Forty years ago tomorrow night in Inglewood, the Forum played host to what Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe called “the single most-awaited game in Laker history”—which, given the franchise’s star-laden past, was saying something. Larry Bird and his Boston Celtics were in town to play Magic Johnson and the Lakers, the first time the two would go head-to-head since their battle in the NCAA title game nine months earlier.
The from-the-hip hot take has long been that the Magic-Bird rivalry saved the NBA. And while from-the-hip hot takes seldom tell the whole story, there’s more than a little meat to this one. “If Magic Johnson and Larry Bird did not save the NBA, they most certainly performed CPR on it,” wrote SI’s Jack McCallum in 1992, on the occasion of the rivalry’s end.
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