NOTES
- Derrick Z. Jackson, “The 1980s—for African Americans,” Boston Globe, Dec. 31, 1989.
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals, DVD, directed by Ezra Edelman (New York: HBO Sports, 2011).
- Ibid.
- Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson, and Jackie MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals. One thing to note is that by the end of Bird's and Magic's careers, Michael Jordan had eclipsed both in popularity.
- Earvin Johnson and William Novak, My Life (New York: Random House, 1992).
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.
- Douglas Hartmann, “Rethinking the Relationships between Sport and Race in American Culture: Golden Ghettos and Contested Terrain,” Sociology of Sport Journal 17, no. 1 (2000): 229–53.
- Philomena Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1991).
- For a sampling of some of the research done concerning how race affects sports journalism, see Boulou Ebanda De B'béri and Peter Hogarth, “White America's Construction of Black Bodies: The Case of Ron Artest as a Model of Covert Racial Ideology in the NBA's Discourse,” Journal of International & Intercultural Communication 2, no. 2 (2009): 89–106; Susan Eastman and Andrew C. Billings, “Biased Voices of Sports: Racial and Gender Stereotyping in College Basketball Announcing,” Howard Journal of Communications 12, no. 4 (2001): 183–201; Kelby K. Halone and Andrew C. Billings, “The Temporal Nature of Racialized Sport Consumption,” American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 11 (2010): 1645–68; Jeff Stone, Zachary W. Perry, and John M. Darley, “‘White Men Can't Jump’: Evidence for the Perceptual Confirmation of Racial Stereotypes following a Basketball Game,” Basic & Applied Social Psychology 19, no. 3 (1997): 291–306; and Pamela L. Wonsek, “College Basketball on Television: A Study of Racism in the Media,” Media, Culture & Society 14, no. 3 (1992): 449–61.
- University of Alabama professor Andrew C. Billings has conducted numerous content analyses that identify how black and white athletes are depicted differently in the media. For some examples of these studies, see James R. Angelini and Andrew C. Billings, “Accounting for Athletic Performance: Race and Sportscaster Dialogue in NBC's 2008 Summer Olympic Telecast,” Communication Research Reports 27, no. 1 (2010): 1–10; Andrew C. Billings, “Portraying Tiger Woods: Characterizations of a ‘Black’ Athlete in a ‘White’ Sport,” Howard Journal of Communications 14, no. 1 (2003): 29; Andrew C. Billings, “Depicting the Quarterback in Black and White: A Content Analysis of College and Professional Football Broadcast Commentary,” Howard Journal of Communications 15, no. 4 (2004): 201–10; Bryan E. Denham, Andrew C. Billings, and Kelby K. Halone, “Differential Accounts of Race in Broadcast Commentary of the 2000 NCAA Men's and Women's Final Four Basketball Tournaments,” Sociology of Sport Journal 19, no. 3 (2002): 315–32; and Eastman and Billings, “Biased Voices of Sports.”
- Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism.
- Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1972): 176–87.
- Pamela J. Shoemaker and Timothy Vos, Gatekeeping Theory (New York: Routledge, 2009).
- Billings, “Depicting the Quarterback in Black and White.”
- Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours; and Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.
- David Halberstam, “The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of,” Sports Illustrated, June 29, 1987: 38–40.
- In numerous instances from various sources, it was acknowledged that many fans cheered for Bird or Magic depending on race. In Bird's autobiography, he notes this several times. Most famously, a scene in Spike Lee's fictional movie Do the Right Thing dramatizes this. See Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals; Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours; Larry Bird and Bob Ryan, Drive: The Story of My Life (New York: Doubleday, 1989); and John Matthew Smith, “‘Gifts That God Didn't Give’: White Hopes, Basketball, and the Legend of Larry Bird,” Massachusetts Historical Review 13 (2011): 1–30.
- Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. (Boston: Bodley Head, 2008).
- Ibid.
- Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours, 96.
- ESPN Sports Century: Larry Bird, DVD, directed by Mike Strom (New York: ESPN, 2006).
- See Billings, “Depicting the Quarterback in Black and White”; and Stone, Perry, and Darley, “‘White Men Can't Jump.’”
- David Halberstam, The Breaks of the Game, (New York: Hyperion, 2012), 35.
- John W. Sloan, The Reagan Effect: Economics and Presidential Leadership (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999).
- Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours.
- Lawrence A. Wenner, ed. Media, Sports, and Society (London: Sage, 1989).
- James H. Frey and D. Stanley Eitzen, “Sport and Society,” Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991): 503–22.
