“When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball” by Seth Davis (Times Books,
By DAN MCGRATH
“When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball” by Seth Davis (Times Books, $26)
Sports Illustrated college basketball expert, studio analyst for CBS’ telecasts, Duke graduate ... Seth Davis totes a hefty portfolio as a hoops savant.
And yet ... The S.I. gig is pretty much a notes column, and on TV he is conditioned to talk in sound bites: Get in and out quickly, short attention span theater. Not to diminish the work, but it lacks a certain substance.
Maybe that’s why Davis was not the ideal choice to re-examine, 30 years later, the game that elevated college basketball in general and the NCAA tournament in particular into a center-stage attraction.
Davis, see, was 9 when Larry Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores and Magic Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans staged their epic title-game showdown at Salt Lake City in March 1979. The most meticulous research in the world can’t convey the feeling of what the college game was like in those pre- ESPN days of short tight shorts and no three-point line or shot clock.
Here’s a hint: Bird and Indiana State had been on national TV exactly once before the NCAA tournament got under way in 1979. The curiosity factor helped set a title-game ratings record. These days, Duke is usually on national TV five times before Thanksgiving.
The book endeavors to recap each team’s season leading up to the confrontation between two of the most decorated players of their era, who could not have been more unalike as people: Johnson, black, the smiling showman who courted the spotlight and reveled in it; Bird, white, country to his core, shy and suspicious to the point of hostile toward any and all outsiders.
That dichotomy is the story, but the book spends too much time on game recaps and post-game quotes that don’t add much .
Most who saw it believe the game — Michigan State won 75-64 — failed to live up to the hype, primarily because Bird had nothing left after lifting Indiana State past DePaul 76-74 in a Saturday semifinal. Michigan State had no such trouble with Penn (101-67), leaving Magic with the energy to frolic as a Bird impersonator in Sunday’s practice, the only player alive with the size and skills to mimic Larry Legend.
In the hands of a writer with a frame of reference for the times — Dave Kindred, say, or Curry Kirkpatrick or Malcolm Moran — this could be a great book. In Seth Davis’ hands it’s like an afternoon in the studio: informative, fairly smooth moving and no embarrassing glitches, but nothing memorable.