When the Game Was Ours | Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson Jr., ...

When the Game Was Ours | Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson Jr., ... | Enjoyable retrospective

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	When the Game Was Ours Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson Jr., ... Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 113 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

From the moment these two players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most compelling rivalry in the NBA. These were the basketball epics of the 1980s--Celtics vs Lakers, East vs West, physical vs finesse, Old School vs Showtime, even white vs black. Each pushed the other to greatness--together Bird and Johnson collected 8 NBA Championships, and 6 MVP awards and helped save the floundering NBA at its most critical time. When it started they were bitter rivals, but along the way they became lifelong friends. With intimate, fly-on-the-wall detail, When the Game Was Ours transports readers to this electric era of basketball and reveals for the first time the inner workings of two players dead set on besting one another. From the heady days of trading championships to the darker days of injury and illness, we come to understand Larry's obsessive devotion to winning and how his demons drove him on the court. We hear him talk with candor about playing through chronic pain and its truly exacting toll. In Magic we see a young, invincible star struggle with the sting of defeat, not just as a player but as a team leader. We are there the moment he learns he's contracted HIV and hear in his own words how that devastating news impacted his relationships in basketball and beyond. But always, in both cases, we see them prevail. A compelling, up-close-and-personal portrait of basketball's most inimitable duo, When the Game Was Ours is a reevaluation of three decades in counterpoint. It is also a rollicking ride through professional basketball's best times.

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"When the Game Was Ours"!

I enjoyed this book a great deal, and I learned a lot about Bird and Magic, hence the 5 star rating. But if you are a basketball fan, even a casual fan you should take my opinion with a grain of salt (maybe two or three). You see, I'd only heard of Magic Johnson and I only thought the name Larry Bird sort of rung a bell. Actually, I've never even seen an entire game from start to finish (*gasp*)! I really got this book for my brother who is quite a fan of the ol' NBA and he read the book very quickly and said although he enjoyed it, he wouldn't say it was quite perfect and would give it 4 stars. He's only started following the NBA last year regularly so I can understand why some reviewers who lived during the Larry and Magic era may not be as pleased as I.

Still, pleased I was. I was immediately drawn into the book, which surprised me a bit for the above reasons. As most every reviewer has noted, this book is NOT written by Bird and Johnson, it is written by Macmullan. They seem to have been interviewed heavily, but that is they're role in this book, interviewee's. Personally, I enjoyed the way the book was put together, but it could have helped that I had absolutely no expectations.

The book has two introductions, one from Bird and Magic respectively. Then the chapters are broken up into dates, i.e. Chapter 1: April, 9 1978 Chapter 2: March 25, 1979 and so on. Quite often the narrative will break from this period and discuss a later time in one or both of the men's lives, but never for too long and it always pertains to the chapter at hand in some way. At the end of the book are both players Career Statistics, which I'm sure will be a nice addition for the fans, albeit rather expected I suppose. Although I did not have them in my copy, in the finished book there will be two 8-page 4-color inserts and an index.

So, to put things simply, if you are a die-hard fan than you will most likely be rather disappointed with the way the book is written or the lack of new insights. However, if you are a casual fan simply wanting to know more about Bird and Magic, then I highly recommend this book!

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Enjoyable retrospective

I started to follow the NBA in the mid 80s, just as Bird and Magic were at the top, but about to surrender their place to the Bad Boys and eventually Jordan. MacMullan does a good job of recreating the careers and rivalries of Bird and Magic. There were lot of interesting anecdotes, my favorite being the time a black Bostonian walked up to Magic and told him we was rooting for him all the way because the Celtics were too white. (On the subject of race, Bird was no racist, Dennis Rodman notwithstanding). When The Game Was Ours is a well-written,enjoyable look back at a different and unique time in NBA history.

