1980 NBA Finals - Game 6
Friday, May 16, 1980
A twenty-year-old rookie replaces the best center in the league in the Finals at no notice, and scores 42. The first title of the Showtime era.
123
Los Angeles Lakers
107
Philadelphia 76ers
Statistics
Magic Johnson
Los Angeles Lakers
Julius Erving
Philadelphia 76ers
Visualisation
The stats that tell the story.
The Lakers led three games to two and played Game 6 in Philadelphia.
In Game 5 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had rolled his ankle, left the floor, then returned to score the winning points on one leg. Nobody thought he could play again three days later.
He did not even make the trip.
Paul Westhead then made a decision that should have been an admission of weakness: send Magic Johnson, a six-foot-nine point guard aged twenty, to jump centre against Caldwell Jones.
What follows has no equivalent.
Magic plays the low post, takes the rebounds, brings the ball up himself, returns to the block, steps out beyond the arc. He finishes with 42 points and 15 rebounds, carrying a role he had never held at this level.
Philadelphia hold on until half-time by attacking precisely that weakened interior. Then the third quarter, 33-23, closes the game out.
Jamaal Wilkes scores 37 the same night, which would have been the story of any other Finals.
The buzzer sounds on 123-107, on the road, without the team's best player.
It is the first of Showtime's five titles and the founding scene of everything that follows.
It fixed an idea that took twenty-five years to become ordinary: positions are not boxes. Magic showed one player could do everything in a single game, something the league would not really ask for again until LeBron James.
It also created a narrative injustice. Kareem was the Lakers' best player throughout the series, and the game he missed is the one replayed on a loop.
At twenty, Magic had a college title and an NBA title. He would win four more.
Timeline
The plays that defined this game.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar rolled his ankle in Game 5. He stays in Los Angeles. Paul Westhead starts Magic Johnson at center for the tip, a choice nobody takes seriously at the time.
Play: Post-up for Magic, kick-out to the wing
A point guard on the block forces the defense to choose: either Caldwell Jones stays alone and Magic passes, or the help arrives and the wing is free
Philadelphia score 31 in the second quarter and move back ahead. The plan is simple: attack the vacant interior.
The game turns in the third quarter, 33-23 to Los Angeles. Magic plays all five positions in one game, from the low block to bringing the ball up.
Jamaal Wilkes finishes with 37 points, a total almost nobody remembers. It was the second best performance of the night.
123-107. Magic Johnson ends with 42 points, 15 rebounds and 7 assists, and becomes the only rookie in history voted Finals MVP.
Magic Johnson
Los Angeles Lakers
Julius Erving
Philadelphia 76ers