Where were you 20 years ago? Back on March 30, 1981, Dick Enberg and Billy Packer, two-thirds of the best television broadcast team that ever was, were in pretty much the same place they happened to be on March 30, 2001 -- courtside at the Final Four.

Today, Enberg was working on a feature piece for CBS about the third member of the old Basketeers, the late and extremely great Al McGuire, while Packer was kibitzing with coaches and writers; for them and for the teams out on the Metrodome court it was merely a practice day.

Two decades back, however, March 30 was Monday, Big Dance Time. In Philadelphia, Enberg and Packer, Bob Knight and Dean Smith, Indiana and North Carolina, all were preparing for the championship game of the NCAA tournament. Isiah Thomas and Randy Wittman -- both now coaches in the NBA -- would lead the Hoosiers to the title that night, while Sam Perkins -- still now a player in the NBA, for godsakes -- took the loss, setting the stage for his own championship the following year when he was joined by a fellow named Jordan.

It was the last year of NBC's contract to televise the tournament, thus the final game for the Enberg-Packer-McGuire triumvirate. But that landmark championship game came this close to being called off -- this being the intensity of an explosive 22-caliber bullet that simply didn't explode when would-be assassin John Hinckley, waiting outside a Washington, D.C., hotel, shot it into the President of the United States.

Two decades on from a Final Four touched by tragedy, herewith the parallax views of the Boys in the Booth:

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PACKER: We were walking down the ramp and some fella hollers down to us: "What do you think about Reagan?" And Al says: "Yeah, he's a great president!" Or something like that. Typical Al. So the fella says, "No. Didn't you hear? He's been shot!" And Al says to me: "Watch out. This is going to be interesting."

ENBERG: As I arrived at the [Spectrum], I kept asking everybody: anything more on what's happened? What's the news? What really went down? How is he? How serious was the occasion? It was like describing a plane wreck, or any terrible event. There was very little talk about basketball. All the strategies, emotions, the historical significance of the national championship were all lost, to the wind. I remember very vividly just sitting there saying, I can't believe they are going to play this game. How can this happen? The President may well die tonight and we are going to play a silly basketball game?

PACKER: For me it was a great experience from a historical standpoint to watch television interact with the [NCAA] committee. And for the first time in my life I realized that television really wasn't calling the shots. Don Ohlmeyer [NBC executive producer] walked in and quickly commanded us to get to a corner and start thinking about what we'd say and how to react to the moment, and I was just captivated by the whole thing. Then Al grabs me and says "Let's go get a hot dog." I say, "Al, I got to go to the corner." He says "Billy, this is so far over our heads, we'll have nothing to do with this. News will handle it. When they decide to play the game, then we'll do our thing. But that's it. In the meantime, let's go get a dog." And of course he was right. Al was always right. Basically I went and sat in a corner and observed how Wayne Duke [Big Ten commissioner and tournament chair], the guy in charge, took over. And how NBC had nothing to do with whether the game would go on.

ENBERG: After the Kennedy assassination, I guess we all should have been inured to this. But I wasn't. Mentally, emotionally, everything shut down. I couldn't believe they were going to play this thing until we found out the President's true state, his health. The game itself has always been a blur to me. We have this technique in movies and television called a "swish pan" where as time goes by, there's just one big swish. That's how I still see that game. I know Indiana won. But I couldn't really tell you who the players were, or even the stars. I remember it wasn't until the middle of the first half that even the crowd became serious about cheering. They felt as our NBC host, Bryant Gumbel, and myself did, that the game shouldn't be played. I was stunned at even being in this experience.

PACKER: Another perfect Al story: Gumbel was kind of new to this whole thing then. He was obviously the guy leading off the show, he'd be the one taking the country from this somber news to the sports part of the evening, the game environment. They would tell him "Bryant, you have one minute." Then a little while later they'd tell him, "No, you got 30 seconds." Then it might change to 45 seconds. Back up to two minutes. Back down. It was total chaos. So when it was time to go on, this young guy, new to the deal just came on and went through it like a dream. And I will never forget Al grabbed me and said: "Billy, this guy is a pro. He's a PRO, Billy. Unbelievable job! PRO job! What'd you say his name was?"

ENBERG: It wasn't until Reagan came out of surgery -- what, early in the evening? -- that we were all convinced the game would be played. As I remember, the President paraphrased W.C. Fields' famous line: "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia." Which not only eased everybody's fears but made Wayne Duke and all the other NCAA officials extremely happy.

PACKER: That just showed everyone what an amazing person Reagan was and how much he had the full life in perspective. The way it came back to us was that he was not in danger, so we went on with the broadcast in that frame of mind and continued it through the game. We felt that hey, the guy probably got nicked or something. He's okay. To be honest, I never thought about it during the course of the game. We never realized until weeks after just how serious that shot had been.

ENBERG: Some would argue that in times of tragedy we need distractions such as sport. It was Isiah Thomas' moment. He showed the world what a tremendous talent he was and would be. But to be honest, after the game was over, it wasn't a matter of saying: "Wow, Indiana! National champions!" And I had a bias. I did my graduate work at Indiana. I was the first announcer at the Indiana University sports network. I was happy for all my friends at Indiana. But when I returned to the hotel, it wasn't to talk about "Hey, Indiana won another." It was to quickly get to a television and find out the latest news of President Reagan's shooting.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.