Lessons from When March Went Mad

March is coming.

And with it, March Madness, the annual men’s and women’s NCAA college basketball tournaments where fans consume 12 hours of hoops at a time, inhale unfathomable quantities of beers and wings … and yes, some guys even get vasectomies to optimize their couch time.

But March wasn’t always so mad.

In 1979, a single game realigned the sport’s trajectory. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson kicked off a personal rivalry in the championship game that put themselves, the NCAA tournament, and soon thereafter, the NBA, on a new path to fame and fortune.

That’s the backdrop for college basketball analyst Seth Davis’ book, When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball.

The book chronicles the rise of Magic and Bird, who’s personalities, background, and paths to greatness couldn’t be more different — and that contrast bound them together forever.

Bird, from French Lick, Indiana, dropped out less than one year after arriving at Indiana University. He traded his Crimson and Cream jersey for a florescent work vest, working a city maintenance job before coaches at Indiana State slowly talked him into giving hoops another try.

Johnson, on the other hand, was a high school teenage celebrity in quasi-metropolitan Lansing, Michigan. The press conference in which he selected Michigan State over Michigan kicked off a two-year celebration of his talent and charisma in the state’s capitol. Magic loved the limelight. Bird loathed it.

The book culminates in the 1979 title game matchup which supercharged the sport’s popularity. In all, if you’re a fan of college basketball—even if only in March—When March Went Mad is fun tale of the first big chapter for two emerging superstars who would carry their on-court battles into the NBA Finals three times in the 1980s.

Find the game you can’t stop playing

“When I was younger I played for the fun of it, like any other kid,” Bird said. “I just don’t know what kept me going and going and going. I remember we used to practice in the gym in high school. Then, on the way home, we’d stop and play on the playgrounds until eight o’clock. I played when I was cold and my body was aching and I was so tired . . . and I don’t know why, I just kept playing and playing.”

The game you can’t stop playing is the one you’ll win, in the long run.

I don’t know what that is for you. For me, it’s two things: going to the gym, and reading. I even mash them together sweating and swiping Kindle pages while I chug away on the elliptical. I when I write about those books I read, well, that’s a pretty good virtuous circle: cardio, learning, creating.

I’ll keep that game going.

Hold on loosely

“Larry Bird’s celebrity burgeoned, his experience on the garbage truck would draw considerable interest, as well as a smattering of elitist derision. Larry, however, never saw it as beneath him. “I loved that job,” he said in 1988. “It was outdoors, you were around your friends. Picking up brush, cleaning up. I felt like I was really accomplishing something. How many times are you riding around your town and you say to yourself, Why don’t they fix that? Why don’t they clean the streets up? And here I had the chance to do that. I had the chance to make my community look better.””

As much as Bird loved basketball, he was willing—and even preferred at one point—to walk away from hoops completely to pick up trash and paint park benches.

Choose your game, and love it. But not too much.