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Except for a few weeks in 1992, when they were part of the transcendent Dream Team, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were never teammates on the floor.
Off the court was quite different, because in 1985, commercial sponsors and the two players discovered that if they teamed together, they could increase their incomes significantly.Despite the considerable passage of time, the two most influential NBA players from the decade of the 1980s are still capable of generating headlines almost at will.And that’s exactly what they did Wednesday when their latest effort — a book titled When the Game Was Ours, written by veteran journalist and former Boston Globe writer Jackie MacMullan — was released.The book chronicles one of the two great rivalries in NBA history. Only Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain can be compared to Bird vs. Magic, and it can be argued that the latter was more significant because it occurred during the explosion of cable TV. And it was the warmup act for Michael Jordan, who dominated the 1990s and propelled the NBA to its greatest heights.The fascination with Magic vs. Bird continues and the principals are grateful for the interest."I’m still amazed after all these years that people bring up games that I played years ago," Bird said Monday in an hourlong teleconference to promote the book. "This has always just been a dream to me to play the game that I loved and people remember it and still enjoy talking about it."Johnson agreed — sort of. But then again, both players are aware of the impact they made and there is no false modesty."You still can’t believe it," Johnson said, "but at the same time I guess we can believe it. It’s something that people really respect — the way we played. We were about winning, we were about making our teammates better, we were about playing the game the right way."The first excerpts of the book were distributed almost two weeks ago and one of the explosive elements was Johnson’s criticisms of one-time friend Isiah Thomas.About a year after Johnson revealed that he had contracted the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), stories were published quoting Johnson that one unidentified NBA player had spread rumors that Johnson was bisexual. The allegation was that Johnson had been infected because of homosexual relations. Johnson was upset at the time, but did not reveal the player, although several stories published quoted unnamed sources saying it was Thomas.In MacMullan’s book, Johnson is quoted for the first time publicly identifying Thomas. When Ian Thomsen of Sports Illustrated contacted Thomas with that information, Thomas went off on Johnson."I think Magic has been misled on a lot of things, and unfortunately this has been another one of them," Thomas told Thomsen. "I am hurt and disappointed that he has chosen to believe others as opposed to his closest friends."When asked for a response Monday, Johnson said: "I don’t have any. It’s no surprise. It’s a part of life."
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