Barstool Review: “Magic and Bird: A Courtship of Rivals”

I admit to being biased on the subject, but I’d have to rank the whole Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson rivalry as one of the Top 5 most compelling sports stories of all time.  And I’m convinced that even if I had no stake in the matter… if I was just some neutral fan from New York or Houston or wherever… I’d feel the same way.  It’s a cliche’ to say it (not that that ever stood in my way before) but you couldn’t make this stuff up.   A shy, blue collar hayseed with a funny name from a podunk Indiana town (that also has a funny name) and a flashy, exuberant, charismatic star with one of the all time great nicknames meet in the NCAA Finals.  Then the former goes to Boston, the latter to LA and together they revolutionize basketball.  To steal a line from Sideshow Bob, it’s a story so formulaic it could’ve spewed from the Powerbook of the laziest Hollywood hack.

So even though the story has been told a quintillion times before, it was worth having HBO take a stab at it this weekend with “Magic and Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.”  Because without a doubt, whether they’re doing Ted Williams or the Miracle on Ice or Curse of the Bambino starring the incomparable Jerry Thornton, HBO does these sports documentaries better than anyone.  And there’s so much to the Bird vs. Magic saga that it’s pretty much low-hanging fruit for them.

If I wanted to nitpick, I could point out that there’s not a lot here that you probably don’t already know.  (Spoiler alerts!) The fact that Bird & Magic played together in an invitational tournament in college was news to me.  (As was the incredible footage of them dishing the ball back and forth.)  I knew Mr. Bird killed himself but had never heard he was post-traumatic from his time in Korea.  I also learned that Rick Robey still looks like he’s 30 years old.  And that’s about it.  Other than learning that Magic was desperate to be Bird’s friend through the early part of their careers but Bird wanted no part of it.  Whether that was because of  Bird’s old school competitiveness or just him being a dick is a matter of perspective, I guess.

What’s not surprising is how much they play up the race angle, in spite of the fact that Bird and Magic never looked at things that way.  But HBO conformed to FCC guidelines that state you can never do a show about Boston without saying what a bunch of racist jerkoffs we all are.  (And as anyone who grew up in the busing days will tell you, the ones who deliver those lectures are always the same ones who send their kids to schools five minutes from their house.)  What should be surprising to no one is the best interviewee in the entire show is Cedric Maxwell who talks about the Bird-as-a-white-superstar angle with his typical candor and honesty.  But for all the story lines that surrounded that era, “Magic & Bird” is really only about the rivalry between the two guys and how they viewed it.  It’s like a Cold War documentary that only focuses on what Reagan and Gorbachev thought of each other.  The major difference being that while the stakes in the Cold War were slightly higher, the Bird- Magic rivalry was way more interesting.