Be glad Heathcote fostered Madness

Final Four Saturday remains the best day in sports even if it doesn’t settle anything – maybe because it doesn’t settle anything and so much anticipation remains.

But 30 years ago, it only had the potential for being the worst day.

For one thing, the Ivy League team that had crashed the party was going to get bombed back to Brainiacstan – that was a given. And if the wrong result occurred in the other game, then the world wasn’t going to see Magic vs. Bird, the pairing that turned college basketball into a March obsession and saved the NBA at the same time.

Yesteryear caught up with us yesterday, which means that somebody up there has a sensational sense of timing – and geography.

As Michigan State was kicking Connecticut out of the NCAA basketball tournament on Saturday, Earvin Johnson sat three rows up behind the Spartans’ bench, reveling in the spectacle. In front of him sat Jud Heathcote, who coached Magic and his teammates to the title 30 years ago and in that narrow sense is the godfather of March Madness. That it all happened an hour and a half down the freeway from the MSU campus, in front of more than 70,000 herded into Detroit’s Ford Field – and with Heathcote having willed himself through two open-heart surgeries in the past year to see it – was almost too much in the way of destiny.

Except for this:

“Detroit,” Heathcote said last week before taking off from Spokane, “is maybe the worst place you could think of to have a Final Four.”

Well, they didn’t give him an honesty-ectomy when they had him on the operating table, that’s for sure.

The Final Four is Jud’s party. In fact, there is an actual Jud Party on Friday, hosted by the man himself at whatever watering hole can accommodate up to 300 of his former players, coaching protégés and guests. This year was No. 29 in that series, though he’s been to 36 straight Final Fours – none more memorable than 1979, of course.

There have been no such intersections of hype and opportunity since, nor will there be again.

The great game-changing players that followed have either jumped directly to the pros (Kobe Bryant, LeBron James), were still enveloped in team-oriented systems (Michael Jordan) or never made it to the Final Four (Shaquille O’Neal). The media have sucked the marrow out of every story angle long before the title game, and the players’ games are of no mystery, having been aired and re-aired over ESPN2UClassic and its many spinoffs.

But we’re still discovering things about the first meeting of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, most recently in When March Went Mad, a new book by Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis.

And what did we learn?

“The way he wrote the book,” Heathcote cracked, “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to play for me.”

Jud knows he might not be every player’s cup of Gatorade, but disputes the notion that his coachly sermons were profane (“loud and critical, yes”) or that he sang only the one note. The man can make you laugh and players discovered that – if they had some hard bark themselves.

Let’s face it, Magic chose Michigan State – and having grown up in Lansing, he saw enough Spartans games to know what he was getting into.

“I tell everyone he came because of my personality,” Heathcote said. “But really, his mind had him at Michigan because they were the established program, but his heart was always at Michigan State.”

Just as Bird’s heart was more comfortable in out-of-the-way Indiana State than as the focus of Bob Knight’s withering glare at Indiana.

No one knew how much their meeting in Salt Lake City would impact the basketball landscape, but Heathcote – who did not see Bird play live until the semifinals – understood these were not just the two best players of their generation, but two with skills who could make passing seem as cool as scoring. Everyone else seemed to sense something, too – media credentials at that Final Four doubled for the previous high. The title game was the most-watched basketball event in television history, and CBS cashed in – first by leveraging the rivalry the next year in its NBA broadcasts, and a year later by snaking the college rights away from NBC with a 60 percent boost in rights fees.

The game itself was no one for the ages, but that had something to do with the defense Heathcote concocted to neutralize Bird – though he does not feel his contribution is as unappreciated as some do.

“The coach gets more credit and more blame in the college game than he deserves,” he said. “It’s still a players’ game.”

Which is not to say he’s without regret.

“I always thought I’d get back to the Final Four two or three more times,” he said, “and I never made it.

“Then I look at two of my best coaching friends, my mentor Marv Harshman and Gene Keady at Purdue, and neither of them made a Final Four, which is a disappointment for them – and for me.”

Still, he was a central character in the most important one – and sees to it that the party goes on.