Of Magic and Legend
Birth certificates for modern day NCAA basketball and the NBA were issued by Magic Johnson and Larry Bird during 1979's Final Four in Salt Lake CityI remember walking out of the University of Utah's Special Events Center just as the sun was setting over the Great Salt Lake. Like it is this week, it was warm for the end of March.
A man asked if I wanted to buy his tickets for Monday. I looked around. Others too were waving tickets. The semifinals of the Final Four had just ended and a Buyer's Market had broken out on the arena steps.Most of the sellers were people from DePaul and Penn, teams that had just been eliminated from everything but a bad idea called the third place-fourth place game that the NCAA would cancel in a couple more years. These astute fans had taken it upon themselves to cancel the third-fourth game here and now.
"How much?" I asked.
"Face."
Like a lot of other excellent business prospects I have passed on over the course of the past 20 years -- Apple Computer stock especially -- I declined.
But who knew what that ticket stub would be worth?
Who knew that the 1979 NCAA Final Four, the one and only Final Four ever to be held in the great basketball state of Utah, would wind up being, if not the best Final Four ever held in terms of exciting games, then surely the best ever held in terms of matchmaking?
Who cared how they played? Who cared if the semifinals were lackluster and the final was just short of boring? Who cared if it was all arranged through pure, blind luck?
All that matters, the only legacy of our one and only Final Four, is that Salt Lake City was the place where Magic met Bird and Bird met Magic. A confluence of champions. For the championship.
We were here and so were they.
I had just started writing a sports column for the Deseret News when the NCAA brought Magic Johnson's Michigan State team and Larry Bird's Indiana State team to Salt Lake City to play in that championship game. I could say I had a pretty good idea back then just how good Magic and Bird were going to be, that they would go on to the NBA the next year and change the face of basketball. I could say that and lie. The only strong opinion I remember having at the time was that Tom Nissalke should give Pete Maravich more playing time.
Times were different then. The Jazz had just come to town and were playing rock-paper-scissors trying to decide which bill to pay this week, power, gas, or telephone.
Little did they know that up at the U., the two guys who would rescue their league and turn their measely hundred-thousand-dollar contracts into millions were lacing up their sneakers to play in the final college game of the year.
They were different, that's for sure. Earvin "Magic" Johnson came to town as "E.J. the D.J." because of his reputation as an amateur disc jockey back on the campus of Michigan State. He had a smile as wide as State Street and an extroverted enthusiasm that sucked up everything in its path. He was quotable, likeable and -- just a sophomore -- extremely youthful.
To counterbalance all this pleasantness, there was . . . Larry Bird -- soon to become Larry "Legend."
With all the personality of a moose, the older Bird came to town upset at the media for either misquoting him constantly during the season or for ignoring his teammates. As a result, he was doing what was known in those days as a "Steve Carlton" -- stonewalling the press the way Carlton, the best pitcher at the time in baseball, habitually did in Philadelphia.
Bird was good at it, too. Some sought-after athletes stonewall the press but they're not happy doing so because they love to talk. Karl Malone, for instance. He'll occasionally stonewall, but it doesn't suit him, you can tell, and he's glad when it's over. Bird, on the other hand, was just happy to have a reason.
None of this mattered, of course, and for the simplest of reasons: Both Bird and Johnson were just being themselves, neither putting on airs or taking any off. If history has taught us anything about these two extraordinary basketball players, they were always true to who they were and they never tried to be anything else. Not 20 years ago. Not now. Probably not ever.
The closest I got to Bird all week was about five rows back in a press conference -- the single place he deigned to speak (after suitable NCAA intervention).
I did get within touching distance of Magic Johnson in the lobby of the hotel where Michigan State stayed, which was on North Temple where I think a parking lot now stands. I walked into the lobby around 10 in the morning about three days before the semifinals and ran into Jud Heathcote, the Michigan State coach, and three or four players, including Johnson, just as they were leaving breakfast.
I wanted to do an interview with them, ask them how they were enjoying their visit to Salt Lake, but they were looking down and moving fast so I just stepped out of the way and waited until the formal interview sessions the next day at the university.
It doesn't exactly make me look like Sam Donaldson, I know.
I also should have bought those extra tickets.