and ten rebounds per game for the Boston Celtics.
Bird’s impact was felt much more in the standings:
During the 1978-1979 season, the Celtics won twenty-
nine games, but with Bird they won sixty-one games
the following year. The team also advanced to the
NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, losing to Phila-
delphia.
Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics took home
many championships during the 1980’s. Los An-
geles won five NBA championships and played for
three others. Boston won three titles and played for
two others. The most intense period of this rivalry
took place between the 1983-1984 and 1986-1987
seasons. Over that four-year stretch, the teams met
three times in the NBA finals; the Lakers won twice.
Toward the end of the decade, basketball’s man
of the 1990’s took center stage. Michael Jordan
joined the NBA in 1984, a few months after helping
the U.S. men’s basketball team win an Olympic gold
medal. He was an instant superstar, averaging more
than 28 points per game for the Chicago Bulls. Jor-
dan won multiple scoring titles over the remainder
of the decade, but he and his teammates could not
get past Boston in the middle of the decade, nor De-
troit at the end of it, to advance to the NBA finals.
Jordan and the Bulls would dominate the league in
the 1990’s.
Hockey The Lakers and Celtics were basketball’s
dynasties in the 1980’s. In hockey, the dynasty tag was
owned by the New York Islanders at the beginning of
the decade and by the Edmonton Oilers at the end
of it. The Islanders won the Stanley Cup from 1980
through 1983. The Oilers lost the 1983 finals, but
they quickly rebounded and were hockey’s best team
in 1984 (defeating the Islanders and denying New
York a fifth consecutive title), 1985, 1987, 1988, and
1990.
The Oilers had all the makings of celebrity status:
They were young, cocky, and brash, and they had
perhaps the greatest player in the history of the
sport—Wayne Gretzky. During the 1980’s, he scored
more than two hundred points in a single season
four times, scored more than fifty goals in a season
nine times, and won the league MVP award eight
straight times (nine times overall).
The Oilers began to be dismantled in 1988, when
owner Peter Pocklington agreed to trade Gretzky to
the Los Angeles Kings. Although Gretzky never won
another championship in his career, his superstar
status ensured that hockey would survive on the
West Coast. Sold-out crowds became the norm in
Los Angeles.Tennis and Golf Women’s tennis was the purview
of Martina Navratilova during the 1980’s. She won
fifteen of her eighteen grand slam singles titles, in-
cluding the most prestigious, Wimbledon, on six dif-
ferent occasions. She also won the singles title at the
U.S. Open four times, in 1983, 1984, 1986, and 1987.
Two men repeatedly etched their names into the
golf record books in the 1980’s. Tom Watson won
three of his five Open Championships, his only U.S.
Open title, and the second of his two Masters cham-
pionships during the decade. He also was named the
PGA Golfer of the Year three times. The “Golden
Bear,” Jack Nicklaus, also proved he still had some
bite left in him. The dominant golfer of the 1970’s
won three more majors in the 1980’s, including the
1986 Masters. He rallied from a four-shot deficit on
the final day to win the crown.Impact The 1980’s saw professional and college
football replace baseball as America’s most popular
spectator sport, while the superstars of the NBA
helped to elevate the league to equal status with the
NFL and MLB. The Olympics also experienced a sig-
nificant change, as the 1988 Summer Games marked
the first time that professional athletes were allowed
to take part in the Games.Further Reading
Craig, Roger, and Matt Maiocco.Tales from the San
Francisco 49ers Sideline. New York: Sports Pub-
lishing, 2004. This is a somewhat typical but enter-
taining sports account.
Elway, John, Marc Serota, and Elise Glading.Elway.
Media, Pa.: Benchmark Press, 1998. An easy-to-
read book. Not the best choice for a scholarly proj-
ect, but it provides a glimpse at Elway as a person
and an athlete.
Feinstein, John.A Season on the Brink: A Year with
Bobby Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers. New York: Si-
mon & Schuster, 1987. This remains one of the
most popular sports books of all time, chronicling
the legendary basketball coach and his team.
Ironically, this book covers the 1985-1986 Indiana
season. One year later, the Hoosiers won the na-
tional championship.
Guttmann, Allen.A Histor y of the Olympic Games.2d
ed. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002.The Eighties in America Sports 907