the owner asked.

Three hours later, Magic was on the field at the USC game standing next to the coaches and the players. The Lakers' season hadn't started, and Magic had yet to play for LA, yet he was serenaded by the college football crowd with doting cheers of "Mag-ic, Mag-ic!"

"Dr. Buss!" Magic exclaimed. "They know who I am!"

Buss and Johnson, the two new guys on the Lakers' block, became constant companions. They both loved chocolate doughnuts, which they shared on Saturday mornings. They enjoyed shooting pool and competed in epic Ping-Pong battles. The owner liked to frequent exclusive nightclubs, and while Johnson was not a drinker, he went along anyhow, socializing with some of the wealthiest people in Los Angeles.

Buss took Magic to fellow real estate mogul Donald Sterling's famous annual Malibu party. Sterling, who would later purchase the-Los Angeles Clippers, owned a stunning waterfront home and served aqua-colored martinis and cocktails with miniature umbrellas floating on top. Magic was awed by the music, the food, and the women, but mostly he was mesmerized by the rolling surf.

"I was from Michigan," he explained. "I had never seen the ocean before."

When he got home from the party, he called Greg Kelser, his childhood friend Dale Beard, his girlfriend Cookie, and his mother. "You won't believe where I was tonight," he told each of them. "I was at the beach. Right on the water. With all the movers and the shakers!"

A week later, Buss took Magic to Friday night at the Playboy mansion. It was movie night, only Magic couldn't concentrate on the film because there were too many beautiful women to distract him. That prompted another series of phone calls back home to say, "Guess where I was?"—except this time he left his mom and Cookie off the call list.

Buss took his point guard to the exclusive Pip's in Beverly Hills to dance alongside the biggest Hollywood names. "There's Prince, there's Sylvester Stallone, there's Michael Douglas," Johnson would say, rattling off the parade of stars.

"It blew me away," Magic admitted. "And what blew me away even more was, they knew me."

Night after night, he and Buss toured the town. Buss brought lots of women with him on their excursions, and he'd dance disco, the waltz, and the tango with them for hours. When he got tired, he'd turn to Johnson and say, "Earvin, dance with these ladies."

Sometimes Buss and Magic would go to Vegas, where Buss would win (or lose) thousands of dollars in a half-hour. Whenever the Lakers' owner decided he had reached his limit, they'd go dancing again.

Although they spent countless hours together, they rarely talked about basketball. Buss wanted his prize investment to think beyond that.

"Earvin, take care of your money," Buss told him. "What do you want to do after basketball?"

The goal of the Lakers' flamboyant owner was to create a basketball team with Hollywood flair. Doris Day and Frank Sinatra were already regulars at the Forum, but Buss knew he'd made it when Sean Connery called him one evening and asked if there was room for agent 007 in his box.

"Once people saw Magic play," said Buss, "everyone wanted in."

Before Johnson's arrival, the Lakers' summer league games typically drew around 3,500 people. For Magic's first outing, more than 10,000 fans showed up.

There was a similar buzz in Boston, where Bird was already being billed as the savior who would turn around a franchise that had won only 29 games the previous season. Bird was wary of the city, especially after looking out the window of his downtown hotel room at the Parker House and watching a flock of Hare Krishnas dressed in robes chanting on the Common.

His owner, Harry Mangurian, was not interested in nightlife, casinos, or scantily clad women. He was a racehorse enthusiast who shook Bird's hand once and left it at that.

"He didn't seem all that interested in basketball," Bird said. "It was his wife who was the big fan."

While Boston certainly had its share of exclusive restaurants and trendy nightclubs, Bird did not frequent any of them. He was content to drink a six-pack of beer in the kitchen of his modest Brookline home. The team went to a steak house one night before the season to have dinner, but the rookie did not attend. He was busy mowing his yard.

He was thankful that Dinah was moving to Boston with him. Bird could be impetuous and hotheaded, but Dinah was his valued alter ego. Just as he was about to make a rash decision, she would pointedly tell him, "I'd think about that if I were you."

