Sports: When March Went Mad
WHEN MARCH WENT MAD: THE GAME THAT TRANSFORMED BASKETBALL
Three decades after MSU beat Indiana State to win the NCAA basketball championship, the game remains the most viewed ever. A new book examines the stories and people involved, including Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. This excerpt recounts a 1989 match between MSU’s 1979 team and a Scott Skiles-led MSU All-Star Team.
It was supposed to be a friendly little game. The 1979 Spartans, led by Magic Johnson, played the Spartan All-Stars, a team of Michigan State alumni led by Scott Skiles, in the summer of 1989 to mark the tenth anniversary of the NCAA title. The game was the last one to be played in Jenison Fieldhouse before the team moved into the brand-new Breslin Center in the fall. In the spirit of the occasion, the All-Stars allowed the ’79ers to reprise the opening-tip play they had used in their regional final win over Notre Dame. Without any defense, the play again worked to perfection, though this time Mike Brkovich, who was after all ten years older, scored on a layup instead of a dunk.
From then on, the game became a game. They were competitors, after all. The All-Stars wanted to shut up the guys who were always bragging about their title, and the champs were too proud to go down without a fight. Not surprisingly, Magic was the difference, going for 25 points, 17 rebounds, and 12 assists while converting the winning free throws in the final minute to give the ’79ers a 95–93 win before a sellout crowd. Afterward, the champs huddled together on the court, where Greg Kelser led them in their “potential” chant. Being reunited never felt so good.
The winds of time have cast the Spartans in disparate directions, but their common experience has always brought them back together. It helped that Michigan State’s hoops program has remained strong as Tom Izzo built upon, and even exceeded, the legacy bequeathed to him by Jud Heathcote. During his first 13 years as head coach, Izzo guided the Spartans to four Big Ten championships, four Final
Four appearances, and the 2000 NCAA title. Yet Izzo is the first to concede that none of his teams has captured the attention of the Spartan nation, much less the entire nation, quite the way the 1979 squad did. “It baffles me even today to say it’s still the highest-rated game in history,” Terry Donnelly says. “To say that I was a participant in that game and played as well as I did is really special. I love when February and March come around every year and I start getting calls from reporters who are doing articles. I get to enjoy that the rest of my life.”
Ten years after that “friendly” game closed Jenison, Michigan State hosted the 1979 team again for their twenty-year reunion. This time the event was an intimate, low-key dinner at the Harley Hotel outside Lansing. A video replay of the championship game played on a television in the corner of the room, but the guys were too busy socializing with each other and their families to pay much attention. As the evening wore on, it appeared that Magic Johnson wouldn’t show up, but he sauntered into the room just after the food had been cleared and held court for the next two hours. “I’ll never forget that night,” he told reporters. “I don’t want to forget. It’s so, so special to me. . . . I’m Earvin here. One of the guys. Nobody can take that away. Around here, I’m just Earvin.”
At that point, Kelser sneaked up behind him and said, “Excuse me, can you come over here, Magic?” Johnson busted a gut laughing, hugged Kelser, and said, “Man, we never change, do we?”
The grandest reunion of all was the silver anniversary celebration that took place over the first weekend of November 2003. The festivities began on Saturday morning, when Michigan State unveiled a twelve-foot bronze statue of Johnson outside the Breslin Center. The sculpture, which cost $250,000, was titled Always a Champion and showed Johnson dribbling the ball with his right hand while directing traffic with his left. At Johnson’s request, there was a serious look on his face, not a smile, which may account for why the face on the statue bears so little resemblance to the real thing. “I very rarely smiled when I was actually playing,” Johnson explained. He was emotional during the ceremony inside the Breslin Center that morning.
“I tell you, this is just the greatest moment,” he said through tears. “Knowing that even when I die I’ll still have a presence is just an unbelievable feeling.” Johnson also said that weekend that he was finalizing plans to complete his communications degree in 2005, but by the fall of 2008 he was still more than fifty credits shy.
Johnson and his teammates were introduced during halftime of the Michigan–Michigan State football game later that afternoon. Then, on Sunday, Johnson suited up for the Harlem Globetrotters during an exhibition game against the current Michigan State squad. The Globetrotters won, 97–83, but Johnson, who was forty-four years old, contributed little to the victory. He had 5 points and 4 assists in sixteen minutes, and he spent most of the afternoon kibitzing on the sideline with the Globetrotters’ honorary coach—one Larry Bird. Terry Donnelly had never met Bird, and when he introduced himself before the game, Larry pointed at Donnelly’s championship ring and said, “If it wasn’t for you, I might have one of those.” Says Donnelly, “That was a pretty proud moment for me.”
For the players, the best part of the weekend was Friday night, when they gathered at Izzo’s house. Mike Brkovich showed up late because he wanted to defy Heathcote. (“I don’t have to show up on time anymore,” he boasted.) And Magic showed up late because, well, he was Magic. Izzo had arranged for a designer to produce commemorative championship posters, and the players signed each one. Once Magic finally arrived, he assembled everyone in Izzo’s basement, and, still orchestrating like a point guard, he called on each guy to stand up and tell a story from the championship season. “Magic just took over,” Heathcote says. “It’s a good thing, too, because the Brkoviches of the world wouldn’t say s--t unless he made them.” The session was the first time Izzo had heard the story about Heathcote’s embarrassing foray behind the luggage flaps at the Capital City airport. Johnson relished in showing off his Coach Heathcote imitation, limp and all, though Heathcote got the last laugh by asking Magic why he wasn’t so funny on his television talk show, which had failed so spectacularly. (“It was hard to watch that show, because it wasn’t Earvin,” Jud says. “It was him trying to be what he wasn’t. That’s why it wasn’t successful.”)
As Johnson’s public persona grew larger than life over the years, it has been harder for his former teammates and coaches to remain in close contact with him. That, however, does not mean they have grown apart . . . Whenever Johnson is at the Palace of Auburn Hills, either in his capacity as part-owner of the Lakers or as a studio analyst for TNT, he makes a point to seek out Brkovich, who Johnson knows is a season ticket holder. “He’ll tell a guy from the Pistons, ‘Where’s Mike? I want to see him.’ He doesn’t need to do those things, but he does,” Brkovich says. Heathcote has also had minimal contact since Johnson went to the NBA—“I called him a few times early, but you could never get through,” he says—but when Heathcote turned eighty, he received a fruit basket with a card that read, “Thank you for helping me become a better basketball player, a better man and a better person. Love, Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson.”
* From the book, WHEN MARCH WENT MAD: The Game That Transformed Basketball, by Seth Davis. Copyright © 2009 by Seth Davis. Published by arrangement with Times Books, an Imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. All rights reserved.