Death at the Wing Episode 1: The Invisible Revolution ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ADAM McKAY (host): When I was a kid in the 70s, I lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, We didn't have video games, or big Marvel movies. So if you wanted to idolize someone, you pretty much had two choices. You had the Fonz, or you had Carl Yastrzemski, the left fielder for the Red Sox. Then I moved outside Philadelphia, and it was kind of the same thing -- only it was the band Kiss or Mike Schmidt. But then, towards the end of the 70s, basketball burst onto the scene, and just instantly blew our minds. We had Dr J. playing for the Sixers, and then in the blink of an eye, there was Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. This felt like it was more than just a new sport, but a whole new culture. The short shorts, the Afros, the flashy uniforms, the cheesy graphics on TV… Suddenly all we could do was watch basketball. And a lot of other things were changing as well. The country just felt different. People were talking about sports cars and making money, and there was this kind of flag-waving American vibe going on. Movies like Top Gun, Red Dawn and Rambo. My friends and I made fun of this stuff. And a lot of the music was really terrible. The clothes were ugly. But it all felt new and big. And in the middle of it, for me and my friends, it was all about the NBA. ARCHIVAL TAPE 1 ANNOUNCER: Michael in a drive, across the lane, turnaround shot, got it! Sixty-three for Jordan! I remember watching Michael Jordan drop 63 on the Celtics in the playoffs. I'll never forget Dr. J in the 1980 championship series, that up and under move. And I swear to God when we saw it, it looked like he was walking on the air. ARCHIVAL TAPE ANNOUNCER: Unbelievable! Julius Erving! He was hanging underneath, and he was trapped... My friends and I would watch this stuff over and over. But I also remember very vividly the heartbreak of hearing how Len Bias had died of a cocaine overdose right after being drafted by the Celtics. ARCHIVAL TAPE TV REPORTER: Once again, 22 year old Len Bias, star forward from the University of Maryland basketball team, is now dead. I remember hearing how Benji Wilson out of Chicago had been tragically gunned down… ARCHIVAL TAPE NEWS ANCHOR: Instead, they shot him. And today Ben Wilson died. Many in Chicago are grieving. And being shocked that Dražen Petrović, who had seemingly unlimited range, Steph Curry before Steph Curry, had died in his prime. ARCHIVAL TAPE TV REPORTER: Petrovic was killed late yesterday when his car slammed into a truck near Munich, Germany, in heavy rain. Dražen Petrović was 28. There are many more: Terry Furlow, Ricky Berry, Hank Gathers, Bobby Phils and on and on. All these tragic deaths. So why did all these rising talents die in that same time period? 2 I realized after we did some digging that there really wasn't one smoking gun. We all love stories with evidence and one clear perpetrator. Look at the 300 different true crime podcasts out there. But the truth is our lives aren’t usually determined by one other person or a conspiracy or some magical singular event. We’re usually pushed, shaped and sometimes even crushed by big forces, collisions, accidents and changes. And to some degree that’s what happened to the NBA in the 80’s and 90’s. For better and, sometimes, for worse. ARCHIVAL TAPE RONALD REAGAN: I think you all know that I’ve always felt that, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’ The 80s saw massive changes in politics, media, and even in the story of how Americans see themselves. This helped create a new kind of superstar in the NBA, even as the same communities these stars came from were being left behind by a nation becoming more and more obsessed with extreme wealth. It’s a decade that leads very directly to where we are right now in America. Both for our country and the NBA. It was the 1980’s. I actually lived through it, and it sucked. Except for the basketball. I'm Adam McKay, and this is a new series from Hyperobject Industries and Three Uncanny Four. This is Death at the Wing. Each episode, we’ll look at one player, one tragedy, and the big forces at play behind that tragedy. Tonight's episode: We set the stage for how basketball started to change, and America did too. The NBA, the ABA, television and Reagan. 