Glory Days

May 10, 2021
Sports Illustrated executive editor Wertheim (Blood in the Cage) offers an occasionally entertaining history of developments in sports and culture during the summer of 1984, but fails to demonstrate that they’re more than coincidental. There’s no denying the year featured noteworthy events: it marked the first NBA Finals battle between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the Chicago Bulls’ drafting of Michael Jordan, and ABC’s purchase of ESPN, which enabled the tanking sports cable network to survive and expand. From the creation of the basketball “dream team” that represented the U.S. at the Los Angeles Olympics to the rise of Vince McMahon’s WWF, Wertheim offers a sweeping look at those “pivotal” 90 days, but sacrifices depth for breadth and prizes trivia over analysis, giving cultural milestones unrelated to sports a passing glance. Though a “string of blockbusters” hit theaters that summer, for instance, he briefly touches on them and devotes only a single sentence to Ghostbusters and John Hugh’s seminal Sixteen Candles. Similarly bewildering is the narrative’s clunky prose (“thermodynamics of celebrity makes for an inexact science”), which tends to overshadow more exciting passages, such as Wertheim’s detailing of Jordan’s “singular talent” for dunking, and the way he would “stuff the ball through, violently yet elegantly.” This feels like a missed opportunity.