[books] when the game was ours

The 80s were freakin' awesome for so many reasons. One of those many reasons was the constant duel Larry Bird and Magic Johnson treated us to for much of the decade. "When The Game Was Ours" is an inside look at the rivalry from the player's own perspective - with commentary from Boston Globe writer Jackie Mackmullan, who covered the Celtics during the 80s. One of my favorite thing about sports is the "story within a story" narratives that play out - things that you would have never heard of otherwise. Take the night of June 12, 1984 for example. After winning Game 7 of the NBA Finals against Magic's Lakers, Celtics Larry Bird and Quinn Buckner are on a team van, on their way from the Boston Garden to a college campus just outside of the city where their cars were parked. The plan was to pick up their cars and drive back into the city to party it up with the rest of the Celtics players. There's so much traffic on the way out that Bird & Buckner decide to hop out of the van, flag down a random car heading inbound on Storrow Drive and jump in for a lift back into the city. Imagine this scene: two six-footers crammed into an unsuspecting (and probably stunned) Celtic fan's car, getting a ride into the city just hours after winning the NBA Finals. This sort of stuff only happened in the 80s.