When the Game Was War: A Journey Back to the NBA's Greatest Season | Rich Cohen

31:06So, you know, the other interesting thing is you have these great individual athletes like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, Larry Bird, but ultimately it's a team and you you go through this in the book like the dynamics and the bonding of the team are just as important for winning that championship as is you know whoever your greatest player is like you know there's plenty of examples of teams that have you know the greatest player in history where they can't win because there's no team around them i mean the lakers if they didn't have kareem abdul-zabar and magic johnson and uh byron sky and all the all these or bryan's i don't i forget all these names if they didn't have the team it wouldn't have worked for them yeah well a good example of that is jordan himself who took many i think i can't remember six or seven years before he finally won he's the best player in the league he won the mvp but the bulls would get eliminated in the usually as soon as they ran into the pistons in the playoffs and the the the criticism of jordan was he's not a plate a team player and they asked Larry Bird that his response was, yeah, well, he doesn't have a team.

32:17And when I was a kid, they called the Bulls Jordan and the Jordanaires. You know, the Jordanaires were Elvis's backup band. And basically, they had to build a team. What interested me was I was a history major in college. And when I would study the United States and how the United States became so heavily armed in my childhood, you couldn't really understand it if you didn't understand the Soviet Union in Russia. You know, it wasn't in a vacuum. They were responding to something. And when I tried to figure out why the Pistons played the way they did, which was the bad boy, very violent, very physical, and I didn't really get it.

32:51You go back and you look, they were built specifically to beat the Celtics because before they could get to the finals, they had to beat the Celtics. And the Celtics had the biggest front line, maybe in NBA history, size-wise. Larry Bird was the smallest one, Robert Parrish and Kevin McHale, three Hall of Famers. So they had to get me to beat the Celtics and the Celtics had to get big and mean to beat the 76ers. So that's sort of how basketball evolves. And for the, one of the great things about the Pistons was Isaiah Thomas. He was a great, great player. Who's kind of undervalued now because of his feud with Michael Jordan, the magic Johnson, but it was such a great player.

33:30He realized that he was the best player on the Piston and he could probably score 30 points a night, but he realized that if he scored 30 points a night, his team would not win. He had to sublimate his own talent, score less, and spread out the scoring. And the great thing about those Pistons was they were so balanced, they became impossible to stop. Not only their first team, they had a second team that was arguably better than their first team. On their second team, they had Dennis Rodman and John Sally and Vinnie Johnson, all all-stars, almost all Hall of Famers coming off the bench. So when they play a team like Larry Bird, the Celtics might beat the first team.

34:10But as soon as the Celtics sat down to rest, the second team came in and ran up the score. So then the coach had to send the first team back out and those guys were old and they just couldn't play that many minutes that the Celtics made them play. And that physical minutes. And when I was a kid, one of the sadder things I remember watching was Larry Bird at the end of his career would come out. He was still great, but he'd come out of the games that has to lie on the sideline because his back hurts so much his back was spasming and it was like if you had a back spasm that's just like excruciatingly painful and you'd see him lying on the sidelines waiting till the spasm died down and then coming back in scoring five or six points and going back and getting back down on the sideline it's like watching a combination between dr j and my uncle rouse that's what it seemed like you know i wonder if like you mentioned michael jordan was the best player in the league but they were he was having trouble or the Bulls were having trouble winning titles.

35:06This seems particularly true in the season you write about, 1987-88. You mentioned how the coach had all these plays, or Phil Jackson had somebody working for him, had all these plays for all the other guys, and eventually they would run out of steam, and then it was Michael Jordan for the rest of the game. Is this why they weren't really that much in contention in years like 87? Yeah, and also, again, true in all sports, which is the game in the regular season and the game in the playoffs. completely different, which is in the regular season, they're playing, you know, a team here, a team there, and they play their game, you know?

35:40But when they get to the playoffs, it's these long series, and they work out a strategy for just this team. And now you have to face a team that's figured out how to beat you. And in that case, Jordan and the Pistons did it. And the Pistons, it was Joe Dumars who did it. And they were very smart about it. So Jordan, they said, we're not going to stop Jordan from scoring. What they would do is let him score. in the first three and a half quarters then in the fourth quarter they'd put the screws on him and they'd also they would play they'd play make him play a lot of defense to try to tire him out right and then they put the screws on him in the third in the fourth quarter in the crunch time which meant they would foul him a lot and each guy had five fouls so they'd each take fouls they'd spread around the fouls they'd be draped all over them they had the jordan rolls or basically once he gets into the paint, which is the area, you know, right under the basket, they knock him, foul him hard, knock him down.

