Everything They Had (26 page)

We leave early. Knight always leaves a game early, because he wants to beat the traffic. He is pleased with what he's seen of Oliphant. Good passer, good hands, already well coached and disciplined, will fit nicely into the Indiana program. An agreement with both coach and son has already been worked out that will work to everyone's benefit: because IU is short of scholarships this year, Oliphant will come as a walk-on in his first year, probably red shirt, and then get a scholarship for four years. As a five-year student, he can pick up a master's degree if he so chooses.

“What do you project him as?” I ask Knight. “Small forward?”

But Knight insists he doesn't project such particulars. “I may be ten years behind the times,” he says.

We drive through the night, a few friends of his, two assistant coaches, and two writers. They are talking basketball and I am thinking that with the exception of a rare team like L&M, Indiana high school basketball has changed because the state has changed. Rural communities were losing their identity anyway; small farmers were finally giving up and moving to the city, and as farms were being consolidated so were schools. Besides, the lives of the people who stayed behind have changed. They know what goes on not just in the next town but in Washington and in foreign countries. There are more stimuli now, more alternatives in life, more things to occupy their time. Even people in the smallest hamlets have color television sets, and that means that they are no longer alone, they are able to bring the world into their living rooms, whether it is news, sports, movies, or even wars.

High school basketball is simply less important. The state tournament still matters, but there is less magic to it. There are other distractions: one can watch the NFL and major-league baseball and the Olympics. There is a professional football team in Indianapolis. Mostly there is Bobby Knight's team in Bloomington, which is carried on a statewide network and has become the focal point of the fever. The state, because of television, has replaced the village as the operative community. The nature of the culture has not changed; the size of the community has. The new village is now the state of Indiana. Ohio State and Illinois have replaced the neighboring village as the community to war against. But sports here and elsewhere still mean as much, probably too much. It was, I thought, easy to measure the popularity of the sport in the old days as a safeguard against an unrelenting loneliness. Now it's different; people live in modern instant subdivisions and have neighbors only a few feet away, and they have their television sets connecting them to the world. In some ways they care as much or more about sports than ever. The hardest thing to measure here or anywhere else is the new loneliness.

Great NBA Finals are supposed to last seven games, of which at least six should be close; this year's series lasted only six, of which 3½ were close. Even so, because of the nature of the matchups—the difference in the styles of the two teams—this series was in no way disappointing. The good games were so very good, and even the runaway games so resembled a clinic, that it was nothing less than the best against the best. A fan can ask no more.

Using only five men to any significant extent, exhausted and physically worn down as the series began, the Celtics had to play almost perfect basketball in every area to win, and they did that twice and almost a third time. For the younger, deeper, faster Lakers, the challenge was comparable: The Celtics are so tough and resilient that if the Lakers lapsed even a small degree, particularly on defense, the Celtics might capitalize and win. The Lakers were the better team, but only if they played their absolute best. Any lowering of their level and the Celtics would break through and win.

It was the kind of playoff series that showcases great athletes at the top of their game.

The Lakers were and are that good. They are a team of such speed and power that when they are playing their game, it seems almost not to matter who their opponents are. With the Lakers at their best, one has a sense of watching basketball as it will be played in the next century.

During one stretch of Game 1, Larry Bird hit 11 shots in a row. Normally that kind of shooting from an established superstar can crush the opposition; in this case it did not even dent the Lakers.

They have become one of the most exciting teams in NBA history, one that can take control of a game in a matter of minutes. In the past it was the hallmark of the Celtics to drive through the opposition when it began to wilt and break a game open. In this series the Lakers returned the favor.

In the eight years since Magic Johnson joined them, the Lakers have won four championships and have been a powerful if somewhat schizophrenic team. They were, in most matters of critical importance, a Kareem team, bringing the ball upcourt at a steady pace and then setting Abdul-Jabbar up for a skyhook (a style perilously close to one which, were they the Celtics, would be called white basketball). But they were also a Magic team, one that showcased the latest in American athletic advancement, the 6 ft. 9 in. point guard who grabs the rebound himself and pushes it relentlessly upcourt, on occasion sacrificing control for tempo. Until this year that conflict between the two faces of the Lakers had never been entirely reconciled. It cost one coach, Paul Westhead (who had too clearly sided with Kareem), his job, and it reflected Pat Riley's skill as a coach that he was able to balance the two forces, paying homage to the Kareem team, while expediting the emergence of the Magic team.

This year the Lakers finally were Magic's team: Speed is power, power is speed. Slowly the cast had changed. Michael Cooper had emerged; A. C. Green and James Worthy had been added. Even Mychal Thompson, the most important pickup by either team this year, once was strong enough to play center yet was fast enough to play small forward at times. One had, at certain moments, a sense of watching a prototype of a different breed of athlete—strong, fast, disciplined—playing at a level of stunning intensity, with surprisingly few turnovers. If the Knicks of the late '60s could be described as four guards and one forward (Willis Reed), then this was often a team of four forwards led by a point guard who could, in a very recent era, have played power forward.

What made the series so special was the sharp contrast in the styles of Los Angeles and Boston and the knowledge that these two teams, with cameo appearances by Philadelphia and Houston, have essentially dominated the championships since Bird and Johnson entered the league in 1979. That and, of course, the fact that both teams have gradually been shaped to the styles and contours of their superstars, one white and one black.

