When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

PROLOGUE

On Sunday evening, March 25, 1979, the NBC Sports production team gathered in a conference room at the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City to go over the game plan for the following night’s NCAA men’s basketball championship game. George Finkel, the game producer, spoke first. He laid out the manner in which he and his broadcasting team of Dick Enberg, Al McGuire, and Billy Packer would be presenting the contest between Michigan State and Indiana State.

The next person to speak was Don McGuire (no relation to Al), who produced the pregame, halftime, and postgame segments that were hosted by Bryant Gumbel. Before beginning a career in television, McGuire had worked as the sports information director at the University of New Mexico, where the associate athletic director was a man named Bob King. King had since moved on to become head basketball coach at Indiana State University, but before the start of the 1978–79 season, he developed an aneurysm in his brain and had to undergo emergency surgery. That forced King to hand over the reins to his young assistant, Bill Hodges, who despite having no previous head coaching experience had guided the Sycamores to a stunning 33–0 record and a berth in the national championship game. Now, McGuire told the group that he wanted to air a story on King, the incapacitated head coach, during NBC’s pregame segment on Monday night.

McGuire was abruptly interrupted by Don Ohlmeyer, the executive producer of NBC Sports. A large, domineering, and sometimes bombastic man, Ohlmeyer had spent a decade at ABC Sports learning at the knee of the legendary producer Roone Arledge. While working for the popular, eclectic program Wide World of Sports, Ohlmeyer learned the importance of developing a story line to pump up interest in a sporting event.

"Nobody cares about Bob King," Ohlmeyer said to Don McGuire. "What about Magic and Bird?"

Ohlmeyer was referring to Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird, the All-American stars at Michigan State University and Indiana State, respectively. An uncomfortable silence fell on the room. "Well," McGuire said, "Dick, Al, and Billy are going to be talking a lot about those two during the game. And we’ve got a highlights piece set to music ready to go for halftime."

"Well, you’re going to do them in the pregame, too," Ohlmeyer snapped. "Those guys are the stars here. That’s who people want to see."

Ohlmeyer’s edict left McGuire in a bit of a pickle. In the first place, he now had less than twenty-four hours to put together a quality piece. More problematic was Bird’s notorious antipathy toward the media. He had gone through most of the season without speaking to the press, and McGuire had no idea whether Bird would consent to be interviewed so close to tip-off.

The following morning, Don McGuire sent Packer and a camera crew to the University of Utah’s Special Events Center, where the Indiana State Sycamores were just completing their game-day shootaround. Fortunately for NBC, Bird agreed to answer a couple of questions. Packer began by asking him how he felt about playing for the national championship.

"Well, this is probably the biggest game I’ll ever play in my life," Bird replied in his high-pitched Hoosier twang, which made "life" sound like "lahff." As he spoke, Larry looked not at Packer but straight ahead and slightly downward. He had a disconcerting habit of resisting eye contact with people he didn’t know well.

Bird continued, "I just feel like I’m representing not only myself and my team, but we’re representing our school and our town, Terre Haute. It means so much to me just to even be here that we’re gonna give it all we got, and we’re gonna try our hardest to win."

"You know," Packer said, "a lot of people were surprised yesterday, Larry, when you mentioned you played ball with Magic Johnson in the World Invitational Tournament." Packer was referring to the tournament the two of them played for Team USA the previous summer that culminated with a game against a squad from Russia in Lexington, Kentucky.

Larry cracked a wry smile. "Well, you know me and Magic played in that game, and you know it’s funny ’cause Magic’s such a great passer, but he wouldn’t give me the ball. And you know I need the ball."

The interview had been surprisingly pleasant and light. Larry left the court with his team, and the Michigan State Spartans strode into the arena. Packer knew there was no concern over whether Magic Johnson would consent to an interview. The broadcaster had never dealt with an athlete who so enjoyed the give-and-take with the media.

"It’s a dream come true, really, for me," Johnson said in answer to Packer’s first question. "I won a state title [in high school] back in my home state, and then my next accomplishment was going to the NCAA and playing a game like tonight in the finals. It’s a dream come true, and like I said, it’s an awful important game. I just hope we play up to par and win the game."

Packer then told Magic what Bird had said about him. Johnson flashed the bright ivory smile that would soon earn him millions of dollars. "Well, I hope he don’t think I’m gonna pass it to him tonight, either. But I thought I passed him the ball. Maybe he forgot."

Don McGuire was pleased to hear that Packer’s excursion had been successful. He now had enough material to make NBC’s pregame show an all-Magic-and-Bird affair. In retrospect, it seems inconceivable that anyone involved in producing the game could have failed to recognize the significance of the impending confrontation between these two compelling characters. Ohlmeyer, however, possessed an innate sense of theater that allowed him to see beyond the attraction the game would have for a hard-core basketball audience. He knew that if NBC could draw in the casual sports fan, and even the nonsports fan, the network would have something bigger than just a game. It would have an event.

By one measure, the impact of the 1979 NCAA championship game would be apparent a few days later. Nielsen Media Research reported that the contest had generated a 24.1 rating, which meant that nearly a quarter of all television sets in America were tuned in that night. Thirty years later, that remains the highest Nielsen rating for any basketball game, college or pro, in the history of the sport. Thanks to the proliferation of channels that has taken place since then, it’s unlikely the number will ever be surpassed by another basketball game. Consider that the 2008 NCAA final between the University of Memphis and the University of Kansas yielded a 12.1 Nielsen rating, a healthy number by modern standards. When Magic’s and Bird’s former pro teams, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics, met in the 2008 NBA Finals, it was hailed as a dream scenario for the league. Yet the highest rating any of the six games delivered was a 10.7.

While the success that Magic and Bird later enjoyed in the pros added retrospective luster to their first meeting, it does not account for the intense interest the two of them generated that night. Those millions of viewers had no idea they were watching the birth of the most storied rivalry in modern American sports. They were simply drawn in by the dramatic story line ripped straight out of the Old Testament: little Indiana State, which had competed in the NCAA’s Division I for only ten years, was taking on Michigan State, the mighty Big Ten team, for the title. That concept might not have been so titillating if they were playing a best-of-seven series, but the one-and-done format of the NCAA tournament made it irresistible. Anything could happen, the thinking went, so you’d better...