36:36And by the time they got to the end, Jordan was exhausted. He was beat up. And now he'd start looking for help. And he'd pass the guys like Will Purdue, who was on that team, or Sam Vincent, guys you haven't heard of, maybe, were on that team. And those guys hadn't really shot all games. So they were all cold. So basically, it was kind of a really brilliant strategy. And Jordan still scored a lot of points, but his average was like down 10 points against the Pistons. And that's what was so frustrating. And the coach then was Doug Collins, who'd been a superstar player, had a superstar player's mentality.

37:10And he was kind of with Jordan and Phil Jackson came in and he had the Isaiah Thomas mentality, which said, you've got to sublimate your own talent. Develop these other guys. That's the only way you're going to win. And he got Jordan to buy into it and they got the players. A lot of them are already there in the year I wrote about, but they were on the bench like john paxton who became the famous you know guards for the team and and pippen and rot and horace grant were both great players and they were rookies that year so the team was just about there but uh they hadn't quite figured out how to win but it was ultimately so satisfying as a bulls fan because the season would end with this basically beat down where the pistons would just beat the crap out of the bulls you go outside you'd cry it was so upsetting but every year the bulls got closer and closer and closer and when they finally beat the pistons the pistons collapsed they swept the pistons and then they went on and i think they beat the laker and lakers in five and um and it was just so satisfying that was the first year they won so 80 89 91 let's bring in 91 so um it was kind of like a dragon quest it was like we've with the Bulls as they slowly built this team and struggled.

38:30You know, it was like Lord of the Rings or something. I mean, it wasn't just basketball. It was like epic. It was an epic, epic thing. And that's another thing you don't get as much anymore because of free agency. And because all these guys know the guy across from me in the court is the guy I might be playing with this next year. So the idea is like Bird didn't want to be friends with anybody. And there's a famous story where Magic, who considered Bird his friend because they played together in high school, went to shake Bird's hand and Bird cut him, you know, just walked by him. Some players have to hate the other team, they think, to perform.

39:06They have to decide the other team is evil, unjust, and must be stopped and play with kind of a righteous anger. Magic wasn't like that, but Bird was and Rodman was and Isaiah was. But it's interesting, though, how when Magic johnson in 1991 had you know announced that he had aids larry bird was one of the first people to call him and larry bird was just like you know really sad about it well bird had softened because the famous story is that they did a commercial together a converse commercial where uh magic came out to bird's house in french luck indiana where he lived with his mom and they kind of became friends and then the thing is i wouldn't say bird didn't like magic but he saw him he felt that if they became friendly, then when it was time to stick the knife in, he wouldn't do it.

39:55He just didn't want to be friendly because he thought it took away an edge that he needed to perform. You know, and, but he realized that magic was a crucial part of his time and his career and they needed each other. So to me, it's like one of the reasons why this was the greatest season is because there were four great dynasties, each in different stages of rise and collapse. and they pushed each other and they tested each other over a series of seasons, really. So to me, it's like you don't really have Muhammad Ali if you don't have Joe Frazier, if you don't have Larry Holm. You know, I grew up when I was just out of college, Mike Tyson was this devastating boxer, but you felt like he never faced a great, great boxer.

40:38So you never really saw how great he was, you know? And I feel like Bird understood that Magic was his great rival and it was together. that rivalry that made them both great players, starting, you know, when they played against each other in the NCAA final the year before they went into the NBA and then continue to play against each other for their entire careers.

41:16how much of a basketball player's ultimate skill is talent versus work so like so let's say a michael jordan you know he he grew and then he had this unbelievable talent larry bird says i've ever seen anything like it, but we know he worked really hard. Is it true like Michael Jordan was the first person at the court, you know, working out and practicing and the last person to leave, you know, or guys like Magic Johnson, Larry Byrne, and so on? Here's what I realized as I've gotten older. The work is the talent. You know what I mean? Like, obviously, you need some physical talent, but sort of the ability to work and to play and to perform at that level intensity night after night is a talent you know and jordan and all these guys they had that talent to turn it on and to push themselves further than anybody ever pushed themselves i spoke to this guy who was like maybe the number one draft pick in the nhl or in the top 10 and he by tampa bay and his career nothing happened he played like 30 games and then he wanted to minor league hockey and now he's like giving skating lessons okay and i asked him what the hell i mean obviously he played against these guys in college or juniors or whatever what happened he said at the nhl you have to basically play your best game every single night he said i couldn't do it every night i could do it like once or twice a week you know but the ability to to go that hard that's why it's so hard to play so long and one of the things i found really interesting was i always think that there's like two considerations when somebody's playing a sport like this one is like the long term the career.

