“Larry Bird Was Just Slicin and Dicin Him!”: Magic Johnson Describes Watching The Celtics Legend Play For the First Time

Magic Johnson reveals that his first experience of watching Larry Bird and playing him changed his opinion about the Celtics legend totally.

NBA basketball in the late 70s and 80s was a far cry from the commercial juggernaut that it is today. Rarely were games ever broadcast on national television. And when they were, CBS would often tape delay those broadcasts in order to run other sports – mainly college football.

College basketball was, in fact, a bigger draw for basketball fans than the NBA or the erstwhile ABA. Even Michael Jordan – who grew up in rural North Carolina – didn’t watch the NBA till he made the pros.

However, the tide started to turn for the NBA’s popularity beacon from the 1979 season. This was the first season that the league introduced a 3-point line. It was also the rookie season for Pantheon legends like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.

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Larry Bird had been drafted with the 6th overall pick by the Celtics in 1978 as a junior-eligible. Magic Johnson, meanwhile, was selected by the Lakers with the #1 overall pick in the 1979 NBA Draft.

Both of them took the league by storm, setting all kinds of records and putting sportswriters on notice.

Magic Johnson describes his first time watching Larry Bird play

Magic Johnson and Larry Bird played each other competitively for the first time in the most-watched college basketball game of all time – the 1979 NCAA Tournament Final between the Indiana Hoosiers and the Michigan State Spartans.

But before that, they also played together in an exhibition college game of sorts. Speaking to Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on the All the Smoke podcast recently, Magic narrated the tale:

“When I first met him I said ‘Alright, I’m gonna see this dude, this white cat can really go like he said.’ It’s respect, this ain’t nothing, yeah. So I said let me see what he can do.”

“That boy, he could play, man! He turned it out. We played on a team in college in a tournament together, this is the first time I ever sat on the bench. He and I are on the bench. We were like the guys in front of us weren’t better than us.”

“But the Kentucky head coach was coaching the team, so he started 3 guys from Kentucky. But when we got in the game, we turned it out. I saw this guy eat Jack Gibbons up, he was Player of the Year that year. And Larry Bird was just slicin’ and dicin’ him.”

“And I said ‘Ooh!’ And I called home, and I said ‘It’s true about this boy.’ I called everybody and said ‘This dude can play!’ And so that was my first time seeing him.”

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