Review: Magic (2023)

By Roland Lazenby

One of the unforeseen aspects of the rise of computers in the publishing industries is that some books are getting bigger.

Because they can be. 

A friend of mine in the industry once told me that it became much easier to write a mammoth publication when paragraphs could be bounced around the page like basketballs on the court. Since it's easier to put words in than take them out, it's only natural to see books on sale that are a heavy lift when carrying them out of the bookstore or when toted to your front door by the guy from Amazon.

That brings us to Roland Lazenby's book, "Magic."

This checks in at an impressive 832 pages. My edition was on Kindle, so no muscles were pulled in reading this book for a review. To be fair, there are some notes and a bibliography at the end, so the actual text probably under 800 pages. We're used to that when Robert Caro is writing about Lyndon Johnson, but basketball players usually don't get this sort of treatment. 

Still, the subject of this book is Earvin "Magic" Johnson, and he's in rare air. Magic certainly ranks as one of the best basketball players in history - a unicorn as a 6-foot-9 point guard who could make opponents' victories disappear. Even better, his absolute joy in playing and his flamboyant style made him one of the few players in history that just everyone loved to watch. They didn't call the Lakers' style in the 1980s "Showtime!" for nothing.

Lazenby goes well back into the past in opening the story of Johnson's life, climbing the roots of the family tree back to the Old South. The Johnsons eventually landed in Lansing, Michigan. By the time Earvin was a couple of years into high school, everyone knew he could be something special - although it was difficult to know how special. What's more, Johnson's infectious personality was on display right from the start. As Lazenby writes about, Earvin played a role in helping schools get through some difficult times when it came to integration. Johnson even made some speeches to his classmates along the way.

The man who picked up the nickname of "Magic" along the way in high school opted to stay close to home in college by going to Michigan State. He played in one of the most famous basketball games in history in 1979, the NCAA final against Larry Bird and Indiana State. It was the start of a relationship hat would last a lifetime in various forms. 

You probably know what happened from there. Johnson joined the Los Angeles Lakers, and helped them win an NBA title in 1980. The championships popped up regularly through the 1980, featuring some epic clashes with Bird's Celtics that did wonders for the NBA's image. But then Johnson tested positive for HIV, essentially and eventually cutting his career short. Magic moved into the business world, and perhaps surprisingly showed that he was a quick learner there too. Johnson's wealth is well into nine figures these days.

Lazenby certainly has the time and space to explore just about everything at length, and no one can dispute that the major moments of Johnson's life are fully covered. There are even quite a few "I didn't know that" moments that pop up along the way, and not all of them are flattering. Still, the author captures the player and his era quite nicely. That's not unexpected, since he's written a number of basketball books over the years, many of them on the Lakers in particular. 

The last word about "Magic" comes down to a simple question. If you are intently interested in the life of this Hall of Fame, then you're sure to go through this book in its entirety with enthusiasm. As for the rest of us, we probably could have lost a couple of hundred pages without much difficulty - but it's still worth the read.

Four stars

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Review: Finished Business (2021)

By Ray Didinger

Ray Didinger had been following the Philadelphia Eagles for essentially his entire life. It started with parents who had the idea that there was nothing better on a summer afternoon than to go watch the team work out under a hot sun in training camp.

From there it was on to college, where he decided to become a sports journalist. Didinger quickly rose up the ladder from one job and newspaper to the next, eventually becoming one of the youngest beat writers in the NFL and then moved on to become a columnist. Eventually he moved into other mediums, such as working for NFL Films and in radio and television. 

Along the way, eventually he became one of "those guys" that became the most respected opinion on local sports in the area. Every city has a couple. They seem to tap in to what the community is thinking, simply because they are so familiar with how the population thinks. 

When Philadelphia won its first Super Bowl in 2018, Didinger did a little celebrating too - famously with a big hug with his son on camera. And he thought to himself that an NFL championship was just the bow he needed to tie his life in sports together in the form of an autobiography of sorts.

That book is called "Finished Business," and it holds up very nicely as a readable look back at an interesting career. 

One of the good parts about books like this centers on the basic job of reporters. That is to say, they rely on the kindness of strangers for information. Yes, Didinger's life story is covered here. But it's basically a clothesline to hang stories about famous athletes and personalities. Since Philadelphia is a big town, its stars are well known nationally.

Therefore, there's information about a variety of athletes from an upclose viewpoint. Bobby Clarke. Mike Schmidt, Julius Erving. Dick Vermeil. Some other characters come up who might be a little less familiar to national readers, like Eagles' owner Leonard Tose and wrestler Sergeant Slaughter. 

The best chapter in the book, though, might have been the next-to-last one, though. It's the story of Didinger's relationship with Hall of Fame wide receiver Tommy McDonald. Ray first met him as a seventh grader at training camp as he walked back to the locker room after practice with him. It became a ritual that took place over the course of six years. Much later, the two were reunited in a different way - even if Didinger didn't immediately reveal the old-time connection to McDonald. Ray played a role in Tommy's induction in Canton, and they remained close until he died. Didinger even wrote a play about their relationship; it sounds like it would be worth seeing, even outside of Philadelphia.