42:59Like what I'm doing right now is going to jeopardize my career. And the other is right now. Like I don't care about what happens to my career. All that exists is right now. And I'm going to do whatever I got to do right now. And in that era, a lot of those guys chose the right now over the longevity. Bird is an example. Maybe the great example is Kevin McHale, who's a forward for the Celtics who played an entire playoffs and most of a season on a broken foot. Meaning he was in excruciating pain every night he played and surely shortening his career. So did Isaiah. Isaiah, in the playoffs I write about, was knocked out cold twice and both times came back and delivered the decisive blow.

43:43It was almost like not that he could still play well after he got hurt. It's like he played better after he was hurt. because she would piss, you know? And I think that that is a talent, and it's, because all the time you hear about guys, oh, he would be great if he worked harder, or if he tried, you know, da-da-da, but, like, that is just a part of the makeup that is part of the talent that allows you to go at the top of his level, which is, it is true about Jordan. I wrote a story for Rolling Stone a lot of years ago about Keith Van Horn, who'd been a top draft pick by the New Jersey Nets, and it was when Jordan was older, like 30 in his late 30s or whatever on the Washington Wizards or the Washington.

44:26Yeah. And I went by to meet Van Horn like at 10 in the morning the day before a game that night, like at seven. And I walked into the arena and Jordan was all alone in the arena just shooting free throws at 10 in the morning. And Barry Bird, that was the thing, like Barry Bird did. So he just shoot like 300 shots a day. And the other really cool thing about Bird is, this is a good lesson for writers too, after every season he played, he would go back, evaluate his season, evaluate his postseason, see what he was lacking, and develop a new shot. And every fall, summer, when they'd come back to camp, he'd come in with a new shot that nobody knew about, that nobody could defend.

45:06So the idea of keep adding new tricks as you get older is just sort of a brilliant thing. That is really interesting. I didn't, um, it, and it is similar to writers. Like, you know, I would say writers challenge themselves constantly with experimenting with different forms, different, you know, different points of view and so on. Uh, what was it about 1987, 88 that really stood out for you? I mean, obviously it's like a hall of fame, you know, extravaganza in terms of all the players and names and personalities, like every, everybody you, you write about in the book and you kind of give their stories you give the team stories you give the game stories but all these people again to me they're people i've heard up heard about even though i've never followed basketball at all i think that i mean we mentioned the fact that there were more hall of famers playing then than ever before and and they and age-wise they span the entire history of the league because you had kareem who was 40 and he played with players that played before there was an NBA.

46:09And he also played with and against players that played almost up until now. So he's kind of at the focal point of the whole history of the NBA played for so long, but he played with everybody past and future. And then you have, you know, the young players are like Reggie Miller, Scottie Pippen, you know, so there's that. But also I think like that was the moment when I fell in love with pro basketball and it was a specific game, which I write about. It was game six of the 1988 NBA finals where the Pistons were trying to close out the Lakers would be the first team to win back-to-back titles in a long time in the LA forum they were cruising along and Isaiah rolled his ankle and looked like he broke his ankle if you watch it and it looked like he was out for the game and it was like as if he knew that I have a little bit of time before I can't walk anymore.

47:04You know, if you ever had an injury like that, you're going to start to swell up and soon you're not going to fit a shoe on. And I'm going to do, I'm going to carry this team. And he scored like 25 points, I think, in the third quarter, which is still a playoff record. He was hitting shots, almost it seemed like he was hitting shots in the locker room. I mean, he was all over the place. And it was so exciting to see a guy playing hurt like that. I mean, it was just inspiring. And then they ended up losing the game on a very questionable call, sort of a phantom foul that Bill Ambeer probably did not commit against Kareem, and Kareem went to the free throw line at the end.

47:40So I wanted to go back and think about what it was about that era that involved me emotionally to such a degree. And part of it is, like you mentioned, there were these four different dynasties. And normally, you know, like I've written a book about the Cubs, Chicago Cubs, and I wrote a book about the Chicago Bears. and I wrote a book about my son's peewee youth hockey team. But it's like every one of those, you try to build this thing that existed. And in this case, sort of get to build four teams and then it's like having four different toys and then they go to war with each other. And I had this idea that it's only four games.

