TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Excerpt from When March Went Mad
• Mr. Davis' SI columns
• CBS College Sports Television

E-mail a friend

Sports writer comments on the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry, which began during the '79 NCAA championship game. (3:01)
 

Full interview. (12:59)
 

Tavis: Seth Davis covers college basketball for "Sports Illustrated" and CBS Sports. This weekend, he'll be on hand in Detroit for college basketball's main event, the Final Four. His new book is called "When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball." He joins us tonight from New York. Seth, nice to have you on the program.

Seth Davis: Great to be with you, Tavis. Thanks for having me.

Tavis: Let's start with the obvious. Who you like this weekend?

Davis: (Laughter) Well, I always say that any similarities between my predictions and the actual course of events is strictly coincidental (laughter). You know, Tavis, if you look back at the big picture and look at this college basketball season from beginning to end, it's clear, I think, to everybody who follows the sport that the best two teams in the country have been Connecticut and North Carolina.

They've had their bumps in the road. Connecticut had an injury that they had to overcome when they lost their second leading scorer and best defender. But really those have been the best two teams, so I expect them to advance to the championship game.

Even though I'm a Duke graduate, class of '92 and proud of it, I got to go with the Tar Heels for the championship. I think they're the best. I think they have the best "A" game in the tournament and, if they play their best, they'll be your champs.

Tavis: Speaking of Duke, what happened this year and all the talk about whether or not the time for - I'm a Coach K fan because I went to Indiana. Coach K, as you know, taught under Bobby - or learned under Bobby Knight, coached under Bobby Knight.

So whenever Indiana's out, I like Duke because, again, I like Coach K. But there are questions about whether or not his time has come and gone. Can he still recruit? Does his style still work? What happened to Duke? What happened to that meltdown this year?

Davis: Well, you know, they actually had a really good year. I mean, they won the ACC tournament. They were a number two seed in the NCAA tournament. They reached the Sweet Sixteen. So I think just the fact that you're even asking what went wrong, I think, is a great compliment to Coach K and that program. You know, he showed you over the summer in winning the Olympic Gold Medal that the man can coach. It's just real competitive.

I mean, you know, when I was at Duke, Tavis, in my four years as a student, they went to four Final Fours, they played in three championship games and they won it twice. I just think that, you know, they were basically the last program to see significant players go to the NBA, so their run at the top really lasted really longer than it should have.

You know, it's a crowded neighborhood. Connecticut's great, North Carolina's great, there are a lot of really good programs out there. Duke is one of them and don't you worry your pretty little face. They'll be back.

Tavis: (Laugher) I don't doubt that. As I said earlier, I want to qualify my statements by saying that everybody else is wondering whether or not Coach K is done. Obviously, I like the guy and I'm sure they'll be back as they seem to be perennially around those parts of the country.

I mentioned a moment ago that I went to Indiana, so I remember - I want to ask you in a moment - but I remember exactly where I was, what I was doing. I mean, for those of us who are college basketball fans, this was the game. So it's kind of like remembering when JFK got assassinated or Dr. King.

If you were around, you remember where you were watching this game. I'm a kid growing up in Indiana; I'm on the floor of the trailer that I grew up in watching this game. I want to know where you were before we talk about looking back. Where were you on that night?

Davis: This was actually three weeks before my ninth birthday, so I was asleep (laughter). You know what? I actually don't have any recollection of watching the game, Tavis, but I distinctly remember knowing about it.

I think, in a lot of ways, that's actually the more appropriate recollection for someone at the age of eight or nine because it was the sense of anticipation and hype and expectation and promise and possibility that I think this game really tapped into and I think it really ushered us into this era that we currently call March Madness.

I mean, here we are 30 years later and it is still the highest Nielsen rating ever generated for a basketball game, college or pro, in the history of the sport. It will always be the number one highest rated game because back then there were only four channels and now there's about 804 channels, thankfully for guys like you and me who make our living being on television.

Tavis: Yeah. For a guy who didn't see it when it first happened, which is a great segue to what I want to know now, I know why I thought the game was great. I got a chance to see it again. I'm growing up in Indiana, Bird's in Indiana, Magic's just up the road at Michigan State. But when you started studying this game, tell me what you thought about it initially.

