When the Game Was Ours (16 page)

"Mr. Carr," the policeman said, "we've got a problem."

"What is that?" Carr asked.

"See that wood you have out there? Some of your neighbors say it looks an awful lot like the wood they had delivered to their house."

"Oh, really," Carr said. "Which neighbors would those be?"

The policeman declined to identify the accusers.

"Are you sure that's your wood?" the officer asked.

"Are you sure you want to ask me that again?" Carr replied.

Robert Parish, born and raised in Louisiana, was strolling through the North End of Boston one night and was stopped and searched by police without provocation. The next time he frequented the popular Italian section of the city, it happened again. After that, he found another part of town to have his supper.

It was far more challenging to find a highway where Parish would not be pulled over in his luxury vehicle. On half a dozen occasions, he was stopped by police for no apparent reason.

"I wasn't speeding, I wasn't swerving, I was just driving," Parish said. "And when I asked them why they pulled me over, I got the same answer every time: there were reports of 'suspicious activity' in the area. I guess that's code for: 'There's a black guy driving a nice car down the highway.'"

K. C. Jones, an avid golfer, tried to join a local country club but was told the wait was several months. Two weeks later, he bumped into a mutual friend who had applied and been accepted in a matter of days.

"The only difference between the two of us was he was white and I wasn't," said Jones.

Jones lived in the wealthy town of Wellesley in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. Many of the neighbors were cordial but distant. He didn't discover until he had lived there a few months that his realtor had been warned not to sell the house to a black family.

Most of the time, Jones said, the slights were subtle. Other times, the racial bias was appalling. In the late sixties, he walked into a suburban Boston restaurant for lunch with a white friend. Before they were seated, the owner nervously motioned to his friend.

"You can't stay here," he said. "All of my patrons are white."

After a couple of racial incidents involving his family, the affable Carr carried a registered gun with him at all times, including game days to and from Boston Garden, a practice he continued when he became coach.

"I never had to fire it," said Carr, "but that doesn't mean I didn't have to use it."

City officials worked tirelessly to ease racial tensions, but in some cases Boston's reputation had already been cemented among professional athletes. A handful of Major League Baseball players had clauses written into their contracts that allowed them to veto a trade to Boston.

Maxwell went home to his native North Carolina to visit family and was chagrined to learn that none of them were rooting for his basketball team.

"Plain and simple, black people didn't like the Celtics," Maxwell said. "They were too white—or at least that's how they were presented. You had John Havlicek, who was white, so you never heard about Jo Jo White, who was black. You had Dave Cowens, so you never heard about Paul Silas. And then later you had Larry Bird, who was the Great White Hope in a white town that was perceived by most black people as the most racist city in the country at that time."

According to Maxwell, the first time the Celtics played the Lakers in the Larry and Magic era, the majority of black America monitored the 1984 Finals very carefully. Even though the barber shop elders admired Bird's game, they still passionately booed him and his Boston team.

"They were rooting for Magic and the Lakers, and when Larry Bird and the Celtics won instead, it was one of the worst black eyes you could have given black America," Maxwell said. "Now, I was a black man playing for the Celtics at the time. We had a bunch of black guys that year, but it didn't matter. We were still perceived as a white team, and Larry was front and center.

"You couldn't find any black people rooting for us, even in our own town."

When Magic Johnson landed at Boston's Logan Airport for his first playoff game against the Celtics, an older African American man chased after him and extended his hand.

"You gotta beat those Celtics," he said.

"Where are you from?" Magic asked.

"I'm from Boston," the man answered.

"I thought everyone from Boston loved the Celtics," Magic said.

"Son, I am a black man," he said. "Why would I root for those white boys?"

Bird was oblivious to the racial undertones. He didn't care what color you were as long as you cut to the right spot, boxed your man out, and dove for a loose ball if it came free. He was an equal opportunity motivator: whether you were black or white, he was going to be in your grill if you messed up. The first time he barked at Maxwell, his teammate quietly burned.