48:18I only write about four games, plus the postseason, plus the finals, that in each one of those four sections, I'll describe all the players on each one of these four teams. And by the time you get to the fourth game, you know everybody on the floor. You know, so it's sort of like Pulp Fiction. It's how I imagined it. Where in one scene, Bruce Willis is the center of the action. And the next scene, he's in the background. Normally a player, a guy in the background, you don't know in a movie. You already know all about him because he's now a bit player instead of the star player. And it gives you a sense of a whole complete world.

48:52So that was what I was trying to do organizationally. Yeah, no, it's a book that almost, I don't want to say it writes itself. Obviously, it requires a great writer. But you had so much material, so many great dramatic stories to kind of weave together to get to that final, you know, very dramatic playoffs. It's the Lakers consecutive. You know, Pat Riley had made the statement the year earlier that we're going to we're going to definitely win the consecutive titles, which no one had done in something like 30 years. and then you, again, you start with the players and their stories. That builds the story of each team until finally we have the story of the season.

49:31So it was really, you know, well done. You know, I'll tell you one thing. They used to have this show in Chicago, public access TV or maybe called the sport. And then it was picked up, I think, called the Sports Writers. You ever seen that? No. Go look it up on YouTube. It's hilarious, man. It's these great old Chicago sports writers, plus Rick Tellender, who is young. I wrote a story about it for Sports Illustrated, and it's sort of the super fans on Saturday Night Live that are imitating Bears fans. Yeah, yeah. They're based on those guys. Those guys are like that for real, and they had this whole discussion about Pat Riley at that era because after they won that second title, Pat Riley trademarked the term three-peat, right, which they never did.

50:13So they were talking about how they're going to need, what all that means, Pat Riley trademarked three-peat is that we're going to have to pay him a royalty when the Bulls three-peat. And the Bulls did. The Bulls three-peated twice. That's funny. Did they pay a royalty? I'm sure they had to. To the term. Seems like a weird term to trademark. Yeah, well, he always said, you know, he's writing those business books and the how-to books and the guru books and everything. So, I mean, he built great teams. What do you think of Adrian Brody as playing Pat Riley in winning time? I like it. I mean, the weird thing about playing anybody like this is what I always feel about all kind of biopics.

50:49a lot of these guys were playing roles. So Pat Riley was on display. He was playing Pat Riley. You know, I mean, if you look at Pat Riley two years before he became the Lakers, he had blow dried hair. He wore glasses. He was a sideline announcer who'd been sort of a middling player. I mean, and then he sort of realized where he was and he reinvented himself. So he was already playing a role. So to me, it's always hard. I never think an actor does the role as well as the actual guy doing the role. Another one, famous examples are Will Smith playing Muhammad Ali, you know, or Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman.

51:27Andy Kaufman was playing Andy Kaufman. You know, so now you have Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman, playing Andy Kaufman. So I think A.J. Brody is great. I'm a huge A.J. Brody fan. I think all that cast is great, but my mind always goes back to the real people. It's like when you read a novel and then they make a movie out of it and the people, the actors never seem right. You already got them in your head. Right. Yeah, I think that's why books always seem better than the movies, because you've already cast and played the movie in your head many times while reading the book. Not only that, I mean, what's so great about books, like I always think movies go from the outside in and books go from the inside out.

52:03So when you read a book, you're actively engaged in creating the book. So you're part of the creation. When you read it, you're imagining everything, you're putting it all together, you're connecting the dots. and so it's just it that's why a lot of times i'll have a memory and i'm trying to remember where that happened and i realized it's from a book i mean it's so vivid it's like the actual experience and it's very hard for movies to do that because they do all the works for you in a way and your brain isn't engaged in the same way that's how i feel how do you think basketball and this is kind of equivalent to all other sports and and competitions how do you think it's evolved in the past 30 or so years since those playoffs.

52:45Like, it seems like the players, and again, this goes for every sport, it seems they're a lot more physically trained. Like, you see a lot more weightlifters among athletes now. Like LeBron James compared with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It's like a different, a completely different set of training made those, you know, athletes. How do you think the training and the sport itself has evolved? Well, I think all sports, all the pro sports, they become much more precise in how they train players and the fitness and everything. And as a result of that, the bad players now are bad's the wrong word. The players at the bottom of the roster on these pro teams are better than the players at the bottom of the roster back then.

