Rivals
On Thursday evening the NBA finals open in Boston, with the Celtics facing the Lakers. These fabled franchises have met eleven times in the NBA finals, but this is the first time since 1987. Back in the ’80s when they met three times in the finals, Larry Bird led the Celtics and Magic Johnson led the Lakers. Their personal rivalry started in the 1979 NCAA championship game, which was won by Magic and Michigan State. These two champions gave us the most intense rivalry of the ’80s. Will the Kobe Bryant led Lakers dominate or will the trio of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen prove to be too much for the Lakers? Will Phil Jackson win another championship ring and go one up on the legendary Red Auerbach, who must be tuning in for this series? This is what great rivalries are all about and I trust that most of the nation will be caught up in the intensity of the battle.
Over the years in business, I came to have a high regard and healthy respect for my best competitors. They are the ones that are able to help you take your game to another level. I started my media career in sales and marketing and to this day I can recite the legendary battles for market share with our competitors. In the ’80s for example, when I ran the special interest consumer magazines for Capital Cities/ABC, two of our titles, High Fidelity & Modern Photography, competed directly with Stereo Review & Popular Photography from Ziff-Davis, which was led by the publishing legend Bill Ziff. In the ’90s when I joined IDG’s InfoWorld, we battled PC Week, another title from Ziff-Davis. It is not the easy victories but the hard-fought ones that build character and over time produce winning franchises. These are the ones that you reflect on, as you look back on your career. You also recall the teammates that made these hard-fought battles worthwhile. You remember the days that you went to war and covered each other’s backs.
Several years ago, after a pleasant lunch in San Francisco with a former rival, I remember walking down the street and having him tell me that the ZD team always believed that they were the better team than the IDG team. I challenged him on this and we both understood that even though we were long removed from the IDG vs. ZD rivalry, those were years and battles that would live on for both of us forever.