By John McCurdy
Indulge the obsessive sports fan inside...
"Sports Illustrated" contributor and CBS analyst Seth Davis's "When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball" is a more than admirable nonfiction work, no matter who you are.
But for a professed basketball nut, such as myself? Well, let’s just say the following review may be colored with a bit of bias.
See, we’re talking about the beginning of the greatest rivalry in the sport so far: Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird.
We’re talking about basketball’s emergence into the national conscience: the beginning of hoops’ “Golden Age”.
We’re talking about the very incipience of March Madness: the 1979 NCAA Championship.
And Davis does such a good job of putting it all into context, it’s mind-blowing. The book starts all the way back in Magic and Bird’s high school days and chronicles the recruiting processes that they enjoyed (in the case of Johnson) or endured (for Larry).
Magic obviously possessed his famous magnetic personality from birth, whereas Larry was about as shy a Great Plains teenager you could find. Johnson had big names like Michigan and Michigan State fighting over him and held a press conference to announce his Spartanhood, while Bird left Indiana for tiny Indiana State with nary a protest from then-Hoosiers coach Bob Knight.
This is just the beginning of the dichotomous construction that Davis masterfully crafts through his descriptions and selected quotations from a myriad of sources. It’s not that he casts one as good and one as evil; indeed, both are clearly heroes.
But Bird and Magic were very different, and through both his clean-cut structure (each chapter has separate sections for both players, though they are not labeled as such) and generous research (expect bits from pretty much every coach and assistant, plus some fascinating views from roommates and cheerleaders), the author sets up the tales of the college seasons leading up to their fateful matchup extremely well.
As the book transitions to a more game-by-game reporting format, it retains its tone. The whole is fact-heavy, but by keeping it this way, Davis does this history justice. He’s not trying to take these events and project them politically, socially, or racially. He’s just projecting them on basketball.
Every important contest leading up to the title bout is chronicled, but the work never feels tedious. I’ll even go so far as to say that this would hold not only the attention of a non-hardwood aficionado, but also the interest of a non-sports fan. It’s just that easy to read and digest.
Besides, there is some intrigue in both the staff of Michigan State and Indiana State to spice things up. Even back in the ‘70s, college sports could be a bit shady and were certainly populated by some characters. Throughout it all, though, Davis remains very impartial and very much shows the reader the machinations and emotions of each school’s front office and locker room denizens, rather than telling about them.
It might be best to say that "When March Went Mad" doesn’t shove anything down your throat. Davis presents all kinds of excellent information in clean fashion and doesn’t try to force poetic prose as some sportswriters do. Not that that doesn’t have its place, but here, the focus is on the two individuals and the time period they represent.
By the time the reader reaches the detailing of the ’79 final itself, it doesn’t really matter that Johnson’s Spartans led Bird’s Sycamores throughout and won by a comfortable 11-point margin. You’ve learned that any sports fan should simply be grateful that these two came around when they did, and that the U.S. recognized that basketball could indeed be a national pastime on the level of baseball.
And you’ve come to respect not only Magic and Larry, but plenty of the people who surrounded them and came after them.
March didn’t really go mad; the country came to its senses and started following the greatest sport there is.
2 comments:
I'm glad I chose to leer mas.
I appreciated your recognition of your rabid bias, John, but your review was so contagiously enthusiastic that it was probably unnecessary. I paid attention to the Larry-Magic story this year and I found it pretty inspiring myself. Your summary of the book gave me some more context for the story and made me want to read more about their high school days. Good job.
My only suggestion is to cut down on "very." There was a couple of sentences in which you used it back to back. You don't need it. Your review is very.
PS- did you notice Magic wore a baby blue tie to the national championship?
LEER MAS is dead, bitches! ahahaha.
Post a Comment