Davis: Well, let me break it down to you very simply. I mean, obviously one of the first things I did was watch a DVD of the game itself. There in the pre-game segment for NBC - Bryant Gumbel, of course, the brother of my current host at CBS, Greg Gumbel - Bryant Gumbel was hosting the pre-game show, the pre-game segment really. He's standing on the court by himself and he makes a comment while talking over some Larry Bird highlights.

He says to the audience, Tavis - now this is the night of the championship game - "If you've never seen Larry Bird play, you're in for a treat." I mean, think about that. You think it's gonna occur to me on Monday night for CBS to say to the audience, "If you've never seen Ty Lawson play or if you've never seen Hasheem Thabeet play," I think it exemplifies why it was such a special moment for people like yourself.

I mean, it's amazing, Tavis, over the last couple of years, how often when I've said to somebody, "I'm working on a book about the Magic-Bird game," they don't tell me, "Oh, yeah. I watched that game." They say like you said it, "I remember where I was" because not only was it a huge audience, but for a lot of the people watching - not you living in Indiana - but for most of the audience, this was the first time you ever saw either Magic or Bird play or possibly both.

So this notion that you could discover somebody of that caliber on the very night that they're playing for the national championship, that to me is what this game represents. That's the world that Magic and Bird stepped into and that's the world that they remade.

Tavis: Is it just about these two guys, Magic and Bird? Are there other parts to this back story that make this a game that everybody wants to see?

Davis: Well, there are a lot of parts to the back story. To me as a journalist and, in this instance, a historian, that was what was fun about it because for most of us, the Magic and Bird story begins the night of this game. But, of course, in real life, it didn't begin the night of this game.

So for me to be able to go back and excavate all this material and really write and report about what these guys were like as high school players, how they got recruited to their respective schools -I mean, Larry Bird is a fascinating, fascinating character when you're talking about at the age of 19, 20, 21. Intensely introverted, very shy, almost really pathologically antisocial.

I mean, he would not look at you if he didn't know you. That's why, when he went to Indiana, he didn't even make it to the first day of practice because he was so overwhelmed socially. Basketball-wise, he would have been fine. It was the social and psychological and emotional aspect that was so difficult for him.

You know, here you had an instance, Tavis, where you had arguably the best two players in the country playing for the championship, but you still had this David versus Goliath storyline. Indiana State was this little school from the Missouri Valley Conference. They were actually picked to finish fourth in their own conference at the start of the season.

Here they are, they're 33 and 0, undefeated, ranked number one in the polls, playing for the national championship, and people are still really wondering are they for real? Versus the Big 10 powerhouse with its charismatic super star with his great nickname so appropriate to the joy that he evinced on the court, and it was just an irresistible storyline you had to watch.

Tavis: You mentioned a moment ago Indiana overwhelming Larry Bird. For those of us who know the story, of course, we know that before he went to Indiana State and he went to play for Bobby Knight at Indiana, he gets, to your point, overwhelmed and he leaves Indiana.

And before he goes to Indiana State, this guy is working as a garbage worker before he winds up at Indiana State and starts the journey of becoming the great Larry Bird that we know him as. But I think your point's well taken that these guys couldn't really be that much different. They couldn't be more different, rather.

Davis: Right, exactly, and that was the great contrast. I mean, think about this, Tavis. Larry Bird entering his senior year. First of all, he had been drafted by the Boston Celtics over the summer in what they call the junior eligible rule where he could play his senior year, but the Celtics would still retain his rights.

So he was a fairly well-known guy in that respect and, you know, entered the season as a first team All-American. He went through his entire senior year without talking to the media. I mean, think about that for a second. Think about a player today, number one, being able to get away with that and, number two, even wanting to get away with that. It almost seems like that's the point these days of being a great player.

Versus Earvin Johnson who was a huge celebrity in Lansing, Michigan, which is where Michigan State is located, in the seventh grade. I mean, he broke a city scoring record in the seventh grade. He didn't play the fourth quarter in that game. He was a larger than life super star with this great nickname of Magic and he gets to Michigan State and he just - I mean, he'll talk to writers until they're out of questions and he loved being photographed.

Really, Tavis, and you know from following sports, that should poison a locker room, a freshman coming in with that kind of hype. The fact that it didn't, I think, is a great credit first of all to Magic Johnson and his parents, but also the rest of the folks in that locker room because they wanted to win and they recognized that this very hyped young freshman could help them do that.