"We grew up in a time of segregation," Maxwell said. "I'm looking at Larry, and he's from the French Lick area, a center of Klan activity. If you were a black man in Indiana, once you got past Indianapolis, you didn't stop for nothing.

"So for me, in the beginning, it was crazy to be playing alongside a guy from there. But it stopped being an issue pretty quickly. Race was never ever an issue with Larry Bird. He was no racist.

"He was just a guy who wanted to kick some ass and win."

Stern demonstrated a keen sensitivity to the racial climate of his league and set about transforming the NBA into one of the most diverse entities in sports. He championed African American players, coaches, and general managers and pushed tirelessly for minority ownership. As the popularity of Bird and Magic increased, the NBA marketed them in a way that transcended racial stereotypes. They became the optimal story line for corporate America, and companies began lining up to capitalize on their success.

Stern had already developed a cordial relationship with both Johnson and Bird, although his initial instinct was to keep a respectful distance. Bird, who insisted on calling the commissioner Mr. Stern, liked him immediately. Stern found Bird to be a man of few wants and even fewer words, but he said, "I was good at reading grunts, so I was pretty sure I knew what he meant."

Magic was more vocal and proactive. He regularly presented Stern with a flurry of ideas on how he could better exploit the growing rivalry between the Celtics and the Lakers, as well as the tantalizing subplot of Larry versus Magic.

Stern genuinely loved the game of basketball and made it a priority to attend every NBA Finals game. Through 2009, he had missed only one in his tenure—to attend the 80th birthday celebration of his wife Diane's Uncle Martin.

In the earlier playoff rounds, Stern traversed the country in an attempt to drop in on every postseason team. When a team fell behind 2–0 in a best-of-five series, Stern would fly in on the chance a franchise was about to be eliminated, earning him the moniker "Grim Reaper."

His first Finals as commissioner was the 1984 series between Los Angeles and Boston. The Celtics were up 3–2 in games when Stern, riding in an elevator before Game 6, struck up a conversation with a group of men wearing number 33 Celtics jerseys.

"So where are you from?" Stern asked.

"We're from Indiana—we're friends of Larry," one of them answered.

"Jeez, tell Larry to take it easy on us," Stern cracked. "We need this series to go seven games."

It was an offhand joke, but when the Celtics lost Game 6, Bird publicly berated the new NBA boss.

"He's the commissioner. He shouldn't be saying anything like that," Bird declared. "The NBA wanted a seventh game because they wanted to make more money, and they got their wish. There's no reason to lie. He said it. He's a man and he'll live up to it.

"He may have said it in jest. But I'm out here trying to make a living and win a championship."

Bird's attack on Stern instantly became headline news. The comment threatened to derail the commissioner's tenure in its infancy, and he was mortified. For the first time in his life, he shut off his phone and locked himself in his hotel room. "What have I done?" he asked himself as the messages piled up.

With a pivotal Game 7 looming, Stern correctly assumed his misstep would quickly fade into the background. It did. Bird and the Celtics prevailed, and Stern's first minor controversy receded from view.

Nearly 25 years after he called out Stern, Bird recalled the incident with regret.

"I was wrong," Bird said. "I never should have said it, but that's how I felt at the time. Stern shouldn't have been joking about something so important either, but two wrongs don't make a right.

"If you have never been in that situation, if you've never laced them up, then you don't know what the players are thinking. It's so intense, so
big,
and it was my first time to play Magic [in the Finals] since college, so it was stress city."

Buoyed by the star power of Bird, Magic, and later Jordan, Stern realized he needed to shore up his marketing coffers. He reached out to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn and sat in on their meetings, asked questions, took notes, and formulated a strategy for his own league based on the success of two of America's favorite sports.

Stern canvassed his own NBA franchises and identified who was having the most success generating income for their teams. Billy Marshall, a retail buyer for the department store Jordan Marsh, had been selling Bird jerseys in his shop and had accounted for almost 10 percent of NBA merchandising sales at the time. Stern offered Marshall a job, and within two years he had placed merchandise in 18 of the league's 23 cities.

