I finally saw the HBO documentary Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals last night. Like most documentaries… when it sticks to the subject — Magic and Bird — it is riveting. I also saw more fundamentally sound basketball in 5 minutes of highlights than one would see in 5 games of today’s NBA game. When it seeks to give things context, however, it comes off the track a bit. Now, I know and appreciate that race played a role in their rivalry — especially when Isiah Thomas says that Bird wouldn’t be seen as great if he was a Black guy. To Bird and Magic’s everlasting credit — they avoided all talk of that except for Bird saying it didn’t matter (I don’t know what ended up on the cutting room floor). Race mattered to everyone else — and by everyone else I mean the entertainers and the sportswriters — and the idiots on the fringes who have to express racial hatred. Who knew that the 1980s were a return to Jim Crow due to “conservative policies”? I thought seeing tapes of all those millionaire Blacks was odd. Every other Black person was standing in line to get into the Colored Pool I guess.
Anyway, I didn’t let a 2 minute punch — I’d say “sucker punch”, but I knew it was coming when I heard the film was being made so I sucked it up and enjoyed the other 98%. Blaming Liberals for injecting race is becoming like blaming my 80 year old grandmother (RIP) for farting at inappropriate moments. You just expect it, hold your breath for a moment and the stench usually passes. As I said… all you get from Magic and Larry is basketball, hatred, rivalry, friendship, and compelling portraits of each.
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What and ever with the race crap (and were the Lakers practicing reverse racism by only having two prominent honkeys, Kupchak and Rambis???). Greatest era ever for basketball in the 80s, beyond Larry and Magic, too, but mainly because those two stepped up everybody’s games (even the Cavs). All the athleticism of the Kobes, LeBrons and Durants isn’t gonna change that either.
Blaming Liberals for injecting race …
I’m old enough to have grown up around people (neighbors, relatives, coworkers, etc.) whose idea of being polite was to call certain folks “colored”, even though on occasion other terms would be used. At some point, you filter out their bigotry. It’s part of them, it really is innocent, as they’re trying hard to change, or at least suppress it, but they never truly can. It’s the way they grew up and what they did and said for decades.
So what’s the Left’s excuse? It’s like when I see the kiddies at the Community College trolley stop stubbing out cigarettes before getting on. After half a century of successful anti-tobacco and anti-racism campaigns, they both know exactly what they are doing, and should be given no sympathy when it all catches up to them…
Not much of an expert on hoops, but if Bird was a star based mostly on his race, I’d guess there were plenty of much better black guys the Celts could’ve gotten by trading Larry.
Oddly enough, they never did.
Complete horse-pucky. Larry Bird was one of the best of his era, arguably the best. If you absolutely, positively had to have a basket, there is no one else, except for Magic, who you’d rather have with the ball. There are some guys; Joe Montana, Wayne Gretzky… who are winners. There may be guys with more skills (although all 3 had plenty of that too), but scoring the winning shot in a close game is a lot different than making a dunk in the NBA all star competition. Walter Payton was never the fastest guy in the NFL, not even in the top 50, but if you absolutely, positively had to have one yard there is no one you’d rather have carry the ball. Larry Bird was amazing in the clutch and like Gretzky and Magic, he had a phenomenal sense of the court. He knew where all the other nine players would be before they did.
Huge Larry Bird fan. Always have been. I was also a Celtics fan. The Bucks sucked and couldn’t stand the Laker’s under any circumstances. Something so fantastic and historical about the Celtics, like the Yankees, Cowboys and Packers. The NBA is the NBA because of the Celtics. And Bird was the best of them all. I know Michael Jordan fans will be angry I said that but for me NBA basketball will always be Larry Bird and the Celtics.
Don’t forget Kevin and Chief and DJ and “Cornbread,” Steph.
P.S. Paul Mokeski = best white boy NBA name ever!
you Madame are rasscist!
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I could never watch basketball again after that era. After that the game became a Nike commercial. What was also great about the Celtic’s games was listening to Johnny Most commentating. He was the best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu8Da3pe9h0
Matt… in the race hubbub about Boston being racist (natch) the film-makers (via interview) referenced Boston’s busing crisis from the 1970s. That of course was replicated in many cities across the U.S. in the 1970s as the implementation of Brown v. Bd. of Ed. proceeded with “all deliberate speed”. The ironic/funny thing is they explicitly blamed 1980s “conservative policies”, yet forced busing was a liberal policy from the 1960s rammed down the throats of Blacks and Whites and greatly exacerbated racial tensions in large cities. They unconsciously identified the right cause, but of course can’t bring themselves to label the truth “liberal”.
You mean this thing went off on a tangent about the busing crisis? Nothing like legislation from the bench. That was the work of a MA federal judge named Garrity, who must have been a democrat because LBJ got him his seat. I’ll bet they referenced the black guy that was attacked at a Boston City Hall during a busing protest. Did they connect the evil dots from the Irishness of the Celtics to the Boston Irish to the Southie racists? Sounds more like a documentary on Negro League baseball.
It was mostly a sentence about the busing crisis giving rise or exacerbating racial tensions going into the 1980s.
They also leave out Boston as one of the racist big-cities in America and also one of the most liberal.
John… it is always interesting to me that where liberal big-government Democrats rule… racism flourishes.
Boston hasn’t been its racist self in a long time. It’s stuck with that stereotype though. Even Southie and the North End are no longer Irish and Italian havens where racism used to thrive. If you go to these places today you’ll see they were infiltrated by a melting pot of people. One reason is that the apartments that have been in those places since the turn of the 19th century are tiny (my grandfather lived in one) and the mentality of a whole family (or families) living in one of those places no longer exists. It was more affordable to move to the suburbs at one point and have more room. Those apartments attracted single people and couples from all walks of life eventually, who didn’t mind the small living space. Southie has more spacious apartments but it became real trendy to move there in the 80s and 90s and young people flocked there, diluting the Irish racist pool.
A dirty secret about racism:
The worst pockets in big cities are almost always areas with a predominant, 1st generation immigrant population. European immigrants are often very racist, and they bring that nonsense with them to the States. Latinos have the same issue. Mexicans hate Columbians. Puerto Ricans hate Mexicans. They all hate Cubans… Liberals never, ever talk about that, but the immigrants they claim to love are not the noble unwashed they imagine.
They all hate Mexicans…. if you want to get in a fight… call a non-Mexican Hispanic a Mexican. I’ve only seen the phenomenon. Very rasscist places when you cross our borders out of the U.S. We have it very good here.
Same with Asians. Call someone from Japan “Chinese.” Call a Korean “Fillipino.” Asian countries are full of racism. I doubt most folks in the West know of the brutal genocide done by the Japanese in the last century.
…and within Mexico. I’ve worked there, and the Spanish Mexicans are often very racist to the Mayan, Incan and Aztec Mexicans.