LBJ-Wade not a rival revival in the classic sense

Russell had Wilt. Bird had Magic. Michael had ... nobody really, and everybody -- everybody who stood in his way. Basketball is a team sport, but in the NBA, individual rivalries make for good history and even better memories.

As you scan the basketball landscape, you see the sun setting on the great careers of Shaquille O'Neal and Tim Duncan. You see Kobe Bryant, who like Jordan has never found that one formidable rival on the Bird-Magic level. Soon, it'll be time to pass the mantle to the next guy.

Memo to D-Wade, LeBron: The measure of a player is how he performs against the best, not with the best. (Getty Images)

Or two.

A great rivalry is like the Supreme Court definition of obscenity: You know it when you see it, which brings us to LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. Rivals and friends, walking in lockstep toward modern basketball greatness, they have all the markings of the Next Great Rivalry. What a tantalizing possibility: LeBron and D-Wade, dueling for MVPs, scoring titles and trips to the Finals for the next decade or so.

Only one problem: If they're serious about playing together someday, they'll ruin it. And if both of them have been sincere in their comments from recent days and weeks about the prospect of hitting unrestricted free agency at the same time and becoming teammates, they should listen to some advice from someone who participated in one of the greatest individual rivalries in basketball history.

They should listen to a legend. Larry Legend.

"I saw this coming years ago, that all the great players will want to play on the same team," Larry Bird, now president of the Pacers, said in a phone interview this week. "And you know as well as I do that ain't gonna work. Somebody's gotta be the man. ... I never wanted to go to New York and play with Patrick Ewing or go out to L.A. and play with Magic. I wanted to play against them. There's been a change over the years."

Change is unfolding before our very eyes in the way James and Wade hang out together one night and go for each other's throat the next. You wouldn't have caught Bird and Magic breaking bread the night before playing each other. You won't see Kobe Bryant playing Wii Fit with Paul Pierce before Game 7 of the Finals.

"He knows when you get 'em down, you stomp on 'em," Bird said of Kobe. "That's why he's always been my favorite."

Kobe isn't finished chasing championships and inflicting humiliation just yet. But once the Lakers superstar begins to fade, we will be left with James and Wade as our best chance at an individual rivalry that can stand up to history. It has a chance to be great, but different.

Like Bird and Magic, they're two fierce competitors who are supremely aware of what the other is doing. Like Bird and Magic, they're dominant talents who will spend the next decade or so dueling for MVPs and championships. Like Bird and Magic, they're two marketable stars forever linked by coming into the league together -- in the 2003 draft -- and teaming up for an Olympic gold medal.

Their head-to-head matchups this season have been extraordinary; two thrillers in the span of a week earlier this month were among the best NBA games all year. LeBron's Cleveland Cavaliers won both and have taken three of four from Wade's Miami Heat, which explained the puzzled expression on Wade's face when I asked him recently about his rivalry with James.

"Rivalry?" Wade said. "If you win some and then you lose some and it's an even battle, then that's a rivalry."

Indeed, James and Wade have yet to meet in a playoff series, never mind in the conference finals. They've met head to head 19 times, with James holding the slimmest of margins (10-9), according to STATS. As long as they're both in the East, they'll only be able to dream of going head to head with a championship on the line.

"If you go through a war with somebody individually in the postseason, that helps," James said. "But every night we go out, whether we play against each other or don't play against each other, we're kind of supportive of each other getting better."

Supporting each other? Hoping the other one gets better? Greatness comes packaged differently these days. As much as they're rivals, James and Wade are friends, drawn to each other by common gifts and goals. Their personal bond has been strengthened by spending several summers as teammates with USA Basketball, including the stirring gold-medal performance in Beijing last summer.

"I've been with him more than I've been with some of my teammates in the NBA because of all the summers we've played together," Wade said.

This kind of stuff is foreign to Bird. His rivalry with Magic started with their historic duel in the 1979 NCAA championship game between Indiana State and Michigan State, the subject of CBS college basketball analyst Seth Davis' new book When March Went Mad. It only got better from there. Bird and Magic were the leading men in epic NBA Finals matchups between the Celtics and Lakers, some of the most memorable battles in the history of American team sports. There was mutual respect, but not friendship, per se.

"I always tried to distance myself from Earvin and the rest of the guys, because I just feel to have a competitive edge, you've got to dislike your opponent," Bird said. "Some guys wouldn't agree with that, but that's the way I handled it."

