NBA Store
666 Fifth Ave. at 52nd St.
Tuesday, December 8, free, 5:30 – 7:00
212-515-6221
www.nba.com/nycstore
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com
Local basketball fans haven’t had much to smile about this season, as the Knicks and Nets battle it out for lottery position in next year’s draft and the Knicks keep dreaming that LeBron James will be leaving Cleveland. (Note to Knicks — keep dreaming.) But if it’s a b-ball smile you’re after, then head over to the NBA Store in Midtown today to meet the one and only Magic Johnson, who can still smile like nobody’s business. Johnson is out on the road in support of his latest book, WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 2009, $26), written with his archnemesis and longtime friend, Larry Bird. The stellar rivals redefined the game in the late 1970s and 1980s, from the 1979 NCAA championship pitting Magic’s Michigan State Spartans against Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores through classic NBA finals in 1984, 1985, and 1987. Cowritten with journalist Jackie MacMullan, WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS looks back at a very different time, when two supreme players left it all out on the court, day after day. We may never see their like again.