When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [123]
Christine Johnson and Earvin Johnson Sr., watching from the stands, finally exhaled. Like Cookie, they had been unsure how their son's illness would be received. The pregame murmurs from the crowd were mixed. For every fan who appeared delighted to witness Magic's return there was another casting doubt on his decision to play in Orlando.
Johnson's dramatic three-pointer in the final seconds was a perfect ending—except that now the game, and his career, was over. As Magic drove to the airport with Rosen, he told his agent what an arena filled to capacity with basketball fans in Florida already knew: he didn't want to stop.
***
While Magic pondered whether he should resume his career, Bird was back in Boston debating whether he should end his own remarkable run. He too had been voted in as an All-Star starter but was unable to make the trip to Florida. His back was so horribly damaged that he spent much of his downtime in a fiberglass body brace that extended from his chest down to his hips. Bird hated the brace so much that when doctors told him he no longer needed it, he took it out behind his home in Indiana and blasted it to pieces with a shotgun.
By 1992, his back injuries were the cumulative result of years of diving into the stands, trading elbows with seven-footers, and repeatedly hurling his body onto the parquet after loose balls. The L-4 vertebra on Bird's back was compressed and twisted on the L-5 vertebra, and a nerve was trapped in between the two. The condition left Bird with unstable bones pushed into the nerves, and a piercing, burning pain shooting down his leg. Physical therapist Dan Dyrek, who spent most of the year attempting to manipulate Bird's spine to relieve some of the pressure of bone on nerve, begged him to retire.
"I had genuine concerns about what it would mean for the rest of his life," Dyrek said.
Bird had already undergone back surgery in the summer of 1991 to shave down a problematic disc and widen the canal where the nerves led to the spinal cord. The afternoon after the procedure, he walked six miles with minimal discomfort. He was elated—and, he thought, cured.
Two months later, while executing a routine cut in practice, he experienced the telltale shooting pain in his leg. He missed 37 games in 1991–92, his final season, but even more frustrating, he was unable to participate in the team practices.
"I've always said practice is what makes you great," he said. "I needed that repetition. Without it, I didn't feel like the same player."
The rigors of the team's travel schedule were counterproductive to his recovery, particularly since the team flew commercially, so Bird did not accompany the Celtics on their annual February swing to the West Coast.
But against his doctor's advice, he jetted to Los Angeles for the February 16, 1992, game against the Lakers. Magic's number 32 was being retired at halftime, and he had asked Bird to be part of the ceremony. It was only seven days since Johnson had brought down the house in Orlando with his dramatic All-Star performance, and legendary Lakers announcer Chick Hearn proclaimed, "Let's make this an afternoon the world will never forget."
Magic wore a chocolate brown suit and the expression of an emotionally torn man. He could not bring himself to smile when Hearn introduced him or when Hearn highlighted his legacy with the Lakers. The first glint of a grin came when Hearn welcomed Bird to step up to the podium. As Boston's franchise forward made his way to the microphone, the Forum regulars greeted him with a warm reception that lasted several minutes. Bird tried twice to begin reading his prepared script, but the applause did not subside before he finally chastised the crowd, "Hey, I'm not the one retiring here."
"When are you going to?" shouted a good-natured heckler.
"Pretty soon," Bird replied wistfully.
He presented Magic with a piece of the Boston Garden parquet, recited the accolades prepared for