- Ibid.; and Halone and Billings, “The Temporal Nature of Racialized Sport Consumption.”
- Textual analysis “is a means of trying to learn something about people by examining what they write.” Researchers using textual analysis “assume that behavioral patterns, values, and attitudes found in this material reflect and affect the behaviors, attitudes and values of the people who create the material.” Textual analysis allows for a complete reading of all aspects of a narrative including tone, syntax and word choices, as well as omissions. News is not a picture of reality, but a construction of reality consumers can cull and craft from the virtually limitless amount of possible informational items. Historical research is not a record of the past. Instead, historians select data and other information in research. A historical researcher can find interesting ways of looking at how contemporary ideas about various topics, events, and personalities have evolved. Historical research, however, is only as good and as bad as a limited perspective can be. Historians deal with incomplete, biased data, and study the available evidence to form theories to explain it. Researchers study historical evidence in the context of its time, and the data comes from primary sources such as records and relics. See Arthur Asa Berger, Media Research Techniques (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1998), 23; and David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (London: Routledge 1971), 40–63.
- David Rowe, “Sports Journalism Still the ‘Toy Department’ of the News Media?” Journalism 8, no. 4 (2007): 385–405.
- Nelson George, Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball (New York: Harper Collins, 1992); and Hartmann, “Rethinking the Relationships between Sport and Race in American Culture.”
- Patrick Ferrucci, Edson C. Tandoc, Chad Painter, and Glenn Leshner, “A Black and White Game: Racial Stereotypes in Baseball,” Howard Journal of Communications 24, no. 3 (2013): 309–25.
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.
- Patricia Devine, “Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components,” Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 56 (1989): 5–18.
- For a popular example of this, see Spike Lee's acclaimed film Do the Right Thing. Or for a real-life-based discussion of this, see Howard Bryant's story “Magic, Bird Were More than Rivals,” published by ESPN on March 11, 2010, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=4985885.
- Richard Edward Lapchick and Jeffery R Benedict, Sport in Society: Equal Opportunity or Business as Usual? (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1996).
- Jay J. Coakley and Elizabeth Pike, Sport in Society: Issues and Controversies (Boston: Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 1998).
- Ibid.
- Daniel Buffington, “Contesting Race on Sundays: Making Meaning Out of the Rise in the Number of Black Quarterbacks,” Sociology of Sport Journal 21, no. 1 (2005): 19–37.
- Jacco Van Sterkenburg, Annelies Knoppers and Sonja De Leeuw, “Race, Ethnicity, and Content Analysis of the Sports Media: A Critical Reflection,” Media, Culture & Society 32, no. 5 (2010): 819–39.
- For examples of these findings, examine the studies from Billings noted earlier. Also, one can see Billings's findings replicated in James Rada and K. Tim Wulfemeyer, “Color Coded: Racial Descriptors in Television Coverage of Intercollegiate Sports,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 49, no. 1 (2005): 65–85; and Raymond Rainville, Al Roberts, and Andrew Sweet, “Recognition of Covert Racial Prejudice,” Journalism Quarterly 55, no. 2 (1978): 256–59.
- Rada and Wulfemeyer, “Color Coded.”
- Billings, “Depicting the Quarterback in Black and White.”
- Eugenio Mercurio and Vincent F. Filak, “Roughing the Passer: The Framing of Black and White Quarterbacks Prior to the NFL Draft,” Howard Journal of Communications 21, no. 1 (2010): 56–71.
- Billings, “Depicting the Quarterback in Black and White.”
- Halone and Billings, “The Temporal Nature of Racialized Sport Consumption”; and Mercurio and Filak, “Roughing the Passer.”
- Audrey Murrell and Edward M. Curtis, “Causal Attributions of Performance for Black and White Quarterbacks in the NFL: A Look at the Sports Pages,” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 18, no. 3 (1994): 224–33.
- Nelson George, Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992).
- Mark Ribowsky, History of the Negro Leagues, 1884 to 1955, (Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing Group, 1995).
- Joelle Sano Gilmore and Amy Jordan, “Burgers and Basketball: Race and Stereotypes in Food and Beverage Advertising Aimed at Children in the US,” Journal of Children and Media 6, no. 3 (2012): 317–32.
- Katherine L. Lavelle, “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Black Masculinity in NBA Game Commentary,” Howard Journal of Communications 21, no. 3 (2010): 294–314.
- Eastman and Billings, “Biased Voices of Sports,” 193.
