I got turned on to this book about a year ago via review on si.com. I drug my feet a little bit and kinda forgot about it until football season was over and I was looking for something to fill some time. I ordered a few books from amazon, the autobiography’s of both magic and bird, gang leader for a day and When March Went Mad. I’ve only finished one so far.
WMWM is a telling of the events that lead up to magic and bird meeting in the ‘79 NCAA national title game. It tells some about how both players got there, the personalities of each, some about the teammates around them and a bit about the coaches and schools. I thought the idea of this book was going to be an illustration of how this one game acted as a catapult for college basketball’s popularity. After reading the book you gain an understanding of how this game was important, but it was just one of several things that helped boost college basketball’s popularity. The thing that is difficult for us today to get our head around is how these guys remained hidden from the spot light for so long. Today, we know about the stars damn near at conception. It’s difficult for me to comprehend the lack of information that was available in the 80’s to mid 90’s. Even growing up in that time I can’t get my head around what it was like before the information super highway. I think if you remove Magic and Bird from college basketball it would have still gained popularity, but maybe it would have been delayed until the next superstar match-up (I don’t know when that was). With how technology was delivering media to the masses though, the popularity explosion was inevitable.
I thought this book was very heavy on the Bird side of the story and rather light on the Magic side. Maybe someone could look over it and say it was a pretty even mix, but that’s just the feeling I got while I was reading it. Reading how both these guys moved up into their super-stardom was quit entertaining. I can remember watching these two in the mid 80’s and idolizing Magic. Being a young farm kid, I didn’t get to see any games besides what NBC televised on Sundays…and then whatever playoff games were on. I didn’t read any stories about them or get any kind of feeling from their personality at all beyond what I saw on the basketball court. Reading through this book has let me in on some things that were pretty interesting. I never knew bird had a daughter from his first marriage…I didn’t know he was married and divorced before college. I hadn’t realized he was drafted by the Celtics and delayed a year from entering the NBA. Other things about his personality I found interesting as well. Magic, on the other hand, played out in the book just the way I thought he would. He always seemed very up front about who he was and what kind of personality he has. Unless the book is skewed…which I can’t possibly know. Both, clearly, are winners.
The game itself wasn’t very interesting, the Spartans handled IU fairly easily. Bird was way off his game, turning in his worse performance of the year. He had a busted thumb through the tournament that affected him a bit and fatigue was a big factor. Getting to the game was the interesting part of the book. IU had an undefeated season going on while the Spartans struggled quite a bit. Both Magic and Bird were mostly recognized as decent players but Bird wasn’t given credit till late in the year for how good he really was. Things like that still happen today. Sportscasters devalue a guy based on the school he attends and their perceived lack of a solid schedule. The Spartans were hampered by their coach not handling them quite right and trying to dial in the proper game plan and lineup.
While the story of the players was very interesting, what really struck me in the book was the development of the NCAA T.V. deals after the game. NBC pissed away their chance to be the dominate NCAA network. They hired a president that didn’t value college sports, or sports at all, and basically insulted the NCAA with what he offered to pay them for the tournament. That really opened the door for CBS who had the foresight to help the NCAA develop the tournament into what it has become today. They promised them a dedicated set like what they had on their NFL program. They offered to highly promote the tournament and televise a set number of games on the weekends and they even convinced the NCAA to do a selection show the Sunday before the tournament starts…all of which people still gobble up today. Add to that, ESPN just getting fired up and planning to build itself largely on college basketball…and you have some pretty attractive T.V. deals.
If you’re interested in college basketball or Magic and Bird it’s worth reading. You can pick it up for less than 10 bucks off Amazon. It’s 275 pages of simplistic reading.
I have a couple other books to finish up, then I’ll be attacking “when the game was ours”. It’s another Magic/Bird book that talks about their professional careers.