Tavis: It was a great game. I want to ask you this. The subtitle suggests in a moment, Seth, how it transformed basketball. That's another level of respect you've given this game, but it occurs to me as a quick irony. Magic was on this program not long ago talking about his new book.

For those who are connecting the dots, Bird works as a garbage worker between Indiana and Indiana State; Magic's father is a garbage worker. He learns all kinds of lessons from his dad. There's fascinating parallels here between the lives these two guys were living even at that time.

That said, what made this game, again, that was not just a great game to watch, but to your point at least in the book, it transformed basketball?

Davis: In a word, Tavis, timing. You know, if this game was played ten or twelve years later, it still would have been a big deal, but it would not have had the transformative effect that it in fact had.

Think of it this way. The game is played on March 26, 1979. ESPN was launched on September 7, 1979. The Big East Conference began competing in the 1979-1980 season. The NBA was at such a low ebb that the NBA finals were not even broadcast on live television. They were shown on tape delay. So they were starved for the infusion of these two rookies.

And then the NCAA was really looking to take the tournament to another level. They had actually just expanded the tournament in 1979, Tavis, to 40 teams. It was the first year that they seeded all the teams in the bracket. Over the next five years, the NCAA expanded the tournament twice more to get to the current 64 teams and, in the 24 years since then, it's never been expanded. So this was literally at the perfect moment.

I think Al McGuire - I quote him in the book. I think he said it best, Tavis, where his quote was, "College basketball was already on the launching pad and then Magic and Bird came along and pushed the button."

Tavis: What do you make of the fact that beyond this big game that Bird, by is own admission today, still feels the sting of - he thinks he let down the Indiana State Sycamores that night? What do you make of the fact that they'd go from this game on to be rivals in another, you know, Goliath match consistently in the NBA, a perennial, going back and forth between these two guys at the NBA level?

Davis: Well, it's amazing, again, when you think about it. I mean, not only do they go to the NBA, but they go to the two storied franchises of the league, they go on opposite coasts. Again, the contrast in styles.

Yeah, you know, 30 years later, Larry Bird is still not over this loss. It's very difficult for him to talk about. He and Magic only really talked about it once and that was because they did a special for Fox Sports on the game.

Because of what they did in their NBA careers, it's actually a rare example of an event that was a huge deal at the time that it happened. But because of all that has happened since then, it actually becomes a bigger deal and even more significant. So now here we are, this 30-year anniversary. I've actually been pleasantly surprised at how big a story the 30-year anniversary has been.

Forget about my book, but people just really taking pleasure, just like you said at the top of this interview, in stopping for a moment and thinking, "Wow, it's been 30 years. I remember where I was" and sort of taking stock of the journey that we've traveled since then. You can look back and say, "Huh, this is where it all began, that night. That's pretty cool."

Tavis: So finally very quickly, for historians, I just got an invite the other day to Magic's 50th birthday which is happening this year. So Magic turns 50 this year, it's 30 years after the big game with Bird and his team, the Spartans, are one of the Final Four teams. You don't think that that means that they're might be an upset this weekend?

Davis: Hey, I'm up for whatever's good for the book (laughter). I'm sure Tom Izzo in his pre-game speech over the weekend told the Spartans, "Now if you guys get to the Final Four" in Detroit, I might add, it might help Seth's book.

Tavis: In Detroit, yes.

Davis: That's karma, man. I mean, I'm all for karma. I'm a big believer in karma. And let me just add as an aside, Tavis. I know a lot of people in college basketball feel this way and certainly we at CBS feel this way. I am thrilled that the Final Four is going to Detroit this year.

We all know the struggles that the good people of that city has had. I just hope that, you know, for a weekend we can make Detroit feel good about themselves because they deserve it and maybe this will be the start of some good karma for Detroit and the rest of us.

Tavis: As we say in the Black church, "Amen to that." Amen to this book. Thanks for taking me back 30 years to what was a great night in college basketball. The new book by Seth Davis of CBS and "Sports Illustrated" is called "When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball." Seth, great book. Glad to have you on. Thanks for your insights.

Davis: Tavis, a pleasure. Thank you.