NBA still thrived from the addition of former ABA players plus adding Michael Jordan along with Bird and Magic.

The 80's decade is when the NBA made its big break through, with the arrival of Magic and Bird for the 1979-80 season, to join Julis Erving, arguably the league's most exciting player at that time.

The leauge also was helped from more exciting college players entering the L, most notably Michael Jordan who arrived in 1984, who would go onto become one of the world's greatest sports icons along with the likes of Ralph Sampson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson and Danny Manning.

However just important as the players were David Stern, who became the commisioner on Feb 1, 1984, who helped improve the league's image with strong marketing, the creation of the salary cap to prevent richer teams from dominating the league and other events such as the NBA All Star Weekend in 1984 (with its most exciting event being the Slam Dunk Contest) and the NBA Lottery which started in 1985 where the top spots in the draft were settled by chance.

Also several strong teams and rivalries emerged, most notably the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics, along with the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird rivalry, along with the Philadelphia Sixers (which could have continued into the later 80's and early 90's were it not for some disasterous trades made by team management) and the birth of the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons, starting in the 87 playoffs.

With the individual star players, strong teams and excellent leauge management by David Stern, the NBA took off in the 80' and never looked back and was now considered on par with Major League Baseball and the National Football League and even  made a serious challenge to the Nataionl Leauge Football Leauge to become America's favorite league.

This is as far back as I watched. Magic/Bird was fun and the league was very competitve.