Hey, and welcome back to this day in sports history.

A member of the Sports History Network, you can find more information and a whole lot more podcasts@sportshistorynetwork.com.

it's September 12, and on this day in 1979, Magic Johnson made his NBA debut.

It went well, but the rookie got a little bit overzealous after the game.

It was the opening of the NBA season in 1979 and the Los Angeles Lakers started out on the road against the San Diego Clippers.

Irvin Magic Johnson was eager to make his debut.

He'd been the number one pick in the 1979 draft after winning the NCAA championship back in March.

Now, if you're like me and you wonder how a team like the Lakers, which finished as the 7th best team in the NBA the season prior, was selecting first in the 79 draft.

Well, they got very fortunate.

Their first round pick belonged to the New Orleans Jazz, but they had acquired Gale Goodrich from the Lakers in the 77 season.

And this was the compensatory pick.

And since the Jazz had finished dead last in the league in the 78 79 season, the first pick belonged to the Lakers.

I mean, was there a better place for magic to wind up than La?

I mean, who's to say that he wouldn't have lit up New Orleans with his smile and style and kept the jazz playing in the crescent city for a couple more years?

But it just wouldn't have been the same, right?

So anyway, on this night, it was his debut and it was a good one.

He was in the starting lineup and just did what Magic did his entire career.

Get out on the fast break, find the open man, mix in a little razzle with the dazzle, and then deliver a pinpoint pass for a bucket or score it himself.

Magic finished the night with 26 points, but the game ended with some dramatics.

World be free was on fire for the Clippers.

He scored 46 points with his last bucket coming with under 10 seconds left.

And that put the Clippers up by one.

That set up the final play.

And here's Brent Musperger calling the action on that night for CB's Ford.

Sends it to Kareem sky.

Hook up and good.

Lakers win.

Score it.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar has given the Los Angeles Lakers a victory.

And Magic Johnson is out there celebrating like they just won the NCAA championship.

Hanlan Huntley is out there.

We've got magic man and Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

Abdul Jabbar.

And yeah, magic got a little excited.

His teammates called him Buck, as in young Buck.

And he was hugging Kareem so hard that Kareem told the rookie, buck, quit choking me.

We got 81 more of these.

But it couldn't quell the enthusiasm of magic.

He continued to play with that joy every night.

Now, he didn't exactly celebrate every win like that from this point on, but he always was having fun on the other side of the country.

The other player the league was excited about, Larry Bird, was making his debut in Boston.

Now, Bird had actually been selected in the 1978 NBA draft, but decided to go back to Illinois State for his senior year.

The Celtics kept his rights for a full 365 days, and thankfully for Boston fans, general manager Red Auerbach saw the value of the kidde and paid him more money than he'd ever paid a rookie before.

On the final day before Bird was set to go back into the draft, the Celtics hosted the Houston Rockets, and Byrd had a little less conspicuous start to his NBA career than magic.

It wasn't bad.

He scored 14 on six of twelve shooting, and the Celtics had balanced scoring with eight guys in double figures.

This night in Boston was actually known for something completely different, though.

The NBA had just installed the three point shot.

Boston's Chris Ford is the answer to the trivia question, who made the first three point basket in the NBA on this night in 1989?

It was the Herschel Walker trade, and depending on your perspective, this was either the best trade or the worst trade in NFL history.

But it certainly changed the trajectory of one of the teams involved.

In 89, Herschel Walker was a Dallas Cowboy, and the Cowboys were a really bad team.

They'd finished the 1988 season with a 313 record, which led to the firing of Tom Landry.

At this point in the 89 season, they were zero five under new head coach Jimmy Johnson and new GM and owner of the team Jerry Jones.

The season was pretty much a lost cause, so they wanted to make a change, and they decided to put their best player, Herschel Walker, on the market.

Several teams were interested, and he nearly wound up with the Cleveland Browns.

But it was the Minnesota Vikings that won out for Walker's services.

The Vikes saw Walker as that last key piece to making a Super bowl run.

After two close calls in previous years, the Cowboys first gave Hersl one and a quarter million dollars to go, calling it an exit bonus.

Then the Cowboys packaged Walker and three draft picks.

Well, it actually turned out to be four draft picks because one of the Vikings players in the initial trade did not want to go play for the pitiful Cowboys.

So the Cowboys shipped him to San Diego in exchange for a fifth round draft pick, which they gave to Minnesota.

The Cowboys received four linebackers Jesse Solomon and David Howard, defensive back Isaac Holt and defensive end Alex Stewart, plus three draft picks in the upcoming draft.

Now, Johnson was not interested in the players.

He got in the deal.

He wanted the draft picks.

And there was a caveat in the trade.

If the Cowboys cut any of the four players, they would get compensatory draft picks from the Vikings, which is what he eventually did, receiving five picks from Minnesota because of that.

So in essence, it was Herschel for eight draft picks, and it drained what Minnesota could do in the next three drafts.

Three of the players they were able to draft with those picks turned out to be Emmett Smith, Russell Maryland and Darren Woodson.

Of course, if you've followed the NFL for the past 35 years, you know how this turned out.

The Cowboys turned their franchise around, and they won three Super Bowls in the nineties.

While the Minnesota Vikings have still never won a Super Bowl, Walker only spent two and a half years in Minnesota before being shipped off to Philadelphia.

And on this day in 2019, Elliot Kipchoge pushed the boundaries of what is humanly possible.

Kipchoge was in Vienna, Austria to run in a special event just for him.

He was already the world record holder in the marathon, setting a blistering pace at the Berlin Marathon in 2016 with a winning time of 2 hours, 1 minute, 39 seconds.

But this was a special event, and it was set up just for him to run in it.

It was the Ineos 159 Challenge.

The weather was perfect, sub 50 degrees to start under overcast skies.

He also had seven pace runners with him.

In addition, there was a pace car set up in front that projected a laser grid down on the road to give visual reference to the pace required to break the two hour barrier.

And Kipchoge had laced up the controversial Nike Alpha flies to run the distance.

So not a normal race.

And no matter the time, this would not be considered the world record marathon time due to all of the special circumstances.

But Kipchoge still had to run at a 13.2 miles per hour pace to cover the distance in less than 2 hours.

And he did, crossing the line in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 40 seconds to become the first man to ever run 26.2 miles in under 2 hours.

And it's time for today's got nothing to do with sports.

Fun fact, there was a brief period in the playing card industry when there were 65 cards in a deck and a fifth suit.

The cards were introduced in the 1930s and the fifth suit was eagles.

The card sets didn't do so well, though, and were soon discontinued.

That's all I've got for you today.

I'll be back tomorrow with another edition of this day in sports history.

This has been an original thrive suite production.