When the Game Was Ours (25 page)

After Riley proclaimed that "all the skeletons are cleared out of our closet," a subdued Magic admitted, "It's been a long, long wait for this moment."

Johnson's sense of relief was overwhelming. Since his performance in the Finals the previous season, he had carried a burden that weighed him down in ways he didn't realize—until he and the Lakers finally turned the tables on the Celtics. This time, as he let the cold water from the antiquated shower in Boston Garden pour over him, he reveled in the moment.

"I'll never forget this moment for the rest of my life," he told Michael Cooper.

During the long, regretful summer that followed, Celtics coach K. C. Jones dissected the game film for clues to how his team could have played Magic differently. There were instances when they should have shaded him left, or doubled him off the glass, but, Jones conceded, "I honestly don't know if it would have made any difference. Magic's mindset was just like Larry's, which was, 'I'll do whatever it takes.' He'd rebound, he'd take a charge, he'd dive for a loose ball.

"How many superstars do that? That's what separates Magic and Larry from the rest, and always will."

Shortly after the Lakers' championship parade, Riley took his wife Chris on vacation to the Bahamas. They were sitting on a sand dune in Nassau, sipping on some island cocktails, when Riley looked down the beach and saw a crowd forming. There were some shouts and excited chatter, and his curiosity got the best of him.

"I wonder if someone is drowning," Riley said, squinting into the sun.

It was then that he recognized the unmistakable gait of a large man strolling down the beach with a trail of people following in his wake. It was Earvin Johnson.

Riley sprinted toward him and hid behind one of the palm trees. As Magic walked by, he whistled twice. Johnson stopped and wheeled around. He knew that whistle. Coach Riley never used a real one; he had his own, distinct ability to stop the Lakers in their tracks.

"Coach," Magic said, peering into the palms, "is that you?"

While Riley was ecstatic about the chance encounter with his superstar, Magic, who had come to the island to sleep and replenish, was mildly disappointed. He truly wanted time alone.

"I was thinking, 'Oh, no, of all people, I do not want to see Pat Riley right now,'" Magic confessed. "I had gone to the Bahamas to get away from basketball. I had been working and training and fighting with the Lakers for eight months. I was wiped out. I just wanted a break."

He sat with his coach in the sand for three hours, rehashing everything from holding the ball to the no-lay-up rule to the ultimate thrill of beating the Celtics on their own crooked, warped floor.

"You better believe Larry Bird came up in that conversation," Magic said. "We both knew we were going to see him again."

Bird wasn't lounging on the beach in the summer of 1985. He was shoveling gravel for drainage to protect the new basketball court he had just installed. Although he had the financial means (times ten) to hire someone to do the work, the Celtics star prided himself on doing his own chores.

He knew it had been a mistake, however, the minute he tried to get out of bed the following morning. He had done something to his back and was alarmed by his lack of mobility. He walked around, tried to shake the stiffness, but the pain was unbearable. He lay down and tried to rest, but the sharp jolts shooting down his leg were persistent. Something was wrong—seriously wrong. In subsequent years, Bird would learn that his back troubles were the result of a congenital condition. The canal in which the nerves led to his spinal cord was too narrow, which caused all that unbearable pain. It was truly remarkable, his surgeon told him after watching Bird play basketball, that he managed for as long as he did.

For the next three weeks, Bird did not play any basketball. Still, the back problems did not subside. Quinn Buckner called to see about working out with him in West Baden. He knew something was amiss when Larry declined.

"Quinn," he said, "I'm in trouble."

And so, quite suddenly, were the Boston Celtics.

L
ARRY BIRD STEERED
his Honda motorcycle into the parking lot of the Honey Dew convenience store in the center of West Baden, Indiana. It was a warm, sunny morning, so he left his Ford Bronco, the car presented to him for winning the 1984 NBA Finals' Most Valuable Player Award, back home in the garage.