"She talked me out of doing a lot of dumb things," Bird said.

They met at Indiana State during one of the more chaotic times of his life. His father had committed suicide a year earlier, and his family was struggling financially. Bird married a childhood friend, Janet Condra, right after he enrolled at Indiana State, but the couple divorced in 1976. During a brief (and failed) reconciliation, Condra became pregnant and had a daughter, Corrie. Bird's attorneys asked for a paternity test, and by the time it was proven that Corrie was Larry's child, she was already a toddler who had seen very little of her father. Larry was dating Dinah by then and refused to be a part of his daughter's life, a decision that haunts him to this day.

It was Dinah who urged him through the years to make contact with Corrie and attempt to forge a relationship with her. Dinah, who later became his wife, also helped him navigate a private life that became very public as his stature grew.

"She has always been the mature one," Bird said. "I was a difficult guy to live with sometimes, especially when I was playing. She probably loved it when I came back from shoot-around and took a nap so I was out of her hair.

"I was lucky. Dinah was always independent, but she always supported me too. And there were times when I really needed it."

In the beginning, Bird didn't venture out in Boston much. Like Magic, he knew no one in his new city, and he couldn't have picked his coach, Bill Fitch, out of a lineup. When Bird attended his introductory press conference in Boston, he was anxiously waiting for the proceedings to begin when a portly gentleman came up to him and began discussing the Celtics personnel. Bird politely answered his questions, but was nervous and distracted and wanted the man to leave him alone.

Finally, when it came time for the press conference to start, Bird excused himself and took his place on the dais. To his surprise, the man joined him.

"Larry," he said, "I'm your coach, Bill Fitch."

Fitch would soon become unforgettable. He was a disciplined tactician who held his players accountable for every detail. He was organized and unyielding, and his basketball knowledge left an indelible impression on Bird. Fitch became the standard by which Bird would later model his own coaching career.

The other major influence in his early years was Red Auerbach, the legendary Boston sports hero who built the Celtics dynasty, first as a coach and then in the front office. Red's signature move was to light up a cigar when his team had a game clinched. Often he did this on the bench, during the game, in a building that was clearly marked No Smoking.

Auerbach didn't believe in mincing words, and that suited Bird just fine. The 62-year-old patriarch was fiercely competitive and fiercely loyal. Bird liked him immediately. In fact, the two men were alike in many ways. Both had the uncommon ability to size up people in a matter of minutes, and each could be horribly stubborn.

When Bird reported to rookie camp, Auerbach coaxed him into playing tennis in between sessions. Then, when the regular season started, Larry became Auerbach's regular racquetball partner.

"Red was an angles guy," Bird said. "I hate to admit this, but he did cheat on the score. He really hated losing."

Occasionally Auerbach would take Bird to eat at his favorite Chinese restaurant in Marshfield, Massachusetts, where the team's rookie camp was held. It was there that Auerbach would recite the proud history of the franchise Bird was joining.

"It's an honor to be a Celtic," Auerbach told him. "You should never forget that."

The Celtics' summer league digs were no-frills accommodations that included courts with rims of varying heights. Auerbach ran a summer camp for kids there, and his pro players were expected to eat with the campers in the mess hall and lecture the kids in between workouts. Normally veterans didn't bother to attend, but once word got out that Bird was in town, M. L. Carr and Dave Cowens just happened to drop in.

Cowens was a Celtics favorite, an undersized center who played All-Star basketball with uncommon passion and energy. He was the best front-court player on the team when Bird arrived. Carr was a wily veteran who had come over from Detroit, where he led the league in steals. Auerbach warned Bird ahead of time that Carr would jump his passing lanes and try to distract him with his nonstop banter.

"I got this one," said Carr, pointing to Bird the first time they scrimmaged.

Carr poked him, banged him, muscled him. "C'mon, rook," he said, in a voice low enough for Bird and no one else to hear, "is that all you've got?"