3 This is episode one: the Invisible Revolution. ARCHIVAL TAPE *montage* “Look how high above him he is!” “But yesterday he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” “Watch him just taking his time!” “Collapsed early this morning, here in this dormitory.” “Way back to rock the baby to sleep, and a slam dunk!” ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ARCHIVAL TAPE 1950s PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: “At New York’s Madison Square Garden, a City College quintet faces five fast and fancy feet from the University of Oregon. It’s the opening contest of an intersectional doubleheader.” To understand just how much the NBA changed in the 80s, it helps to think about what pro basketball USED to be. And if you need someone to walk through the changes of basketball over the last century, it’s hard to beat the logo. JERRY WEST: Hello everyone. I'm Jerry West. Um, my life has led me from West Virginia to Los Angeles because of, uh, a talent that I had. Jerry West’s silhouette mid-dribble has lived as the logo of the league for the last 50 years… Seriously, the little basketball-dribbling guy who’s the logo of the NBA? That’s Jerry West. Jerry West: ...from there I coached the Lakers for three years and was involved with them for, Oh my goodness, seemed like a lifetime. Jerry West is in his 80s now and for most of those years, he’s been at the center of basketball. He grew up in Cheylan, West Virginia, population 778. And in the 50s, even as he was becoming a local legend, basketball was still just a regional sport. 4 JERRY WEST: Well, you know, at that time, Adam, the recruiting process, if you played in the East, very few people West of the Mississippi would, would bother to recruit you. Basketball wasn't like baseball, or football, or frankly, ice hockey. West eventually made it through college and into the NBA, in the era of the big man. Jerry West was one of the few superstars who was under 6’10”. ARCHIVAL TAPE 1950s PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: Basketball, a game of giants… JERRY WEST: George Mikan was the first big guy. ARCHIVAL TAPE 1950s PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: And there’s No. 99, George Mikan, one of the greatest. He set most of the game’s scoring records… JERRY WEST: Just that presence alone changed the way the game was played at that point in time. George Mikan. He was the league’s first superstar. 6’10”, 250 pounds, with big thick round glasses like Harry Potter. He dropped lumbering hook shot after lumbering hook shot. It made sense, right? If you're taller, you're closer to the rim. Get the ball to that guy. But honestly? It wasn’t the most exciting style of basketball to watch. ARCHIVAL TAPE GEORGE MIKAN: A real highlight in my estimation is a nice chest pass, or a bounce pass… Kids in driveways don’t dream of standing a foot away from the hoop and laying it in over people. Except for me. I‘m 6’5, pretty tall. Pretty much my only glory moments in basketball involve me lumbering to the hoop and laying it in over short people. But fans don’t spend hundreds of dollars to watch tall guys move like chess pieces on a basketball court. 5 JERRY WEST: When I first came to Los Angeles, the Dodgers were selling out the Coliseum, and the Rams were selling a hundred thousand seats every game. The Lakers, we were lucky to get, you know, 4,000 people. And their salaries showed it. JERRY WEST: You couldn't survive on what we made. I think I was a second player in the draft and I think in first year I made $16,500 and I did not even know I was drafted until the next morning. JACKIE MACMULLAN: I'm old, but I'm not old enough to have been alive in the fifties, but Cous used to tell me, Bob Cousy told me that, you know, in the off season he was an auto-school driver. Here’s legendary sports writer Jackie McMullan. She’s one of the authors of ‘Basketball: A Love Story’ JACKIE MACMULLAN: And so that’s very different. ADAM McKAY (in tape): Wait, I’m sorry to interrupt you. Bob Cousy was a driving instructor? One of the greatest point guards ever... JACKIE MACMULLAN: Yeah. I think Tommy Heinsohn told me once he was a waiter, but he was bad at it cause he smoked and he kept going for a smoke break and the customers complained about the smoke on his breath. So he had to quit that job. JERRY WEST: You know, they called us professionals.