Hoop dreams

Recounting a great rivalry and the NBA renaissance it fostered

December 13, 2009|Brion O’Connor, Globe Correspondent

To be a basketball fan in Boston or Los Angeles in the 1980s was pretty much hoops heaven. Out of the moribund, drug-induced haze that the National Basketball Association had become by the late 1970s came a dazzling, team-oriented game personified by the Celtics and the Lakers and their respective superstars, Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic’’ Johnson. The 13 years that these two clashed following their monumental NCAA championship game in 1979 remain for most hoop aficionados a kind of golden age.

“When the Game Was Ours,’’ by Bird, Johnson, and former Boston Globe writer Jackie MacMullan, is a time-capsule of this era. The two, as MacMullan illustrates, will always be seen as the architects of this basketball renaissance. They were Midwestern boys who made their names in college - Johnson at Michigan State and Bird at Indiana State. As professionals, they were separated by a continent, but their careers are forever joined in the minds of fans.

Most of the Bird-Magic story has already been written, but in MacMullan’s capable hands, the tale is re-energized - from their little-known introduction as college all-star teammates in the World Invitational Tournament in 1978, through their unparalleled rivalry over more than a decade on NBA courts, to their shared captaincy on the 1992 Olympic “Dream Team.’’

The dilemma for MacMullan - a superb journalist with impeccable credentials - is that she gets double-teamed. Bird and Johnson often only tell their sides of the story, casting themselves in the best light. MacMullan knows it, as any self-respecting sportswriter would.

For instance, Bird’s late-night carousing was no secret, but you won’t find anything about that here, with the exception of his comical post-championship hitchhiking adventures in Boston with teammate Quinn Buckner. There’s also the gut-wrenching tale of Bird’s eldest daughter, conceived during a failed reconciliation with his first wife. Corrie Bird was a toddler by the time that Bird was proven to be the father (his attorney asked for a paternity test). “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,’’ writes MacMullan. Really? Then why is Corrie mentioned exactly once over the course this book?