Johnson's publicist said he wasn't available for an interview. Discussing the renewal of the Lakers-Celtics rivalry before last year's NBA Finals, Johnson said, "I didn't have a personal rivalry against Larry. We never guarded each other. It was always Celtics vs. Lakers. When Larry beat us the first time we played in '84, I was devastated. I went into hiding for a month. I sat in the dark, I was so mad and upset. ... But we got a chance to come back in '85 and we finally beat them."

There was always mutual respect between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, but friendship? That was saved for retirement. (Getty Images)

Bird and Magic battled in three NBA Finals, with the Lakers winning in '85 and '87 and the Celtics winning in '84. To this day, Bird doesn't forgive Ralph Sampson for knocking the Lakers out of the '86 Western Conference finals, thus robbing him of another duel with his nemesis.

"We thought we had the best team," Bird said, "and we wanted to play 'em."

You heard him: Bird "thought" the Celtics had the best team, but needed to prove it against the Lakers.

"I would rather have somebody to gauge yourself against," Bird said. "You might not win as many championships, but you're sure gonna have a hell of a time when you get to the Finals."

Given that, the way the rivalry between James and Wade has played out makes Bird scratch his head. Specifically, what happened during the 2005-06 season would've made Bird's head spin -- and probably Magic's, too.

The night before an epic duel on April 1, 2006 -- a game both of them still talk about -- Wade hung out at LeBron's house. At his house! With his friends! The Cavs won 106-99, with LeBron (47 points) and Wade (44) going back and forth down the stretch.

During the playoffs, with Miami waiting to face the winner of the Cleveland-Detroit series in the Eastern Conference finals, Wade was in constant contact with James -- offering encouragement and advice on how the Pistons were defending him. Detroit won the series, and James returned the favor when Wade was battling Dallas in the Finals. Rewind 20 years to '86, when Sampson denied Magic another shot at the Celtics. Do you think Earvin was calling Larry to give him pointers?

"I didn't want to know anybody," Bird said. "I just wanted to compete against everybody. It's different now, no question about it. ... We shot commercials together throughout our career, but we didn't go out to eat and we didn't try to hang around with one another because of the edge. You always want to have the edge."

It's obvious James and Wade will have to meet in the playoffs for their rivalry to enter any kind of historic discussion. If they stay in the same conference, they'll have far more head-to-head meetings than Bird and Magic, who never changed teams and faced each other only 37 times (Magic's Lakers were 22-15). If LeBron and Wade stay together in the East, they'll play each other as often as Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, who had 142 head-to-head matchups. (Russell was 85-57 and won both of their Finals matchups, compiling nine championships to Chamberlain's one during their decade-long rivalry.)

"I learned very early in my career that the only important statistic in basketball is the final score," Russell said during All-Star weekend, when the Finals MVP trophy was appropriately named for him, the sport's greatest champion. "I dedicated my career in basketball to making sure we were on the positive end."

Poll What will LeBron James and Dwyane Wade do in July 2010?   36%  Both will stay put     19%  They'll sign with the same team     13%  Both will join new teams but not as teammates     33%  Only one will leave but not for the other's team     Total Votes: 4640

That never changes about the game, but other things do. We're only 15 months away from a watershed moment for the NBA, and for both Wade and LeBron, who purposely signed contract extensions giving them the right to become unrestricted free agents simultaneously on July 1, 2010. Neither has given more than vague hints about his intentions, and it's feasible one of them could wind up in the West, setting up years of potential Finals matchups that would solidify their rivalry. But both have openly discussed a possibility that Russell, Chamberlain, Bird, or Magic never could've imagined: being teammates.

In late January, Wade said it's "not crazy" to envision the two friends signing with the same team in 2010. Sunday night, when I asked LeBron whether he'd prefer staying in the same conference with Wade or moving to opposite coasts so they could play for titles, he said, "It doesn't matter. Whatever happens, we'll go against each other. And you know, maybe we'll go against each other in practice, I don't know. That'd be fun, wouldn't it?"

James didn't explain what he meant, but it sure seemed like another hint about his desire to be Wade's teammate instead of his nemesis. If that's what they're up to, they should proceed with caution. Bird never entertained the idea of leaving Boston, which he admits put him at a disadvantage in his contract negotiations with Red Auerbach. "I mean, how can you negotiate when you know you don't want to go anywhere?" Bird said. But there was more to it than that.

"You always hear 'em talk about how they're gonna be free agents, and maybe they'll play together. I don't buy into that," Bird said. "If you're good enough, if you're on the level that Kobe is, then give me some good players around me and let's see if we can beat all of 'em. That was my thinking. You always think it's going to be great. They always say the grass is greener. They think it is, but sometimes it's not."

Then Bird, who knows greatness when he sees it and also knows times have changed, said this: "But they're both excellent players. I'm sure they could work it out."