- Mary McDonald and David Andrews, “Michael Jordan: Corporate Sport and Postmodern Celebrityhood,” in Sport Stars: The Cultural Politics of Sporting Celebrity, ed. David Andrews (New York: Routledge, 2001), 25.
- Toni Bruce, “Marking the Boundaries of the ‘Normal’ in Televised Sports: The Play-by-Play of Race,” Media, Culture & Society 26, no. 6 (2004): 861–79.
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.
- Bird and Ryan, Drive: The Story of My Life.
- Ibid.
- Roy Blunt Jr., “Let's Put Life into the NBA,” The New York Times, Feb. 5, 1979.
- Ronald P. Formisano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
- Smith, “‘Gifts That God Didn't Give,’” 5.
- Bird and Ryan, Drive: The Story of My Life.
- Johnson and Novak, My Life.
- Ibid.
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.
- Ibid.
- Bird and Ryan, Drive: The Story of My Life.
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.
- Ibid.
- Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours, 101.
- Bruce, “Marking the Boundaries of the ‘Normal’ in Televised Sports”; and Erika Molloseau, “Grant Hill, Postmodern Blackness, and Art: A Cultural Critique,” Popular Communication 4, no. 2 (2006): 123–41.
- In virtually all books and documentaries about Bird and Johnson, either together or separately, it is acknowledged that the two athletes played the game in the same way. It is an oft-repeated phrase to say that Bird and Johnson were “mirror images of each other.” To see references to these comparisons, read or view Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours; Bird and Ryan, Drive: The Story of My Life; Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals; Halberstam, “The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of”; and Johnson and Novak, My Life.
- Bob Ryan, “Scoring Machines Continue to Click,” Boston Globe, Oct. 21, 1979.
- Scott Ostler, “Lakers and Johnson Winners, 123–105,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 29, 1979.
- Scott Ostler, “Larry Bird Says ‘Magic’ Is Better,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 29, 1979.
- Bob Ryan, “Celtics Seeking Changes? Let's Hope Not,” Boston Globe, Jan. 6, 1980.
- Bob Ryan, “Bird Shows What He's Made Of,” Boston Globe, February 24, 1980.
- Jim Murray, “A Magic Laker Season,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1980.
- Bob Ryan, “The Magnitude of Magic,” Boston Globe, Jan. 11, 1980.
- Bob Ryan, “NBA Playoffs at a Glance,” Boston Globe, March 30, 1980.
- Bob Ryan, “Great Game, Tough Call Go Lakers' Way,” Boston Globe, Jan. 14, 1980.
- Bob Ryan, “Drew's Place on All-Star Team Shows Voting System's Worth,” Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 1980.
- Bob Ryan, “It's Not Magic, but Celtics vs. Lakers Still Special,” Boston Globe, Jan. 18, 1981.
- Larry Whiteside, “Bird's Heroics Nailed It,” Boston Globe, May 16, 1981.
- Bob Ryan, “Bird Personifies Celtic Tradition,” Boston Globe, May 18, 1981.
- Bob Ryan, “Bird Leads List of 10 Really Deserving Big Bucks,” Boston Globe, July 5, 1981.
- Larry Whiteside, “Big Two: Johnson and Bird,” Boston Globe, Feb. 1, 1982.
- Randy Harvey, “Celtics Show Lakers Why They Rule the NBA,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 15, 1982.
- Larry Whiteside, “Celtics Make Do,” Boston Globe, Dec. 9, 1982.
- Mike Littwin, “Bird vs. Magic,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 13, 1983.
- Jim Murray, “Bird Keeps Adding Tricks to the Floor Show,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1983.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “NBA Honors Bird as MVP,” Boston Globe, June 26, 1984.
- Bob Ryan, “Celtics Turnabout Better than Fair Play,” Boston Globe, June 10, 1984.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “With No Center of Attention, Bird Could Be MVP,” Boston Globe, June 19, 1984.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Celtics Looking for Confidence,” Boston Globe, March 18, 1984.
- Mike Littwin, “No Magic Finish for Lakers and Another Win Slops Away,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1984.
- Thomas Bonk, “Riley: Script Is Written for Lakers to Win,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 1984.
- Mike Littwin, “For Lakers, the Last Chapter in the Series That Got Away,” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1984.
- Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Some Things Old, Some Things New,” Boston Globe, Jan. 16, 1985.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Lakers at the Garden with Bitter Memories of 1984 Humiliation,” Boston Globe, Jan. 16, 1985.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Lakers Water Down the Celtics,” Boston Globe, Feb. 18, 1985.
- Scott Ostler, “The Season Is Bird's, but Day Is Magic's,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 18, 1985.
