When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [79]
"I felt there was some envy between the two of us. But I took it with a grain of salt.
"I just didn't spend time with him. I respected his game and left it at that."
Although both paid each other the proper homage publicly, there was little interaction between Johnson and Jordan outside of the game. Their differences were exaggerated by the silence between them. Although Michael and Magic evolved into two of the game's biggest icons, their "relationship" lacked any genuine substance.
"We never got a chance to talk about it," Magic said. "It was Magic against Michael. That's why we never became friends. It's too bad we never spent any time together. People ask me all the time why I didn't do more projects with Michael. I don't even know what to tell them. It [the freeze-out] was a misunderstanding, and neither one of us ever reached out and tried to smooth things over. So the next thing you know, the years go by and there's this distance between us, and it all could have been avoided if either one of us just made the first move. But we didn't.
"That was a big reason why, even today, Michael and I don't know each other as well as we should."
Although Jordan captivated a new generation of NBA fans, his Chicago team was not yet ready for prime time in 1985. The Bulls were eliminated by the Milwaukee Bucks in the opening round of the playoffs, and Boston and Los Angeles appeared headed for another collision in the Finals.
Boston rolled over Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia (whose window of opportunity finally closed as Julius Erving approached retirement), while Los Angeles blew past Phoenix, Portland, and Denver.
Kareem remained LA's primary offensive weapon, but Magic, driven by echoes of "Tragic" (which the Boston fans delighted in chanting during his lone visit to the Garden during the regular season) and "Fakers," tried to post his own Career Best Effort every night. When he was tired or worn down by the travel, all Magic had to do was close his eyes and visualize the celebration in the streets after the Celtics clinched the title.
The Lakers liked their odds. They were quicker and deeper than Boston, which often shortened its rotation to seven players. Kup-chak and veteran Bob McAdoo supplied the muscle that had been missing the previous year, and Riley painstakingly prepared each of them for their chance at redemption.
When it became clear the Lakers would be playing the Celtics in the Finals, Riley called ahead to the Boston hotel that would be hosting them and made it clear that he did not expect to see Celtics banners hanging in the lobby or employees wearing shamrock shirts checking them in. He made sure his players checked in under assumed names and told them to take the phone off the hook when they went to bed to prevent any crank calls in the middle of the night.
All year long Riley harped on treating each possession like it was a rare jewel, even during 25-point blowouts. Magic adopted that philosophy, and the byproduct was a more patient and diligent point guard. As Johnson warmed up before Game 1 in Boston Garden, the site of his lowest moment as a pro, he turned to Cooper and quietly announced, "It's Showtime."
The debacle that followed was equally stunning and inexplicable. Boston mugged LA 148–114 on a night when everything went right for the Celtics, including Scott Wedman's perfect 11-of-11 shooting from the floor. Kareem appeared weary and sluggish and was repeatedly beaten down the court by Parish. Within hours, the obituaries for the Lakers captain and his team were distributed. The beating was forever dubbed the Memorial Day Massacre.
Riley was flabbergasted by his team's meltdown. For 11 months he had harped on the pride of the Lakers franchise and the indignities they had suffered at the hands of the Celtics. He cursed the arrogance