When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [28]
"This Bird guy is really serious," Kelser reported. "He's already got his game face on."
Heathcote spent his entire practice before the championship game devising ways to slow Bird. His frustration grew as one after another of his subs impersonated number 33, yet failed to duplicate the kind of offensive firepower Heathcote knew was coming.
"This isn't working," Heathcote said. "You guys don't play anything like Bird. Earvin, you be Larry—you play just like him, only he has a jump shot."
Magic bristled, grabbed the ball, and said, "You want the real Larry Bird? Just watch me."
Johnson began launching 15- and 20-foot shots, which were well beyond his normal range. He hit fallaways in the post, long baseline jumpers, and turnarounds in the key.
"I was loving it," Magic said. "I think I hit about 15 in a row."
Now Heathcote was agitated with his defense. "Play him like he's Larry Bird!" he admonished them. "Are you going to give Larry Bird all those shots?"
After Magic buried his 10th in a row, Heathcote, his face crimson, blew the whistle and waved it off.
"I was so far out, my foot was out of bounds," said Magic.
The evening before the championship game, Johnson organized a team trip to the movies. When the Spartans arrived at the theater, they spread out in different rows to watch the film. As the lights came up, they were chagrined to discover that some of them had been sitting near players from the Indiana State team.
"We heard a lot of comments," Nicks reported. "Things like, 'It's on, man. You're going down.'"
Nicks reported these developments to Bird, who had not accompanied the Sycamores to the theater.
"Who cares what they say?" Bird asked Nicks.
"Larry didn't care, but some of our other guys were intimidated," Nicks said. "It seemed to me we had some guys who weren't feeling good about our chances."
In the hours preceding the championship game, two college stars bunked down in the same city but in separate hotels, wrestling with their bed sheets and obsessing over the other one's talent.
Bird could not eliminate the image of Johnson prancing up the court and setting up Kelser for one of his thunderous acrobatic alley-oop slams. He tried to visualize how his team could prevent the Spartans from running them off the floor. The problem, he quickly determined, was that Magic was too big for Nicks to guard and too quick for Miley to guard. And if the Sycamores resorted to a double team, either Kelser or Vincent was apt to exploit it.
Magic kept replaying Bird's offensive arsenal against DePaul in his mind and worrying about the versatile ways in which he was able to hurt them. Most of the other top college players they faced had one particular signature move.
"The problem with Larry was he could score from anywhere," Magic said. "It was the first time in my life I was scared of another player."
While Bird experienced his share of trepidation over Magic, he was equally concerned about the shortcomings of his own team. Two of their starters, Brad Miley (50 percent) and Alex Gilbert (28 percent) were horrendous foul shooters, and Bird knew that sooner or later it was going to catch up with them.
His concern about free throws proved to be prophetic. ISU would hit only 10 of 22 from the line in the championship game, while Bird, who went on to be a career 88.5 percent free throw shooter in the NBA, would hit only 5 of his 8 free throws.
On game day, Bird and Heaton sat side by side on adjacent training tables, minutes before the tip-off. As Behnke taped Bird's thumb, Heaton asked, "Larry, how you feeling?"
"I feel sick, like I always do before every game," Bird answered. "I just want to get out there. The waiting is killing me."
Hodges chose the 6-foot-8 Miley to guard Magic instead of Nicks, who had been making noise all week about wanting a piece of the Michigan State star.
Just 15 seconds into the game, Magic upfaked once and easily drove left past Miley. Magic tripped over Miley's