- Leigh Montville, “Magic Goes Public,” Boston Globe, May 30, 1985.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “The Prevailing Westerlies Winds of Change?,” Boston Globe, April 21, 1985.
- Larry Whiteside, “A Place in the Heart of the NBA,” Boston Globe, Feb. 9, 1985.
- Thomas Bonk, “Maybe He Should Be MVPeeved,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1986.
- Bob Ryan, “Magic in the Lineup,” Boston Globe, Dec. 13, 1986.
- Scott Ostler, “Boston Garden Could Pass for White House,” Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1986.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Hometown Cooking,” Boston Globe, July 15, 1986.
- Jack Craig, “Finals Rating Highly,” Boston Globe, June 1, 1986.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Bird Gets His Way Thanks to His Will,” Boston Globe, Feb. 12, 1986.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Play It Again: Nothing Regular about This One,” Boston Globe, Feb. 16, 1986.
- Bob Ryan, “NBA's True Twin Towers? Bird and Johnson Are Reaching New Heights,” Boston Globe, Jan. 4, 1987.
- Mark Heisler, “We Broke Down,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1987.
- Bob Ryan, “Magic's Act Together,” Boston Globe, May 24, 1987, S45.
- Bob Ryan, “Are the Lakers One and Only? Celtics Clearly the Inferior Team,” Boston Globe, June 6, 1987.
- Bob Ryan, “Magic Carpet Ride Johnson Soaring after MVP, Title,” Boston Globe, Sept. 27, 1987.
- Bob Ryan, “At Last, a Jackpot for Grinker Agent of Supporting Players,” Boston Globe, April 10, 1988.
- Bob Ryan, “Fratello Impressed with Bird's Play,” Boston Globe, Feb. 8, 1988.
- Anthony Cotton, “Larry Bird: Stopping Him Is Complicated,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1988.
- Bob Ryan, “Dawn of a Third Official Is Nigh,” Boston Globe, April 3, 1988.
- Chris Baker, “A Season Begins: The Lakers, Clippers and More League Popularity Seems to Reach for the Stars,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 8, 1988.
- Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours.
- Ibid.
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.
- Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours.
- Jackie MacMullan, “Team by Team Analysis,” Boston Globe, Nov. 3, 1989.
- Chris Baker, “Bird Says That He Is Back,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 29, 1989.
- Ibid.
- Bob Ryan, “The Powers That Be Lakers, Pistons and Cavs Are Still the Frontrunners Heading into Playoffs,” Boston Globe, March 19, 1989.
- Larry Whiteside, “Chambers a Hot Topic: Word Spreads Coast to Coast after His 66-Point Effort,” Boston Globe, Feb. 21, 1990.
- Bird, Johnson, and MacMullan, When the Game Was Ours.
- Peter May, “Ankle Sprain Idles McHale,” Boston Globe, Feb. 15, 1991.
- Bob Ryan, “A Great Star and Good Guy,” Boston Globe, Nov. 8, 1991.
- Ibid.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Bird Laments Friend's Plight,” Boston Globe, Nov. 9, 1991.
- Larry Whiteside, “Memories of Magic,” Boston Globe, Nov. 29, 1991.
- Dan Shaughnessy, “Magic Was Gone, but the Show Went On,” Boston Globe, Nov. 30, 1991.
- Jack McCallum, Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever (New York: Ballantine Books, 2013).
- Diego Ribadeneira, “Magic Bringing AIDS Message to Burke,” Boston Globe, Feb. 25, 1992.
- Steve Springer, “An Off-the-Wall Retirement? Ceremony,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 17, 1992.
- Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals.
- Jackson, “The 1980s—for African Americans.”
- Paul M. Sniderman and Thomas Leonard Piazza, The Scar of Race (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993).
- Leslie Inniss and Joe R. Feagin, “The Cosby Show: The View from the Black Middle Class,” Journal of Black Studies 25, no. 6 (1995): 692–711.
- Devine, “Stereotypes and Prejudice.”
- For evidence of these stereotypes, see any of the previously cited work by Billings. Racial stereotypes remain; they are just presented in a more subtle manner.
- Jacco Van Sterkenburg, Annelies Knoppers, and Sonja De Leeuw, “Race, Ethnicity, and Content Analysis of the Sports Media: A Critical Reflection,” Media, Culture & Society 32, no. 5 (2010): 819–39.
- Patricia W. Linville and Gregory W. Fischer, “Exemplar and Abstraction Models of Perceived Group Variability and Stereotypicality,” Social Cognition 11, no. 1 (1993): 92–125.