When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [49]
"It was all about race, drugs, and overpayment," Stern said. "The perception of our players was, 'They are black, they make too much money, and therefore because they are black and have too much money, they spend it on drugs.'"
Terry Furlow, an African American who led the Big Ten in scoring for Michigan State the season before Magic Johnson became a Spartan, tragically fit the profile. He befriended Magic after watching him dominate one of his high school games.
"Hey, kid," he told Johnson. "Meet me after school, and we'll play some ball."
Magic showed up, and Furlow trounced him 15–0 in the game of 1-on-1. The next day the score was the same. For weeks Furlow toyed with Magic on the court before finally Johnson slammed the ball down in disgust.
"I quit," Magic said. "I'm tired of you beating me all the time."
"Now, you listen," Furlow said. "If you quit now, you'll never be nothing. You stay right here and take this whooping until you learn how to score."
Magic stayed. Furlow forced him to his left and made him shoot with either hand. He used his body to seal Johnson off and showed him how to execute a proper drop step. The games became closer. Magic lost 15–5, then 15–7. A year later, he grew three inches, and suddenly Furlow had all he could handle.
"See you in the NBA, kid," Furlow told Magic the day the Philadelphia 76ers made him the 12th pick in the 1976 draft.
Four years later, Furlow was dead—killed after ramming into a pole with his car on a highway in Ohio. Police reported there were traces of cocaine and valium in his system. Furlow was 25 years old and employed by the Utah Jazz at the time.
Magic knew drugs were part of the sports culture, but until Furlow's death, it hadn't touched anyone he knew. That soon changed. Although Johnson witnessed no evidence of cocaine use on the Lakers, he knew some of his championship teammates were smoking marijuana on a regular basis.
"I never said anything," Magic said, "but there was always a part of me that wanted to ask them, 'Hey, aren't we trying to win this thing?' Because you weren't at your best when you were doing that stuff—I don't care what anyone says."
Bird was stunned when former player Paul Westphal was quoted in the eighties as saying more than half of the NBA players used cocaine.
"I didn't see it," Larry said. "I didn't know what guys did when they left the gym, but I couldn't imagine how they could play at such a high level if they were doing that stuff."
When he was in college, Bird and his friend went to a fraternity party on the Indiana State campus. One of the girls was acting strangely, and when Larry inquired about her, his friend told him, "Oh, she's been snorting."
"Get me the hell out of here," Bird said.
"Hey, Larry, what's wrong, it's no big deal," his friend protested. "I'm gone," said Bird.
Larry adopted the same theory in the NBA: he avoided large parties and confined his fun to more intimate, manageable settings. The Celtics were decimated by two high-profile tragedies in the eighties and nineties—the death of draft pick Len Bias from cocaine intoxication, and the shocking passing of teammate Reggie Lewis from heart trouble, which his physician, Dr. Gilbert Mudge, later alleged may have been linked to cocaine use. In both cases, Bird never saw it coming.
"I missed a lot," Bird conceded. "I missed a lot because I didn't want to know."
By 1981, Magic's and Larry's second season in the league, cash-strapped owners, trying to keep their franchises viable, decided to open their books to their athletes to reveal their tenuous future. At the time, 60 percent of the gross revenue, which was hovering at $118 million, was being paid out to the players. The formula had to change or the league was going to be out of business.
In March 1983, the NBA and Players Association president