The game that saved basketball

Strange how the pivotal moments sneak up on you. Sometimes it's not until 10, 20 years down the road, you realize what they mean. Like graduation day. You're 18 and saying, "Yes! I'm outta here!" You think you understand, but you don't.

Later, you find yourself wishing you could go back.

Here it is, 30 years today since Salt Lake hosted the NCAA championship game. Those who were at that Final Four knew it was special, but only in a sense. The actual game was no Rembrandt. Yet some call the Indiana State-Michigan State championship pairing the greatest of all time. It remains TV history's highest-rated college basketball game.

I had been at the Deseret News just over a year, when I was assigned along with Bill Ewer, Linda Hamilton, Ray Grass, Lee Benson and Doug Robinson to cover the 1979 Final Four.

We were kids, all of us still in our 20s or 30s.

I remember thinking, yeah, this would be cool, but not an all-time moment. I had my whole career ahead. I'd see a lot of stuff like that. And I did: other Final Fours, Super Bowls, NBA Finals, Olympics, major bowl games, championship fights.

Still, little did I know I was watching the game that saved the game.

Nor did I realize I'd learn a lesson I'd never forget.

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I wondered, last week, if anyone else was trying to put that championship game into perspective. So I called Jud Heathcote, who coached Magic Johnson's Michigan State squad past Larry Bird's Indiana State team, 75-64.

He lives in Spokane now, and said even he didn't calculate the enormity of the game. I asked whether he agrees with those who say it put the Final Four on the map.

"It did," he said. "But I don't think we realized it then, except that it was the first time the media really descended on the Final Four. … I think it was the luster of Magic playing Bird and a little school versus a big school. So we didn't realize then that it was going to be as big as it has been, because I think Bird and Magic saved pro basketball."

They didn't hurt the college game, either.

The NBA was begging for attendance and short on stars. Along came the perfect players to change that.

The game in Salt Lake had all the dramatic elements, one unknown team, one from a big conference. MSU would go on to four other Final Fours and win one other title. Indiana State has only been in the NCAA Tournament twice since 1979, and won only one game.

But what made it work was the jarring difference in personalities. Bird was standoffish and unsmiling. Magic did nothing but smile and talk. Bird went virtually the whole season not speaking to the media, thanks to a nickname a writer had hung on him: The Hick from French Lick.