The car was spotless, as pristine as the day he received it, and although he didn't articulate it when they handed him the keys, it amazed him that someone would reward him with a car for playing basketball. His mother held down two jobs and his father labored through 12-hour shifts in order to fill grocery carts each week for Bird and his five siblings, and still there was never enough money left for a family automobile.

Bird had just completed his morning workout, so he was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers when he stiffly unfolded his 6-foot-9-inch frame off the cycle and began filling his own tank. His injured back had improved only slightly, and with training camp just weeks away, Larry was growing concerned. He'd refrained from pushing himself through his usual grueling off-season program in hopes that the rest would heal his injury. While the time off had helped, he was skeptical that he'd be able to play an entire NBA season unless he could find a way to alleviate the jarring pain.

As he shifted his weight while he pumped his own gas, three sleek black limousines glided past him on Sawmill Road.

"Well, they're here," he said, to no one in particular.

Inside the second limousine, Earvin Johnson sat perched by the window. He surveyed the landscape of the modest Indiana town adjacent to French Lick, the birthplace of his most ardent competitor. Magic was surprised to discover it stirred memories of his own midwestern roots.

"This reminds me of Lansing," he said to his agent, Charles Tucker, squinting through the tinted windows.

Johnson fidgeted in the back seat. He was uneasy. He had spent the balance of his young career aiming to establish the upper hand in this increasingly heated rivalry between himself and Bird, the Lakers and the Celtics, and yet now he was traveling to Bird's backyard to engage in a joint endorsement campaign for Converse sneakers.

He knew how his Lakers coach, Pat Riley, would feel about it. He would be enraged. Riley despised the Celtics and would undoubtedly chafe at the knowledge that his star player was knowingly and willingly embracing his nemesis.

As the limos snaked up Bird's gravel driveway, Johnson leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

"Maybe," he lamented, "I shouldn't be doing this."

Bird, trailing the caravan back to his house, was also having second thoughts. He regularly chastised Celtics teammates who fraternized with the opponent before big games, yet here he was, hosting the player who had proved to be his most worthy adversary.

Bird didn't like the commotion that three luxury vehicles kicking up dust on his town's main thoroughfare was bound to cause. As he watched the limos driving toward his house, he wondered to himself, "Why in hell did I say yes to this?"

***

The finished product took all of 28 carefully scripted seconds, but the tenor of the relationship between pro basketball's premier dueling superstars was altered permanently on that early fall afternoon when Magic and Larry came together to sell Lakers gold and purple and Celtics black Converse basketball sneakers.

Until that point, the interaction between the two had been limited to cursory small talk. That was by design. As Boston and Los Angeles emerged as the premier teams in the NBA, the inevitable animosity between the two franchises—and their main characters—began festering. Whenever queried on his partner in this East versus West dance, Bird was predictably restrained, making it clear he had no interest in developing a relationship with his rival.

"I admired the hell out of Magic," Bird said, "but I didn't care to know him."

Although the two players rarely engaged in banter on the court during their twice-a-year regular season meetings, it did not preclude them from issuing challenges away from the action. In Bird's and Magic's second season in the league, Johnson was sidelined with a knee injury when the Celtics made their annual pilgrimage to the Forum on February 11, 1981. Bird spotted Johnson sitting on the bench in street clothes and went over to shake his hand.

"Now you just sit there and relax. I'm going to put on a show for you," Bird said.

By the time Bird was done, his stat line encompassed a cornucopia of basketball delights: 36 points, 21 rebounds, 6 assists, 5 steals, 3 blocks. He also played all but one minute of the 105–91 Celtics win. All Magic could do was watch as Bird unveiled one spectacular play after the next, pointedly staring in Johnson's direction after each basket.

"Drove me crazy," Magic admitted. "He was sticking it right in my face."

No wonder, then, that there was hesitation from both men about letting down their competitive guard for the sake of an endorsement payday.

Converse hatched the idea of the "Choose Your Weapon" shoe campaign while chronicling the drama of the 1984 and 1985 Finals.
They approached Bird's and Johnson's representatives about a joint venture, and predictably, the initial response was negative.

"Forget about it," Magic said.