53:30Maybe the middle roster, but the great players then would be the greatest players now. I have no doubt about it. and even with the weightlifting. So like you hear this a lot about hockey as a hockey parent. Somebody just posted a picture of Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull with their shirts off, tying their skates. Those guys were as strong as anybody who's ever played in the NHL. I don't know how they did it. I don't know if they grew up on farms. Maybe they lifted weights, but they were just as strong as anybody playing in the NHL now. They wouldn't be a lesser player and they would have better skates and they would have maybe worked more on certain parts of their skating, but they would still be the best, I believe, would still be the best players in the league.

54:12And with basketball, I still think Michael Jordan would be the best player in the league. And Scottie Pippen would still be an all-star and a great player, and Magic would still be the best guard and the best passer and all this stuff, or best handler of the ball. But I think that here's how the game really changed, which is the Pistons, with a brilliant strategy, the Jordan rules and the way they played physically, figured out how to beat more physically talented teams by keeping the score down and really tightening the screws. And the league didn't like it because, one, it inhibited scoring.

54:54People wanted to see highlights, and they were worried that their marquee players, like Michael Jordan, were going to get hurt. So they changed the rules and they disallowed a lot of the defensive tactics that kept those games close. And now the game's become so focused on offense. The other thing that they did is the three-point shot was in existence, of course, in the whole era I'm writing about. Larry Bird's first game as a Celtic was during that game, the first three-point shot ever was made. So his career is basically the first, whatever, 12 years or whatever it is 14 years of the three-point shot.

55:33The three-point shot was meant as sort of something to keep games close late. So if you're down by nine points with the minute left, instead of fans streaming out and the game being over, there's still a way you can hit three quick baskets and get back in. It keeps games close at the end. It would be like now if they sort of said a whole court shot's worth 10 points. You know, the idea wouldn't be that a team would just only take those shots. But somebody, I think the algorithm guys came along and they figured out that we, and it happened after this era, we're better off statistically shooting almost only threes, threes or give me's, give me's under the basket, shooting only threes and making 30%, then shooting a lot of twos and making 60%.

56:22We will win with the threes. That's interesting. And as a result of that, so now all the players, certain players that would dominate in the league, there's no place for them if they can't shoot an outside shot. And now everybody's pulled to the outside. So in this era, everybody was underneath the basket fighting for the rebound. That was a game within the game. It was like a mosh pit. You never really knew what was going on inside there, but it was a battle. And now, partly because everyone's pulled to the outside, and partly because when you miss a three, you get a completely different kind of rebound.

56:54You get a long rebound. It doesn't go right down underneath. You don't get the same kind of putbacks you would get. the whole inside of the interior of the court, which for a lot of us was basketball, is now sort of hollowed out. And it seems like there's no way the league intended this. It's just an unintended consequence. Like when you make one little change, somebody figured out the way to game the system and everybody else followed. And now we have a completely different kind of basketball. And what do you think of guys like, you ever watch this guy on YouTube, the professor? It's like this amazing dribbler and does all these tricks.

57:30and, you know, play streetball, basically. I mean, the truth is, the history of the NBA is, you know, early on, the game was kind of a gym game played by very precise rules, was very boring. We have a lot of set shots and stuff. And then there was streetball played by mostly black players. And it's the kind of stuff you're talking about. And it was only when you kind of let the streetball become pro basketball that pro basketball got great. so anytime anyone's out there doing crazy stuff it's like basically when i was a kid we had kind of the boring bulls little kid and then you had the harlem globetrotters would do incredible thing and you go watch them and they'd go on scooby-doo and they'd go on scooby-doo and they'd throw a bucket of water and a guy turned out to only be confetti you know and they had a saturday morning cartoon i used to watch yeah you know and um and now and then the bulls became like what the pro players could do by the time i was 15 they could do everything the globetrotters could do while in the process of winning a basketball game and they didn't have to play the washington senators every night they played actual good teams that were trying to beat them yeah it's it's so interesting to me that i'm interested in it having really never watched a basketball game so well go up and look up uh pete maravich youtube highlights he was a guy unbelievable played before his time averaged I think over 40 points a game in college maybe more than that but there's a thing where red arrow back is showing how Maravich passes and he passes one direction and the ball goes the other direction you know that's part of the problem with the way these guys play magic too which is when he first showed up magic sort of the master to this day of the don't look pass if you're open I'm getting it to you even if you don't know you're open and when he went to that those first Lakers practices the other guys didn't know how to play that way and he would pass the ball and would hit guys in the back of the head and side of the head.

