When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [46]
Then there was the All-Star Game itself, a stand-alone, no-frills event that lacked sponsors, imagination, and national appeal. Three days before the event was held at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey (capacity 20,049), league officials, facing the potential public relations disaster of a cavernous arena with empty seats, called an emergency meeting to strategize on how they could boost anemic ticket sales.
David Stern, who was the league's executive vice president at the time, took a proactive approach. He called all of his family ("including some uncles I wasn't sure I had"), then all of his friends, then every acquaintance he could locate in his Rolodex. His solicitations were anything but subtle.
"Would you like some tickets to our All-Star Game?" Stern would ask.
"Sure," they'd answer. "How about six?"
"How about sixty?" he'd reply.
The event was listed as a sellout but should have more appropriately been labeled a handout.
The players provided a spirited competition fueled by the West's objection to the general consensus that the East was the superior conference.
Magic submitted 16 points and 7 assists in a 120–118 West loss. Bird was named MVP of the game with 19 points, 12 rebounds, and 5 assists, but he left with the lingering feeling that Parish, who contributed 21 points and 7 rebounds and held Abdul-Jabbar to 2 points on 1-of-10 shooting, should have been given the trophy. There was one clear reason why Parish didn't: his teammate Bird scored 12 of the final 15 points to win it.
Throughout the weekend, Bird barely acknowledged Magic. His focus was on dismantling the Lakers, not fraternizing with them, even in an All-Star setting. He pointedly ignored his gregarious nemesis, who was omnipresent throughout the proceedings.
Johnson greeted most of his Eastern All-Star opponents by grabbing them, hugging them warmly, then asking, "So how's the season going?" But when he bumped into Bird in the corridor, he nodded silently, then moved on.
"At that point," Magic acknowledged, "there was a real dislike on both sides."
Magic was irritated by the inordinate amount of media attention directed Bird's way. Johnson wasn't allotted the same offensive freedom (or shots) with the Lakers that Bird enjoyed with the Celtics. Magic's primary role was to facilitate others, specifically Kareem. Because Bird scored more and had bigger numbers, he generated more headlines.
"Did I resent the attention he got for that? Of course," Johnson said. "Shoot. I had some game too. But people don't count assists the way they do points. There was nothing I could do about it."
Bird spent All-Star weekend hanging with Boston teammates Parish and Tiny Archibald and lamenting the lost opportunity for some time off. The Celtics traditionally embarked on a West Coast road trip following the All-Star break, and Bird would have preferred to stay home rather than participate in what he felt was a second-rate event.
"To be honest with you, before Stern became commissioner, I thought the All-Star Game was a whole bunch of bull," said Bird.
Each year the All-Stars were feted in an oversized ballroom where they ate dry chicken on a raised dais and were entertained by a series of miscast comedians. In 1983 in Los Angeles, Jonathan Winters left NBA staffers convulsing with laughter in the green room while he was awaiting his introduction, but when Winters hopped up on stage and quickly took stock of the mostly African American athletes staring him down, it occurred to him that he had nothing in common with his audience.
"He kind of froze," Stern recalled. "He got up there and started doing a routine about killing Japs. I wanted to disappear."
Subsequent years proved to be equally uncomfortable. Comedian David Steinberg's monologue about artificial insemination and depositing its contents into a bottle left Stern, who happened to be seated next to Dallas owner (and born-again