“When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball”

By Seth Davis

Times Books

$26.00

When I was growing up in the ’80s, everyone knew whom Bird and Magic were. The dynamic basketball players who revitalized the sport with the Celtics and Lakers (respectively) set the template for all those who would follow, from Michael Jordan on down to LeBron James. What a lot of people didn’t know (myself included) was how good Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were while still in college, a fact borne out by their legendary showdown against one another in the 1979 NCAA Championship Game.

“When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball” (Times Books, $26) is Seth Davis’s attempt to rescue that match-up from the myths that have sprouted up around it and recast it in the context of not only what followed but what came before. Larry Bird, the self-described “Hick from French Lick,” and Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the pride of Lansing, Mich., were legends before they ever met on the court in March 1979. Bird, product of a broken home in the “redneck” section of Indiana, tried to play for fiery Bob Knight at Indiana before finding his way to the less-noteworthy Indiana State Sycamores. Johnson, sought by powerhouse University of Michigan, decided to stay close to home and Michigan State. Both young men became stars on the college level and targets for a hungry NBA to snatch up as soon as possible to help save the professional league from low ratings and a perceived bias towards African American players (a complaint that still echoes today, when most of the superstars of the league are black). But as Davis shows, theirs were not the only compelling stories of that magical NCAA season.

Other figures emerge to help form the narrative of what turned into the defining game of the NCAA. Jud Heathcote, the combative coach of Michigan State, had to win over his players before he could hope to lead them to the championship, while Bill Hodges stepped in to lead the Sycamores after head coach Bob King’s debilitating brain aneurysm kept him out for the season. Bird and Magic, unselfish players through and through, allowed their teammates to share in the limelight. Greg Kelser, Terry Donnelly and Jay Vincent proved to be just as important to Michigan State’s eventual championship as Magic. And Bird shared the stage with Carl Nicks, Steve Reed and Bob Heaton.

The book goes to great lengths to cover the time after the game as well, highlighting how the game affected individual participants not named “Bird” or “Magic” (their careers are well-documented elsewhere). After its 1979 run, Indiana State fell back into the gutter, with Bill Hodges left adrift before finding himself again as a high school history teacher. Many of the secondary players on the teams involved found their way to the NBA, but none shone as brightly as their star-crossed counterparts. Bird and Magic, who saw each other often in the finals, eventually became friends despite Bird’s lingering bitterness about having his perfect season ending with a loss (the Sycamores had a 33-0 record going into the championship round). And the big winners in all of this were college basketball (no longer playing second fiddle to the NBA) and television, where ratings for the game (the highest ever for a college basketball game) convinced the networks to try and outbid each other for the rights to the Final Four. All in all, it was a historic match-up whose repercussions are still being felt today.

In an era when one-named superstars dominate the NBA, it’s hard to remember that Magic and Bird were legendary for their passing skills as much as for their shooting. And with 30 years separating the present day from the event, it’s hard to remember much about the game that put college basketball on the map besides a few recycled highlights on ESPN. But “When March Went Mad” helps those of us too young to know what happened understand why that distant memory of a game still lingers. Madness in any other context is harmful, but when March rolls around it can be positively beautiful.