When the game was ours book review

This book brought me back to memories of my youth. The journey starts with the tandem of Bird and Johnson telling the stories of their childhoods in French Lick and East Lansing. You learn about their high school playing days and how they were courted by the big time college basketball programs. Bird would choose the powerhouse of Indiana coached by the infamous Bobby Knight and Magic stayed with his hometown school of Michigan State.

Bird was very close to cutting his basketball career short. Magic won a championship with the Lakers in Bird had to win one himself which he did in Magic and Bird would meet again in the Finals in Larry was there for Magic when he was diagnosed with HIV in November 7, , which generated a league wide scare. You will also read about the strain of the friendship between Magic and Isiah Thomas.

Magic and Bird forged their friendship on a Converse commercial shoot back in Undoubtedly, this particular recollection will be the most memorable for you, even if you lived through the early s yourself and recall the events personally. This stirring autobiography dovetails with two chapters that highlight a sunset period for the rivalry, as both Bird and Johnson transitioned into their post-NBA lives.

Bird, though, receives a slightly larger focus due to the planned nature of his retirement compared to Johnson, who was forced into retirement due to the aforementioned HIV diagnosis.

Johnson, through MacMullen, relates how downtrodden he felt when some of his peers turned against him publicly. You will find a spot of hope towards the conclusion, though, both for Johnson personally and for his mutual rivalry-turned-friendship with Larry Bird.

First, in , Johnson returned to the court for one final season with the LA Lakers. Though his team lost in the first round of the playoffs, this small consolatory action shows simply how resilient Johnson was, and still is, as a person.

As for the rivalry, MacMullen wraps it up with a poetic bow. Late in , Johnson and Bird come back together after not seeing each other for three years. That being said, this moment was different because Johnson, in recognizing the friendship that the two shared, had asked Bird to do him the honor of introducing him for the induction. Here again, you get an undeniable taste of just how personal the recollections in this book are. This final chapter is rife with emotion-laden quotes from the pair, each of which speaks volumes about two of the greatest players of an era.

As even a cursory read through When the Game Was Ours will show you, the relationship between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson was about far more than athletic competition. When the Game Was Ours truly gets to the heart of Bird and Johnson like no other biography ever has before, making it a great pick for folks who love basketball or who simply appreciate the ways in which two rivals can connect.

When a rival challenges your throne, you should embrace that, because a little bit of competition can help you stand out and earn your place in this world. Read more. NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia.

We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense.

Rules often contradict each other. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project. In her book, The Year of Magical Thinking , the much-decorated journalist laid bare her emotions following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

The same year that book was published, she also lost her adopted daughter, Quintana Roo, after a long hospitalization. Like Magical Thinking , this book is constructed out of close studies of particular memories and bits of medical lingo.