The Celtics, this year's defending champions, play half-court basketball, and they play it better than any team in the league. That they had even made it to the finals was remarkable, given the death of Len Bias, the infirmities of Bill Walton and the fact that Kevin McHale and Robert Parish were both playing with injuries. But Boston finally lacked the bench mandatory for a tough playoff final and the speed to stay with L.A. in a running game. The Celtic front line, after all, was composed of three exceptional basketball players, while the first seven players for the Lakers seemed to be both exceptional basketball players and exceptional athletes.

One had to look no further than the contrast between McHale and Worthy to understand the classic matchup displayed in this series. If the Lakers controlled the tempo, it would mean that Worthy—possibly the fastest big man going to the basket in the league—would be a dominant player; if the Celtics controlled the pace, it meant they would be able to get the ball to McHale, surprisingly nimble and deft, uncommonly skilled at using his body and arms for maximum leverage. Each was an extension of the best of his team. For Worthy to be Worthy, Magic had to be Magic; for McHale to get the ball where he wanted it, Larry Bird and the Celtic offense had to move in proper mesh. If one was having a good game, the other probably was not.

Because the styles and the racial composition of each team were so strikingly different, race was very much at issue during the series (and indeed was covertly at issue even when it was not overtly so).

It was always there, as race is always there in American life, even when it seemingly is not.

One enters the subject of race and basketball as one enters a minefield: American blacks are clearly faster than American whites; in addition, they are now generally perceived as better natural athletes; and Los Angeles is a significantly blacker team than Boston. The first seven Los Angeles players are black; Boston, which was the first integrated team and the first team to start five blacks, has been for almost a decade one of the whitest teams in the league, and it starts three whites and often plays four at a time.

Even before the finals started, Dennis Rodman and Isiah Thomas of the Pistons had raised the question of race, both suggesting that Larry Bird was overrated and had become a superstar not so much because of the excellence of his game as because he was white and because white fans and media seized on and magnified his value. At the same time, the
Boston Globe
ran a story quoting some local black youths at a playground saying they favored the Lakers because the Celtics were so white. That story reverberated throughout the paper for the next few days.

Racism is about stereotypes on both sides, and like most stereotypes, racial ones can be both true and untrue. One can imagine, for example, the young and still healthy Walton as an ideal center for the current Laker team. Comparably, one can easily imagine the mid-career Abdul-Jabbar playing for the Celtics and fitting in perfectly well with their style. Yet, as the current Laker offense springs from Magic, so the current Celtic team is an extension of Bird. The Boston offense is built around a forward with great vision and great hands who moves well without the ball and who will, against an exceptional defense, come off a series of picks, ready to shoot or pass. It is critical on this team that everyone be able to shoot well from within a specified range. This is, for better or worse, defined as white basketball. That Bird would be an equally wonderful forward on the current Laker team does not change the stereotype (in part because Johnson would have difficulty on the Celtics as currently constituted; he would probably be too fast for them, and it is possible that an adjustment in his game might cost him what is best in his game).

The two men are now inextricably linked. They played against each other in the NCAA championship game of 1979, the year they both came into the league. Each has improved his game significantly every season since. Each has the rare gift of the truly great basketball player—the ability to make other players better—and each has played a crucial role in making his team a perennial contender (one or both of them has made the finals every year since they joined the league; Magic has been playoff MVP three times, Bird twice). The era of the '80s has been theirs.

During Bird's rookie year, one NBA general manager was asked what he thought of him. The G.M. was wary—yes, Bird was a good shooter and probably an even better passer than people thought. But even though his skills were obvious, the G.M. did not think that Bird was mentally tough enough for the long NBA season. Of all the predictions heard in professional sports, that one is among the least fortunate.

What was known about Bird was how good a shooter and passer he was. What was not known was how good a teammate he would be, how exceptional a rebounder he was, and most of all how tough of mind he would be—able to impose his will not just upon his teammates but upon a given game itself. He has, over the years, proved to be the ultimate professional, working constantly on his shooting and developing remarkable proficiency with his left hand. He has always had an extraordinary sense of tempo and a fine sense of what his team needs from him at a given moment—passing, rebounding or shooting.

Magic Johnson, too, has gotten better every year. By and large he did exceptionally well in controlling his ego as he adjusted his play to accommodate Kareem's. He has refined his own game, improving his outside shot, and he won the critical fourth game of the finals with a moving hook shot over the entire Boston front line. It was an additional shot he knew he needed in his repertoire, and he had picked it up from Abdul-Jabbar, playing H-O-R-S-E with him. In the often dour world of professional sports he has made the game seem a pleasure. It is quite possible that until this year we had not seen the full range of what he could do and did not realize that he is the rarest of professional basketball players—someone who can dominate the game and lead his team in scoring while playing guard.

The other aspect of Magic and the entire Laker team was the brilliance and discipline with which they played, both on offense and, perhaps even more important, on defense, where they dominated Boston in the first two games and took away the essence of the Celtic game. It is one thing to have tremendous athletic ability and quite another to discipline it, master it and apply it with great skill in situations of constant and enormous pressure. That takes both intelligence and hard work. Yet, if there is one thing that enrages the better black athletes—and coaches—of this era, it is the contemporary white perception, both in the media and among fans, that black athletes are natural athletes, doing night after night what comes quite readily to them. This is, of course, an ironic update of an earlier myth, which was that blacks were faster than whites but could not play in difficult positions in competitive professional sports because they lacked both guts and talent. Whites, by contrast, are seen as less gifted but headier athletes who practice and perfect their skills better because they have, it is implied, better work habits.