In 1984 the NBA's retail merchandise generated $44 million. By 2007 that number had jumped to a staggering $3 billion under Stern's watchful eye. In the mid-eighties, the two most popular team jerseys were easily identifiable: Magic's number 32 Lakers jersey and Bird's number 33 Celtics jersey.

The arrival of Bird and Magic also fortuitously occurred at the same time cable television overtook the sports market. For years most viewers had three networks and one local station to choose from. With the advent of networks like Fox, which tied its success to televising NFL football, the landscape changed dramatically. In the meantime, a fledgling network based in Bristol, Connecticut, called ESPN, believed it could make a business out of a 24-hour sports channel. Stern was initially skeptical, but the NBA's relationship with ESPN blossomed as the network grew.

When Stern began looking to upgrade the NBA's entertainment division, he hired Ed Desser, the executive producer of
California Sports,
and queried him on how to package a highlight show, what constituted a compelling pregame lead-in, and which camera angles were most viewer-friendly.

In 1982 the NBA couldn't afford to buy a 30-second spot to promote its Saturday games on CBS and was dependent on the network for a "charity promo" on Thursday nights. As Johnson and Bird rejuvenated the fortunes of NBA franchises, the network was happy to use them as their advertising hook. It was "Come see Magic and the Lakers and Larry and the Celtics," a marketing strategy that did not sit well with the new commissioner.

"I was happy for the publicity," Stern said, "but I didn't think it was so fair to Kareem and McHale and Parish and Worthy."

The rest of the league understood why it worked. Doug Collins, an NBA player, coach, and broadcaster, said Bird and Magic added a new wrinkle to competition. It was no longer who could score the most points, but who could make the better pass, or whose team could win more championships.

"Having two team-oriented superstars like them really helped save our game," said Collins.

Hubie Brown's Atlanta Hawks went to the playoffs three straight seasons, but their only sellouts were against Philadelphia, Boston, and Los Angeles. It was no coincidence that those teams featured Dr. J, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson.

"In the mid-eighties, Larry and Magic were the two 'must-see' guys on your schedule," Brown said. "And we were in no position to say anything but, 'Great. We'll take it.'"

The explosion of the television market, combined with the drama of Magic and Bird, attracted a new generation of viewers. In 1979 the league's four-year deal with CBS was worth $74 million. By 2002 the league had inked a six-year deal with ABC, ESPN, and TNT valued at $4.6 billion.

There were other factors that fueled the growth of the league, among them Stern's push for top-notch arenas with luxury suites, which proved to be a valuable source of revenue, and his globalization of the game.

Stern, whose unquenchable thirst for new frontiers has come to define him, plunged into the international market. He attended sporting goods conferences in Munich and Milan. He developed relationships with European professional basketball teams and asked them about the structure of their league, their television contracts, the talent level of their players, and their facilities.

He visited Israel, Africa, Mexico, and China. Stern scheduled exhibition games overseas and worked closely with the Olympic committee to lay the groundwork for NBA players to be eligible to participate in the Games. He developed a strong relationship with
FIBA
(the French acronym for Fédération Internationale de Basketball Amateur), the international governing body, paving the way for foreign players to play in the NBA. That led to untapped marketing dollars worldwide.

"But all that was possible because of Magic and Larry," Collins said. "It started with them. They captured the imagination of the entire basketball world. People ask me all the time which one was better. My answer is, 'Flip a coin.' If you win and I pick second, I wouldn't have lost. You couldn't possibly lose with those two."

In the spring of 1984, ten-year-old Derek Fisher plunked himself in front of his television set in Little Rock, Arkansas, and watched the most exciting basketball series he'd ever seen. When the NBA Finals between the Lakers and Celtics were over, Fisher grabbed his ball, ran out back, and practiced his "Magic" moves. Halfway across the country, nine-year-old Ray Allen, mesmerized by the sweet shooting motion of the Bird man, tried to replicate the forward's high-arching delivery in his own driveway.