When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [72]
"If the president wants to see me, he knows where to find me," Bird chuckled.
On the morning of June 13, Magic Johnson stood in the lobby with his bags packed. It was 6 A.M., but he was wide awake. In fact, like Bird, he never really went to sleep.
"It was the worst night of my life," Magic said. "I told myself, 'Don't ever forget how you feel right now.'"
The morning after Boston's celebration, Bird finally went home for a little shuteye. Around midafternoon, Buckner, who was experiencing his first-ever NBA title, drove to Bird's Brookline home with the hope of celebrating all over again. Dinah informed Buckner that Larry wasn't there.
"He was out running," Buckner said. "When he got back, I said to him, 'Man, what are you doing?'"
Bird looked at him quizzically before he answered.
"I'm getting ready for next year," he said.
6. SEPTEMBER 26, 1984
Palm Springs, California
"NO LAY-UPS!" Lakers coach Pat Riley declared.
Magic Johnson wasn't completely sure what he meant, but Riley was already agitated, and it was only the first day of training camp. That was understandable. The Lakers had been mired in a perpetual state of gloom since the Celtics swiped the 1984 championship away from them the previous June. Overnight their reputation as a sleek, hip, dynamic team on the rise had deteriorated into a soft collection of underachieving chokers.
Magic, the embodiment of Showtime, absorbed most of the blame for the implosion of his Los Angeles team. After his uneven performance in the 1984 Finals, he returned to his Culver City apartment and squirreled himself away for three days. When he ventured outside, usually for milk or movie rentals, the vibes were as bad as he feared.
"Fakers!" a disappointed fan sneered from his convertible as he drove past the Lakers star.
The message was delivered more gently when he went home to Michigan to commiserate with his family. Yet even tucked away inside his Lansing cocoon, his brethren wanted answers.
"Hey, the Celtics beat you," his puzzled friends queried him. "What happened to you?"
Johnson's angst was further compounded by the accolades showered upon Larry Bird. The Celtics star emerged from the Finals as clutch and fearless, adjectives previously associated with Magic. The young Lakers star was not accustomed to failure and even less equipped to handle the personal attacks that dogged him. Magic's self-esteem was built around positive self-talk, and for the first time in his career he couldn't conjure up a single thought to make himself feel better, so he spent the summer wallowing in his own misery.
"Looking back, it was the best thing that happened to Earvin," Riley said. "He stewed. He wanted to get back and save face. We all felt the same way. We wanted the opportunity to purge the ghosts."
Riley waited a month, then took the unusual step of writing a letter to each of the players. His note to Magic was a tome of forgiveness. He urged his point guard to grow and learn from his mistakes, just as the coach planned to do. "I respect you and I love you," Riley wrote. "We are warriors. We will not be defeated by this. Great warriors come back stronger than ever. I know you will too."
In midsummer a second letter arrived ordering Magic to find closure. "It's time," Riley wrote, "for us to stop being victims." His coach also made it clear that he expected Johnson to arrive at camp in the best shape of his life and suggested a playing weight of between 216 and 219 pounds. Magic showed up at 212 pounds to prove that he too was serious about redemption.
The third letter, received a week before training camp, was a call to action. "Get ready to work," Riley advised him. "I will push you like never before. You better have worked on your outside shot. And you better have been working on your conditioning, because I'm going to run your rear end off."
Magic was ready for it. He spent the summer training with Aguirre and Thomas, incorporating conditioning techniques with basketball drills that left him so exhausted at night that