Essay On Magic And Bird

In the movie series Magic and Bird from HBO, underlying themes of sport psychology such as personality and personality structure are revealed in two star athletes Larry Bird and Ervin “Magic” Johnson in the 1970s. The movie is set in a time period when there was a lot of chaos in the world with racial segregation and later by the time the two athletes appear in the NBA racial immigration. In the beginning during the men’s high school careers there is little to no focus on the rules and regulations of the basketball game: in fact the two athletes admitted to playing “rough” basketball. The lack of focus on rules and regulations resulted in an athletes personality having a large role on their responses throughout each game situation and this

Many argue that the athletes were equal in performance and some argue that Larry Bird received more publicity because he was a white man playing a “black mans sport.” However, to me, it is evident that Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were both from small towns, both hard workingmen that had nothing handed to them easily especially when it came to money and basketball. The two men’s physical core of personality are exactly the same; dedicated, determined, hard working individuals with a passion for basketball but also a passion to fulfill the shoes of a rival from the east of Boston to the west of Los Angeles. One thing that stuck out to me throughout the movie was the reference to Erwin as an individual and the reference to Magic as a individual almost as if they were two different people. This was Ervin Johnson’s way to express his role-related behavior. In Ervin’s mind when Magic was on the court or even in Los Angeles he was aggressive, competitive and media loving but that when he was away from the Los Angeles the Ervin he knew would never would forget his instilled values of compassion and love and that he was the “good guy” everyone liked and wanted to