As strong as I appeared to be, I still needed a friend to just say, 'Hey man, I'm here, I'm supporting you. 'Both Larry and I are very strong, strong-willed, strong-minded,' he says. Johnson said he needed Bird in that moment - and he knows he can count on him, even if they see each other only once a year. But when I got that call that's the one time I can honestly say I didn't feel like playing.' But still - I was a gamer, I loved game day I couldn't wait to get down to the gym.

But for some reason, when he told me he was going to be fine, I believed him because everything he's ever said had really come to be true, as far as winning and winning championships. At that time, HIV was known to be a death sentence. We played against each other for a long time. 'It was probably one of the worst feelings you could ever imagine,' he says. As strong as I appeared to be, I still needed a friend to just say, 'Hey man, I'm here, I'm supporting you, just do what you got to do to be here for a long time.' If you like competition you want to play against the best, and that's what we wanted to do.' 'People wanted to see us play against one another. 'We did it in a way where we caught the imagination of everyone in America,' he says. The rivalry between the two teams started in the 1950s - and Bird says he and Johnson 'rekindled the fire.' 'I even hated him more because I knew he could beat me.' 'We're so competitive anyway that there was a dislike there,' Johnson tells NPR's Michele Norris. Johnson says that after competing against each other in the 1979 NCAA championship game, they joined NBA teams that already hated each other.

In a new book, When the Game Was Ours, co-written by Jackie MacMullan, Bird and Johnson detail their love and hate for one another over the years.

The modern-day NBA would not be what it is without the era's superstars - Hall of Famers Larry Bird of the Celtics and the Lakers' Earvin 'Magic' Johnson - and the rivalry that elevated the entire league. In the 1980s, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers dominated professional basketball, winning a combined eight titles during a decade that was known as the 'golden era' of the NBA. They detail their relationship in the new book When the Game Was Ours. Retired NBA superstars Magic Johnson (left) and Larry Bird, who had an intense rivalry during the 1980s that captured the nation, also developed a close friendship.

When the Game Was Ours by Larry Bird