YouTube Gold: Kentucky Eliminates Magic Johnson And Michigan State In The NCAA Tournament
But Magic would be back soon enough.
Magic Johnson is now considered a giant of the game, a legend and a guy who is seen as an inevitable winner. It wasn’t always that way though. Even Magic had to start somewhere and had to learn how to win big games.
When he was a senior, Johnson was seen as one of the three best seniors in the country, ut probably the third best. Ahead of him were Albert King, who chose Maryland, and Gene Banks, who of course became a legend at Duke.
And as a freshman, both Johnson and Banks lost to Kentucky in the NCAA tournament.
Michigan State got UK first in the Elite Eight and sadly for Johnson and the Spartans, lost to the Wildcats, 52-49.
Two games later, Banks and Duke would fall to Kentucky, 92-88.
The next year, Johnson would meet Indiana State and Larry Bird in the championship game, which Michigan State would win, setting up one of the greatest rivalries in sports history. We think it’s still the highest rated college game of all time.