59:26They had no idea the ball was coming. They were completely fooled by it. So they had to have an education period where you learned how to play with these guys. You couldn't have one guy who could play that way. You needed a team of guys who played in this really clever way that's all about, you know, getting you going one way and then you go the other way, which is the whole key to basketball. I was just playing with my father. the first thing you would always do is figure out your weak hand and make you go that way every single time. You know, and that's just a small level. That's basketball.

59:58It's not letting people play the way that they want, letting them play the way that's to your advantage. How would you apply that to writing? I think in writing, a good way is just the opposite, which is play the way you want and write the way that's your strength. So one of the things you have to do is when you get caught up writing a whole bunch of crap that you don't like and isn't good, you should cut all that stuff. Just do the good stuff. Yeah, I always tell people, let's say if you write an article or a small story, the first thing you should do, even if you know this rule, the first thing you should do after writing a small piece, a relatively small piece, is remove the first paragraph and the last paragraph and it'll read better.

1:00:42Because the first paragraph, you're sort of struggling to figure out how to start. And last paragraph, you're sort of struggling to figure out how to conclude, but that's not your natural style. The natural style is everything in the middle, in between those. So if you just do the whole article, even knowing this rule, even while you're writing the first paragraph, knowing you're going to cut the first paragraph later, it still works. I find it works like 95 % of the time. Yeah. I mean, I always thought writing a book is kind of like being a sculpt, a sculptor, but before you do the sculpting, you got to first create the marble.

1:01:13so like the first draft is the marvel yeah like my first drafts this book is 75 000 words the first draft was probably 150 000 words i cut usually more than i write and um but while you're writing it you can't you have to sort of forget that it's like women forget childbirth because if you don't forget it then you realize i'm spending a whole day doing something that i'm later going to throw out, that'll drive you insane. So while you're doing it, I feel good about it. You have to learn how to feel really good. That good feeling you get when you cut something and you realize, ah, it's better now.

1:01:52Like you can't have any attachment to something you wrote a second earlier. And it feels like losing weight. Yeah. And there's nothing like the feeling where you have something about a book isn't working and you cut like 10 ,000 words and suddenly it flies. That's just a great feeling. And that other stuff that you write, I always think it's not a waste because like you said, the throat clearing at the beginning of a story that you cut the first paragraph, that was necessary to get you going. Yeah. It wasn't no reason. You couldn't have gotten to the second paragraph without going through the first paragraph.

1:02:27You have to go through the bad paragraph to get to the good paragraph. So what's next? What are you working on next? I've been just you know writing this uh monthly column for the wall street journal which is called uh back when and it's sort of about stuff I was obsessed with when I was a kid and my idea is that at the end of this you put all these pieces together you get kind of a portrait of my whole generation as a young man so like I wrote one about model rockets we really into blowing off model rockets when I was a kid. I wrote one about Risky Business, the 40th anniversary of Risky Business.

1:03:04I wrote one about the fireworks we used when we were kids that are now illegal, like the M80, and about shopping malls, and about wiffle ball, and about stick them in the NFL, and about the song You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone. This is kind of what I've been doing. That's fun. I'll have to check that out. It would be good to see a collection of those. Because that's like, it is like a summary of Gen X, all those things you mentioned. I just think about like, what was I into? What was I into? And then I sort of, that's the only way things just pop up. You know, I still feel like I'm living a version of my life when I was a kid now.

1:03:43Oh, I think that's the great thing about growing older is that you can still, you can go back to the things you were nostalgic about and really explore them from a whole different angle. And I think the idea of looking at everything, like looking at the generation, like I look back at Gen X, you think about like 1994, where you have, or 1992 to 1994, you have things like Douglas Coupland's book, Generation X, you have the movie Reality Bites, you have the movie Slackers. this sort of showed this picture of Generation X as being like this slacker generation that's never going to do as well as their parents.

1:04:19And yet we kind of destroyed it. Like Gen X did a lot better than people predicted. First of all, where did you grow up? I grew up in New Jersey. Okay. What town? Right near New Brunswick, a town called North Brunswick. Okay. So basically we're the same age. When's your birthday? January 22nd. Okay. So you're early. You're like one of those kids that Malcolm Gladwell says is going to go pro and everything. Yeah. So basically, I think that I like, I never believed in the idea of a generation because if you think about it, somebody is born every minute of every day. So it's just a continuous stream of new people.

