Reilly: On April 11, you both will be at the premiere of a Broadway play about your lives -- "Magic/Bird." Larry, how many Broadway shows have you been to in your life?
(Sounds of Magic breaking up laughing.)
Bird (laughing): Uh, well (long pause while Magic laughs) ... uh ... thousands?
Reilly: Zero?
Bird: Yeah, zero.
(Magic now has his hands on the floor, laughing.)
Reilly: It's just, you don't seem like a Broadway play kind of guy.
Bird: I'm not! I couldn't even tell you where Broadway is!
Magic: Ahhhhh!
Bird (laughing): I didn't even go to my school play! And I was in it!
Reilly: Did you read the script?
Bird: Well, my wife read it to me. It's good. When it first came up, it was like anything else. I said, 'I ain't doing that.' But Earvin called me and said, "We gotta do this."
Magic: It's so cool! I'm a black kid from the ghetto and he's a hick from Indiana. And now we have a Broadway play. How does this happen?
~
The two men are so alike -- both grew up poor in the Midwest in big families (Magic had nine siblings, Bird five), with blue-collar fathers. (Magic's dad worked at a car factory, Bird's at a piano factory.) Each has three kids. Each has adopted kids (Bird two, Magic one.) Each married his college sweetheart. And yet they're as different as butter and butterflies.
~
Reilly: What kinds of things would the other guy's fans do to you?
Bird: They'd be out there shaking our bus and everything. But one night, they beat us and we're walking out to the bus and this little Mexican guy ran up and just punched me right in the nose! Just jumped up and punched me right in the nose! And that little guy took off so fast. It was almost like it didn't really happen. I said to my teammates, "Did you see that? That Mexican guy punched me in the nose!"
~
Reilly: You two changed the game in so many ways. Your 1979 NCAA final in Salt Lake is still the highest-rated college basketball game ever. After that game, March Madness really caught fire. Do you ever wish you had a cut of all that money you made for the NCAA?
Bird: Oh, we got it.
Magic: We got some of it. But for us, it wasn't about money. We would've played for free, me and Larry.
~
Magic: Larry was just so smart. He attacked you from so many different angles. And with Larry, you had to guard him five and 10 feet past the (3-point) line. Five feet past the line was nothing for Larry. One time, I was hurt. I was on the bench. Larry comes by during warm-ups and says, "Don't worry, Earvin. I'm gonna put on a show for you." I think he scored 40 that night and I think he only missed two shots. He'd get that walk goin' and that blond hair floppin' and you knew you were gonna be in for a long, long night.
~
Bird: Lemme tell you, this LeBron is about as good as I've ever seen. I seen players that were so unselfish like him, but not as good as him.
Magic: I think he's the best player in the NBA right now.
~
Reilly: Why didn't you sign Jeremy Lin? (Bird is the president of basketball operations for the Indiana Pacers.)
Bird: I don't care what anybody says, nobody knew what that kid was going to be. I only heard about him one time. Our Northeast scout came to me two years ago. It's the only time I ever heard one word about the kid.
Reilly: What did the scout say?
Bird: "This kid can really play."
Reilly: And ... ?
Bird: I didn't want somebody on the team who's that much smarter than me!