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2 NBA GREATS

Growing up as kid in a Houston suburb, my first memory of the NBA was watching the Houston Rockets play the Boston Celtics in the 1986 Finals. As far as I know, those were the first pro basketball games I ever saw. As I watched the Rockets get mandhandled, without knowing anything about the Boston team, I began to hate them. Ainge, McHale, Johnson, Parrish, and of course, Bird. As I watched basketball more and more, and knowing the history between the Rockets and the Lakers, I began to hate the Showtime teams of Magic Johnson just as much. I'm pretty anti-establishment and that's what the Lakers and the Celtics were back in the 80s. The elite, the status quo. Two giants fighting with each other with the rest of the NBA as spectators. I do seem to remember some music video with Magic and Bird as well, with the message being that it was just a foregone conclusion that they would meet in the Finals AGAIN. Times have changed, and I pretty much still hate the Lakers. But I respect the Celtics.

When I picked up this book, I knew I was gonna get hit with waves of nostalgia, just thinking of those times when I first started watching basketball. After the 1986 Finals, it was pretty much a part of my life. I knew Magic and Bird were rivals, but when I started watching their epic battles were pretty much on the downslide. They were kinda like the equivalent of Lennon and McCartney in that they saw each other as their only competitor. Normally, that might be a bad thing, but they were such bright stars, such talents, that they pushed each other to new heights. And most of this happened before they were even friends. It was like they were shadow boxing each other when they were training and when they were on the court, even when they weren't playing each other. I didn't know much of the background of the relationship between the two. I think I was only dimly aware of their teams playing each other for the college championship. So this book was quite the education for me. The turning point of the book is when Magic comes to Bird's hometown to film a Converse commercial. It is only then that the two men compare notes on not only basketball, but their lives. It was a bond that became personal after it had already been professional. Another interesting bit is when Magic, Bird, Charles Barkley, and Michael Jordan argue over a game of pool during the 1992 Olympics about the best NBA teams ever. Quite interesting.

I really enjoyed this book. It was informative but never dry. Both Magic and Bird seem very forthcoming about their family background, what drove them to succeed, and what they wanted out of the NBA. Really, in the end, what they both wanted was to win.

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Fun trip down memory lane

If you read this book, you should really expect little more than nostalgia, stuff you basically already knew. You shouldn't expect that anything but the brief letters at the start of the book were actually written by Larry or Magic - the meat of the book is clearly all Jackie MacMullan's work. She does base much of it on interviews with Bird, Magic as well as most of their notable teammates and a few other key figures from during and just after the time when the game was theirs, especially informative were the quotes from NBA commissioner David Stern and Michael Jordan. But the extensive interviews would have to be a highlight of the book, providing fresh content even for people who are deeply familiar with Bird and Johnson's careers.

However, the book stops well short of providing any real depth. As it's officially written by Johnson and Bird that's largely to be expected - it breezes over the children both of them had out of marriage, for example. But there are some areas where MacMullan could have provided some more insight without offending the "authors", such as some serious insight into how their rivalry helped secure the NBA as a major sports league in America. She has some good analysis early on when describing the precarious situation of the league prior to their arrival, but precious few numbers ever arrive to show what they really did to help the league, we're just told that it happened. And while it's largely true, it's not a good sign when an author's just asking you to take their word for it.

The book lapses pretty badly into fandom in places, constantly referring to Michael Jordan as "his airness" for example. This isn't hard-hitting journalism, it's a fluff piece, an ode to a time when basketball players weren't covered in tattoos and spoke proper English. Not that there's anything wrong with nostalgia, but don't expect much insight out of this book.

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Little lacking, but still good

This is a book you want to pick up if you are interested in the non-game stuff (there are enough game-related anecdotes as well) and about how the two thought of each other and interacted with each other, and especially how they felt once they saw that their dominance was fading. I think that's the part where it's most intriguing - a lot of it is left unwritten, but you get enough of a glimpse of their thoughts as they deal with their respective injuries and ailments and watch Jordan catapult into something that was only made possible because they revived (or rather, re-created) the league.

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