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The Game That Transformed Basketball
Times Books
March 2009
On Sale: March 3, 2009
336 pages ISBN: 0805088105 EAN: 9780805088106 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Sports
The dramatic story of how two legendary players burst on
the scene in an NCAA championship that gave birth to modern
basketball Thirty years ago, college basketball was not the sport we
know today. Few games were televised nationally and the
NCAA tournament had just expanded from thirty-two to forty
teams. Into this world came two exceptional players:
Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird. Though they played
each other only once, in the 1979 NCAA finals, that meeting
launched an epic rivalry, transformed the NCAA tournament
into the multibillion-dollar event it is today, and laid
the groundwork for the resurgence of the NBA. In When March Went Mad, Seth Davis recounts the dramatic
story of the season leading up to that game, as Johnson’s
Michigan State Spartans and Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores
overcame long odds and great doubts that their unheralded
teams could compete at the highest level. Davis also tells
the stories of their remarkable coaches, Jud Heathcote and
Bill Hodges—who were new to their schools but who set their
own paths to build great teams—and he shows how tensions
over race and class heightened the drama of the
competition. When Magic and Bird squared off in Salt Lake
City on March 26, 1979, the world took notice—to this day
it remains the most watched basketball game in the history
of television—and the sport we now know was born.
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