Bird was equally emphatic. Although his attorney, Bob Woolf, lobbied for him to do the commercial by pointing out the obvious financial benefits, Boston's forward was unmoved.

"Magic was the enemy," Bird explained. "And I had no interest in spending any time with the enemy."

Their individual contracts with Converse had required previous joint commitments at industry shows, company meetings, and occasional private corporate outings. Magic, Julius Erving, and Bird were commissioned to appear at a golf outing in Connecticut once and while Johnson didn't play, he toured the course in a cart with clients, regaling them with NBA anecdotes.

"Dr. J and I were chatting away, having fun," said Magic. "Larry was hitting the golf ball and ignoring us completely."

It was a time when athletic endorsements were still relatively rare, and savvy companies were just beginning to launch their new lines using sports personalities. During the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, for instance, Nike plastered the city with billboards of its shoes using five-time Pro Bowl safety Lester Hayes of the Oakland Raiders as the face of its product.

Three months into his job as Converse's advertising manager, Lou Nagy was sent to New York to oversee a commercial with Bird, Magic, and Dr. J at Manhattan College. It was a traditional shoot featuring the three stars discussing how the Converse Pro sneakers made them better players, and it was slated to run only in the top ten television markets in the country.

The trip was memorable to Nagy for one reason in particular. The night before the taping, Converse hosted a dinner at the Hyatt Regency in New York City for the players. Bird and a friend from French Lick showed up wearing jeans and windbreakers. The restaurant enforced a dress code that required a sport coat. Nagy assured Bird that he would find him a blazer, but as soon as he went inside to rustle one up, the Celtics star disappeared into the city streets.

"At least he showed up for the shoot the next day," said Nagy.

As Magic's and Bird's careers continued to blossom—and interconnect—Converse senior vice president Jack Green determined that the best way to capitalize on the rivalry was to accentuate their differences. The "Weapon" campaign would not be a commercial featuring two rivals walking arm in arm, he explained. Instead, Converse would highlight the fierce competition between the two.

"It wasn't going to be cutesy," Green said. "We wanted it to be unique, but a very basketball-oriented ad. That appealed to Larry in particular."

When presented with that story line, Johnson warmed to the idea. Bird, clearly the more reluctant of the two, finally agreed to tape the commercial, but only if Magic was willing to travel to Indiana to shoot it. That stipulation, he figured, would be a deal-breaker.

He was astonished to learn later that Johnson agreed to the terms.

"The more I thought about it, I just thought it would be something that could be great for both of us," Magic said. "Did I want to go all the way out to West Baden, Indiana? No. But it became pretty clear that was the only way it was going to get done."

The production crew descended on Bird's property a few days in advance of Magic's arrival to set up their equipment and frame the backdrop they wanted. The day before the commercial was to be shot, Converse executives received a phone call from Charles Tucker, Johnson's agent. Both Magic's and Larry's contracts were up, and he informed them that the two players had decided their compensation wasn't lucrative enough. The two were prepared to hold out for more money. Larry, who had a close relationship with Converse executive Al Harden, told him to take care of Magic immediately, and he'd trust Harden to pay his portion later. Their demands were not that exorbitant—about an extra $15,000 each—and with the shoot already running up a bill of $180,000 a day, Converse capitulated.

When Johnson and his cadre of limousines arrived at Bird's summer home, the first to greet him was Larry's mother, Georgia Bird.
She was a devoted basketball fan whose interests did not lie solely with her son's Celtics. Born and raised in Indiana, she faithfully chronicled the college game and her favorite player, Isiah Thomas, the former college star of Indiana University.

Two years after the taping of the Converse commercial, the Pistons lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Celtics in a thrilling seven-game series, prompting a bitter Thomas to remark that Bird's accomplishments were inflated by the media because of the color of his skin.

His words touched off a firestorm of criticism. Pistons forward Dennis Rodman, who initiated the dialogue by asserting that Bird was "overrated," was dismissed as an immature, loose-lipped rookie, but Thomas was a veteran who presumably knew better.