This came up in another thread, but I thought it was an interesting hypothetical worthy of its own thread. Magic Johnson said that had the Bulls won the coin flip and not the Lakers that he would have returned to school and come out the following year i.e. 1980. Boston had the 1st and 13th picks in the 1980 draft. It traded both of those picks to the Warriors for Robert Parish and the #3 pick. The Warriors took Joe Barry Carroll at #1 and Rickey Brown at #13, while Boston ended up with Kevin McHale at #3.
So let's say that the Bulls do end up with the #1 pick in 1979 and Magic does actually go back to school. Everything else is the same. If you are the Boston Celtics do you keep 1 and draft Magic or do you still make the trade for Parish and then draft McHale?
Would you rather have Magic and Rickey Brown or Parish and McHale?
What an interesting thing to ponder.
If Magic doesn't end up on the Lakers I think the Bird/McHale/Parish teams would have won at least five rings.
On the other hand, I think the Celtics would certainly have held onto the pick and taken Magic if they had the chance.
On balance I think the game would have suffered. That Magic/Bird rivalry really saved pro basketball and made it one of the national games. (Remember that before them, the finals were on tape delay and pre-empted!).
Not sure that Bird and Magic would have clicked either. They were both super-competitive and very young, and had a fair amount of animosity toward each other.
Who knows, maybe their egos get the best of them and the whole thing blows up, and one demands a trade. Or at the least they don't play as well with each other as one could imagine.
Of course if that had happened the whole thing would have been 100% Magic's fault.