There are a few excerpts from his writing here, enough to give you an idea of his style. But there's a book that's a collection of his work from 2007 that is available elsewhere. This is a more personal story, and the reviews of it on Amazon.com are downright rapturous.

Admittedly, I'm an easy target for stories from sportswriters, especially the veterans. But "Finished Business" goes down very smoothly - as you'd expect. Let's put it this way: You don't have to be from Philadelphia to enjoy it. 

Four stars

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Review: The Greatest Comeback (2022)

By John U. Bacon

Do you like oral histories?

Hockey fans who pass that test certainly will like "The Greatest Comeback," even if the structure of the book doesn't completely fit the traditional description of that technique. 

It's a look back at the famous 1972 hockey series between Canada and the Soviet Union. For those of you who weren't paying attention back then, there's never been anything quite like this in sports. Canadians essentially invented the sport and developed it and its world dominance hadn't been questioned for decades. But after World War II, the Soviets came along with a completely new way of playing the game. It featuring puck possession, speed and conditioning. They eventually began to dominate international competition, although the Canadians usually were excluded from such matches as the Olympics because of their professional status. (Yes, we know the Soviet team was paid to play hockey by the government, but it was all part of the gamesmanship going on.)

With nothing else left to prove, the Soviets challenged the Canadians hockey to a series of games Team Canada accepted the offer, figuring in many cases that they could simply cruise to an easy victory and maintain its reputation as the world's ultimate hockey power. Overconfidence is never becoming in sports, and it can come back to bite you. Ask the Soviet hockey team of 1980, which figured it would have no trouble with a bunch of college kids from the United States at the Olympics in Lake Placid. Some on this side of the pond, including general manager Punch Imlach of the Buffalo Sabres, in 1972 figured Canada would win all eight games easily.

But it didn't work out that way. Team Canada was an all-star squad at the start without much of a sense of team. The players had enjoyed the summer off and weren't in top shape. And the administrators had made some decisions about such factors as scheduling and officials that didn't help. It's tough to describe the reaction in Canada to Game One of the series - a stunning 7-3 loss in Montreal. It only took a dozen minutes in that game for Paul Henderson of Team Canada to note, it was going to be a loooooong series.

But as we know now, Team Canada eventually got its act together. It started thinking like a team, and playing like one too. Fitness came around, and the coaches made adjustments in reacting to the Soviet's approach. The result was out of a storybook - three straight wins in Moscow to capture the series, 4-3-1. Was it the Greatest Comeback Ever? Under the circumstances, you could make a good case for it. Meanwhile, there are open fields in Canada because of all of the trees that needed to be chopped down in order to print all of the books printed on this matchup. 

What was it like for Team Canada to go on that ride? Answering that question was Bacon's biggest task. He managed to talk at great length to just about everyone connected with the squad, as well as a few others. Even the players' wives chipped in with some valuable memories. Bacon also had books by Harry Sinden and Ken Dryden that were written as the series progressed, and he talked some others such as Wayne Gretzky - who was watching as a youngster back in Ontario. It's all edited together nicely with a ton of quotes along the way, supplying the same effect as an oral history.

It's that effort that makes this book a winner. We read about what all of the players were thinking along the way, on and off the ice. As an example, the NHL players rarely even spoke to opposing players in that era - even at All-Star Games. That created some walls that had to be broken down. By the end of the series, though, they realized that they were forever linked as participants in what was voted as one of the most significant events in Canadian history. The Soviets are kept at a distance here, and that really doesn't hurt the story much. There are books out there that cover that angle if you are interested.

There are all sorts of details of the series here that hadn't come up elsewhere. For example, four players left the team about halfway through as something of a protest about a lack of playing time. Two of them were Sabres - Gil Perreault and Rick Martin. I can't say I've read much about that particular aspect of the series, but the departure is covered quite thoroughly here. The reaction of the rest of the team, by the way, seems like it could be summed up with "good riddance." Bacon even comes up with the answer to a great Buffalo trivia question - what were Perreault and Martin's uniform numbers for the series? (It's 33 and 36 respectively.)

Bacon hasn't received enough acclaim for his work over the years. That's probably because he has written several books about the University of Michigan. That's a rather limited audience, particularly in the state of Ohio. But I've read a few of his books, and they've all been extremely well done. His name on the cover means you'll get something good. 

Meanwhile, the effects of that 1972 series linger to this day. The game we see today on the ice is a hybrid of the two styles that clashed back then. The skill level and pace of the game has improved drastically as a result. "The Greatest Comeback" is a full and readable account of how the road taken by the sport began. Even more than 50 years later, it's more than worth your time.

Five stars

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