When the Game Was Ours Read Free Page B

Lee, Cazzie Russell, Rudy Tomjanovich, Phil Hubbard, and Rickey Green, all of whom would go on to enjoy successful NBA careers.
    While the Spartans produced their own crop of NBA alumni (Bob Brannum, Johnny Green, Al Ferrari, Ralph Simpson), the program experienced only moderate success. Their cachet paled in comparison to their Ann Arbor neighbors, and they were reminded of it regularly.
    "We were the stepsons," explained Heathcote. "We always told our players, every game counts just once on the schedule except for Michigan games—they counted one and a half."
    One of the few highlights in Michigan State history before Magic's arrival was the success of former coach Pete Newell, who guided the Spartans from 1950 to 1954, then migrated west to the University of California at Berkeley, where he won an NCAA championship in 1959.
    That same year, Michigan State posted a 19–4 record of its own, but that proved to be the program's high-water mark in the ensuing 18 seasons, when the team's overall record was a forgettable 204–233.
    But then, in the fall of 1977, along came Magic. At the time the enthusiasm level in MSU's home gymnasium, Jenison Field House, was, to put it politely, restrained. When word leaked that Johnson, a hometown hero who was born and raised in Lansing, had inked with State even after being heavily recruited by dozens of top programs across the country (including Michigan), every available season ticket package was snapped up within hours. That fall Earvin Johnson appeared alongside Gregory Kelser and team captain Bob Chapman on the cover of the team's press guide, the first MSU basketball freshman to be bestowed with that honor.

    There was no such fanfare when Larry "Joe" Bird unpacked his duffle bag and reported to class on the Indiana State campus in September 1975. Although there had been unconfirmed rumors of him dominating AAU tournaments and embarrassing accomplished college stars, Bird's circuitous route to Terre Haute—a brief and failed attempt to matriculate at Indiana University and a two week stay at Northwood Institute—left ISU fans either wary or ignorant of his talents.
    Not unlike Michigan State, Indiana State had grown accustomed to being a second-class sports program, dwarfed in its own region not just by Indiana University but also by Notre Dame and Purdue. The Sycamores toiled in the unheralded Missouri Valley Conference, which was dismissed as a junior varsity league when held up against the goliath Big Ten, of which Indiana and Purdue were members.
    Indiana State's first basketball team was fielded at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1946 the school was known as Indiana State Teachers College, and the administration hired an earnest young man by the name of John Wooden to coach basketball and baseball and serve as the school's athletic director. Wooden's basketball teams went 47–14 in two seasons and were invited to the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball tournament in 1947.
    Wooden refused the invitation because of the tournament's policy of not allowing African American athletes to participate. A member of Wooden's team, Clarence Walker, was black.
    In 1948 Wooden left what would be renamed Indiana State University to inject some life into a lackluster UCLA program. He proceeded to win ten national championships, was crowned "the Wizard of Westwood," and remains the standard by which all college coaches are measured. Indiana State, meanwhile, faded into relative obscurity.

    "I never saw anything wrong with Indiana State, but Indiana was
the
school when I was growing up," Bird said. "If you got recruited by IU, you had really made it."
    Both Bird and Magic qualified under those guidelines, since each appeared on Indiana coach Bob Knight's radar as high school seniors.
    Johnson still rates Knight's visit to his high school as one of the greatest thrills of his young life. Knight, who had just led Indiana to an undefeated season and a