1:04:57So how can there be a generation? But yet as they get older, I realized there really are generations because you are influenced by the culture of your time, which you then help create. And then also So at the same time, you necessarily react to the world that's around you when you're a kid. Now, I'm the youngest and I have much older siblings. And the whole kind of... I was like at the burnt end edge of the hippies. Like I saw that hippie thing at the end of it when it was bell bottoms and what seemed to me like bad music and people losing their shit over stuff that was really unimportant and all these causes.

1:05:36And so my reaction to it was, I don't want any causes, man. I just want a story. Don't tell me, you know, just give me the fucking story and don't give me any causes. And I just see as I get older, I see a work of art and I'm like, that person's my age. That person feels exactly like I do. And I see it over and over and over again. I realize and it's part of it, I think, is like because we came after the baby boomers. There were so many of them. Their stuff was so much in our face because the whole marketing culture was geared towards them. And now here come the millennials. There's even more of them when there were the boomers.

1:06:11And now everything's geared towards them. We're like the small group between the big groups. And when I look back, I can see it echoed again and again. So my father's generation, he's in the Korean War. They call it the silent generation because they made no noise. But they made no noise because there weren't that many of them. And they had no president. There's not a president. Right. They had no president. We had no president. And then if you look back, going back to where we started, I think Hemingway's lost generation was like that too. And I think one of the things he said after World War I in Tear of the Arms, I forget the exact quote, but he says, we didn't want to hear the words glory, sacrifice, honor, justice.

1:06:56They all became bullshit, basically. And by the end, the only thing that seemed true were the names and numbers of the roads. And I just recognize that sensibility where you've seen this adherence to this kind of ideology that came before you without any sense of humor about it. You know? So I always said Gen X is the hope of America. We're gonna have to step forward and save them. Well, you know, it's also interesting because we grew up, like you mentioned how we're at the tail end of the causes of the hippie movement, But we were also trained to look at the hippie movement in a different way.

1:07:33Because we had shows that basically normalized in this weird way the whole 60s counterculture movement. Like we had the Mod Squad, where these hippies were basically FBI agents. We had the Partridge Family, where they sort of were counterculture, but they were also just like the first teen idols. And, you know, we had all these TV shows that basically normalized and simplified. Yeah, well, they co-opted it. Yeah. and they and they merchandised it and they sold it back to them so we grew up with the sort of the the math how all counterculture movements are destroyed they become absorbed in the mainstream and turned into kitsch you know yeah and basically that's and that whole reaction like the whole punk rock reaction against that music you know which by the way now that music i like listening to which i hated like uh i just didn't i i just didn't like the overwroughtness of the music at the tail end of the 60s and the 70s where everyone was clearly trying to take the place that had been vacated by the Beatles you know so these orchestral rock songs I um now I kind of enjoy them just because for the nostalgia purposes man just because they were on the radio when I was a little kid you know but basically by the time it got to us it had curdled yeah it just seemed bad and you just wanted something stripped down sleek and cool and that's the clash you know and that's all the everything that came out of that era well like hip-hop was born out of that era definitely hip-hop in the early hip-hop we also didn't have the worries like kind of reagan pushed aside a lot of the worries and and the focus was on money and junk bonds and this but i was worried about getting blown up in a nuclear war, man.

1:09:19I remember knowing what I would do. Like the day that it happened, I knew what I was going to do. If I found out the missiles were on the way, there was a girl down the street I was going to go tell her I loved her, which I'd been waiting to do. I was definitely going to do that. And like this whole list of things I was going to do. And we used to have discussions like, would you rather be at the epicenter and just leave your shadow on a wall? Or would you rather be in the outskirts? You know? And that was like genuine worry. Yeah. And yet, though, the year you became, you know, a drinking adult, the Iron Curtain came down.

1:09:52So, you know, that whole worry was just gone. And we had this peace dividend of the 90s that we became adults in. Yeah. And we had, well, because it seemed like, well, that was the moment of history has ended and all that. Francis Fukuyama, all that stuff. But in fact, what happened is that the world went back to its normal condition, which are a series of nations competing with each other. Whereas after World War I, it was World War II, it was just the United States alone for a really long time because Europe had basically destroyed itself, you know? So, you know, but it's, there's a quote, a great quote where I think it might be like a Walter Benjamin quote where what you see of history in your life is basically a car sliding into and hitting another car.

