1958-
Heart and Soul of the NBA

The Two.

On 26 March 1979 Earvin "Magic" Johnson, a brash and brilliant sophomore from Michigan State, and Larry Bird, the sharpshooting senior leader of Indiana State, held the first of many summit meetings. On that night Johnson's Spartans defeated Bird's Sycamores in front of the largest television audience ever to watch an NCAA title game. It was the beginning of a relationship between the two players which was fiercely competitive, consistently respectful, and always breathtakingly intense. The dramatic encounters between Bird and Johnson would characterize professional basketball at its best for much of the next decade and would permanently link the two in the annals of the game. As the scene changed from college to the professional stage — Johnson performed before the footlights in Los Angeles while Bird roamed the parquet floor of Boston — the...