When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [156]
"I thought the Lakers were the softer team," Bird said. "And as great as Kobe is, everything has to run through him. He dominates the ball a lot. If he has any inkling things aren't going the team's way, then it's up to him to take over the game the way Michael [Jor dan] used to. But even Michael will tell you, it's hard to win that way.
"The Lakers are at their best when Kobe comes down, gives the ball up, cuts through, and they swing it back around to him. That's when he's most deadly. I always felt the same way about Michael."
As Danny Ainge sat court-side in the third quarter of Game 6, with his Celtics up 3–1 in games and bulldozing their way to an insurmountable 31-point advantage that would clinch the championship, he looked down at his cell phone and saw a new text message in the inbox.
"Congratulations," Bird wrote. "You, your players, and [coach] Doc [Rivers] deserve it."
When the Celtics secured their 17th championship on the fabled parquet, neither Bird nor Magic was in the building to witness it. Bird was home in Indianapolis, keeping his promise to stay away from the limelight of the current players. Although Johnson was on the Lakers' masthead, his interaction with the 2008 team was minimal because so few of the players seemed interested in his input.
"I love the Lakers," Magic said. "I've been through it all. In our day you went up to the old players and asked them how it was. You learned from them.
"It bothers me the young guys don't have enough respect to do that today. They feel they know it already. And the second part is, they think we're 'old school,' like they are playing a different game than we did. They don't realize basketball is basketball. The only player that's ever asked me anything is [point guard] Derek Fisher."
Magic noted that Kobe Bryant appeared to be more invested in his teammates during the 2008 Finals than in other seasons. He witnessed some leadership from the gifted guard that he hadn't seen before.
"I wanted Kobe to enjoy it, because the work it takes to get to the Finals is too hard to be joyless," Magic said. "You need to be able to share it with the guys.
"You don't want your teammates to be walking down the street someday and have their son or daughter say to them, 'Daddy, what kind of teammate was Kobe Bryant?' and have him say, 'I didn't know him. He never let me in,' or worse, 'He's not my kind of guy.' I thought Kobe made great strides in the [2008] Finals. He's always been a tremendous player, and now he's figuring out how to add the leadership component to that."
Kobe and the Lakers were again among the best in 2008–2009. Boston also contended until Garnett suffered a knee injury in February. The Lakers beat Orlando for the title, and the revised LA-Boston rivalry came full circle.
The only missing component was Magic and Larry. Their rivalry was one for the ages, a timeless bridge to a day when the shorts were shorter, the game was simpler, and the two best players dominated by setting someone else up to succeed. While Jordan became widely recognized as the best player of his generation, the absent piece of his résumé was the consistent foil to measure himself against. There were a number of challengers, among them Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, and Karl Malone, yet none could match Michael's intensity or his abilities. He was a singular sensation, while his predecessors were a tandem of brilliance.
"Larry and Magic are still the only two guys I know who could take ten or eleven shots and still dominate the game," said Kevin McHale. "That was the major difference between them and Jordan. If you got Michael to take eleven shots, you had dominated him."
Knicks executive Donnie Walsh warmed to Bird and Magic because they shattered the myth that you didn't have to come to an NBA game until the fourth quarter because nobody played hard until then.
"Larry and Magic played hard