1:10:35But it's actually like a 10 million car pileup. And you're just seeing one little instance of it and then you're gone. Right. So basically, we had really good luck in that. We were so scared, and then we did see, unbelievable. If you asked me when I was a kid how long the Soviet Union would be around, I'd say another thousand years. It seemed this indestructible thing, and then it just dissolved. And then you had MTV and the Berlin Wall and people ripping off chunks of the Berlin Wall. It was just an unbelievable thing. And not many years before, there was a TV show on, I don't know if you remember, I think it was an Ed's Wit.

1:11:12TV movie called The Morning After. Yeah, of course. Right. And their ad campaign is like, don't watch this movie alone. You'll be deeply, deeply traumatized, which is like a brilliant ad campaign to scare the crap out of everybody into watching it. My whole family gathered to watch it. Me, my mother, my father, my brother, my sister was in law school. And I looked around about an hour into it and everybody else was sound asleep. I was like, oh my God, technically I'm alone. I'm going to be watching this thing alone. Do I wake these people up or am I going gonna be traumatized or what and then just a few minutes later we were you know mtv and the end of the berlin wall and the east and in the east and west germany united and russia not caring seemingly not caring about it letting us do it yeah it's interesting and then of course i think that does lead up to your your book which is sort of right at that same exact year basically yeah the year before and that was i mean there's a great larry king who grew up with my father and i knew him honest kid, used to say sports are the most important, unimportant thing in the world.

1:12:14And that's really about this. It's like, they're really, it was such a good American moment in that we weren't scared existentially in a way for a few years. We would be, now we are again, because of climate change and everything else. But for a few years, that perpetual fear that we're all about to die was sort of lifted. And you could just really think something like the Bulls journey to unseat the Pistons was the most important thing in the world. That's really interesting because I always wonder, on the one hand, you can say it's a game. It's a bunch of guys running around with a ball, trying to throw it into a hoop.

1:12:53Or you can say the same thing about hockey or soccer or baseball or whatever. So on the one hand, it could easily be described as something frivolous. And yet to pursue it like these professional players do, and to be a fan of it and to be an industry around it, it really is worthwhile. Like we're always taught, you know, you either do something frivolous or you work hard, you know, be an accountant, work hard or be a lawyer. But there really is something important about the frivolous and excellence and the pursuit of excellence in something that could also be described as frivolous. It's like great art in a way, you know, it's like the world at a removed.

1:13:35it's not your life but it feels like your life and it's you know these moments of incredible identification with these players and these teams and it's incredibly cathartic and it's good for the players that they get to be free agents and make a ton of money but a huge part of the thing of being a fan was that these players spent their whole careers with these teams and you watched them when they were young and you watched them reach their prime and you watched them grow old and then you watched him retire and you felt like you saw the entire life cycle, you know, played out in these one careers.

1:14:10That's why it's so upsetting when you see somebody like Michael Jordan come back in a Washington Wizards uniform. It makes you want to, you know, bomb it. Like the Yankees were lucky, Yankees fans, and Derek Jeter played his whole entire career for the Yankees. But it almost never happens anymore and it's something that we really miss. I always joke that when I go buy a jersey, like a Cubs jersey now, I ask them to put the name of the general manager on the back because that's the only person that's still going to be around in a couple years yeah it's interesting like like i think of the pittsburgh steelers in the 70s those guys all just spent their whole careers on that team you're like yeah i love that i love that i love that yeah jack lambert jack ham lynn swan and mike webster who was the first sort of cte guy lynn swan stahlward john stahlwer rocky blyer you ever see the rocky blyer so you ever see the rocky Blair story on TV?

1:15:01No. Dude, you talk about a TV movie the week. Rocky Blair was in Vietnam and it's like the movie ends with him like with a three-yard touchdown carry in the Super Bowl and they intercut it with him like running across a minefield under fire. That's great. Well, Rich Cohen, author of When the Game Was War, the NBA's Greatest Season. Such a great book. Riveting stories. And again, this is coming from someone who has never watched a basketball game ever. I, I, I went to one, I don't even know if I watched the one I went to, but I, I love, I love this stuff. And, and thanks so much for writing this book and for coming on the show to talk about it.

1:15:40It was really, really great book and it has a lot of life lessons in it. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And when the Knicks finally make it, I'll get us tickets because you're the Knicks playing the finals. All right, great. Yeah.

1:16:00Thank you.