TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111891/1118107.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.3 KB | 163 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 26

HEALTH

"It Can Happen to Anybody. Even Magic Johnson."


After testing positive for HIV, basketball's most beloved star
retires and vows to become a spokesman in the battle against AIDS

By PICO IYER -- With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Los Angeles
and Dick Thompson/Washington


    For years he has been a walking -- no, a running, jumping,
slithering -- suspension of disbelief. Not just on the
basketball court, where he has all but remade the game and
brought in a whole new dictionary to cover the moves that bear
his monogram -- the "no-look pass," the "triple double," the
"coast to coast" drive. And not just in America, but from Bali
to the Bahamas, where many kids wear his picture on their
chests. Hundreds in Paris were calling out for "Ma-JEEK" when
he went to play in France last month, and everyone was preparing
for the unprecedented prospect of seeing him, the consummate
professional, bring an amateur's enthusiasm to the 1992
Olympics.

    Even outside the world of sports, Mr. Showtime's enormous
smile and unquenchable grace have become almost ubiquitous --
on music video shows, on billboards, at fund-raising dinners.
For more than a decade, Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. has commanded
the world of entertainment on the court and off with an
irreplaceable blend of poise and surprise.

    Last week, however, Magic delivered what was clearly his
most serious shock. At a press conference on the ground he has
made his own, the Great Western Forum, home to the Los Angeles
Lakers, Johnson, 6-ft. 9-in. tall and 32 years old, at the top
of his career, announced that he had been infected by the human
immune-deficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS and would "have
to retire from the Lakers today." Although he has as yet no
symptoms of AIDS, the man who had defied gravity, and belief,
for so long would suddenly, overnight, vanish from the court.
"I'm going to miss playing," said Johnson, dry-eyed and
dignified as ever, "but my life is going to go on. I'm going to
go on a happy man."

    The announcement left millions in a state of disbelief. It
was not just a celebrity that was endangered by a
life-threatening disease, but of all things an athlete whose
strength and endurance had made him the most admired player in
the world. "A situation like this just doesn't make sense," said
Kevin McHale, Johnson's longtime rival from the Boston Celtics.
"When you look at a big, healthy guy like Magic Johnson, you
think this illness wouldn't attack someone like him. But it
did." Many others were sobered at the thought that if even the
most enchanted and mobile of bodies was vulnerable, it could,
as Johnson pointed out, "happen to anybody." Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, the thoughtful, soft-spoken 7-ft. 2-in. giant of
the game, simply broke down and wept.

    Yet Johnson's characteristic refusal to be cowed, even by
AIDS, suggested that the star might, as so often before,
alchemize disaster with his infectious hopefulness. He was,
after all, not unusual in contracting the virus, but he seemed
to recognize that he was in an unusual position to campaign for
protection against it. Vowing to become a spokesman to educate
people about AIDS, Johnson said he would use his plight to tell
others that "safe sex is the way to go." Just by his
announcement, he began the process: calls to AIDS hot lines and
testing centers more than doubled in most places the next day.

    The virus has already claimed the young, the old, the
famous: symbols of Hollywood like Rock Hudson, symbols of youth
such as 18-year-old Ryan White, even symbols of athletic
prowess like the All-Pro former Washington Redskin Jerry Smith.
Yet Magic is perhaps the first celebrity to come out instantly
to admit to his condition, and unprompted. And he is certainly
the most famous: even people with no interest in basketball
recognize his name and smile. In addition, because he would not
discuss how he might have contracted the disease but only
implied it was from heterosexual contact, he drove home the fact
that anyone is vulnerable.

    Johnson is also ideally placed to speak on AIDS to the two
groups that are most in need of counsel: impoverished minority
communities and the young. Though blacks represent only 12% of
the nation's population, they account for 25% of the AIDS
patients: more than half the women with AIDS in the U.S. are
African American. Yet even many of the best-intended
AIDS-prevention programs have failed to speak the language of
the groups that are most at risk. When Johnson made his
announcement, it surely sent shudders deepest through locker
rooms, high schools and inner-city homes across the country
where teenagers idolize the smiling big man from Lansing, Mich.,
who managed to rise from a family of 12 to become a role model
around the world. "Clearly this is tragic," said Norm Nickens,
chairman of the National Minority AIDS Council. "But we couldn't
ask for a better spokesman."

    The Era of Magic could be said to have begun in 1979 with
the first professional game Johnson won for the Lakers, which
ended with his leaping into the arms of his startled and
famously reserved teammate, Abdul-Jabbar. In the final game of
the championship series that year, with Abdul-Jabbar injured,
Johnson played all five positions, and somehow in his rookie
season conjured a victory out of thin air. But even when the
Most Valuable Player awards and championships became
commonplace, and the miraculous expected, Johnson worked
overtime to transcend all expectation, developing a three-point
shot that was lethal, practicing free throws till he became the
best in the league. It was not simply his ability that made him
a star but his determination as well to recast and expand that
ability daily.

    Thus Johnson became not only the most successful player in
the game but also, and more important, the most popular, whose
brilliance played a large part in making N.B.A. basketball one
of the success stories of the decade with fans across five
continents. He had an appeal that earlier, more complex stars
of the game such as Bill Russell and Abdul-Jabbar could never
match. Even Michael Jordan, his only serious rival in stature
and skill, prompted a few grumbles and questions around the
league as Johnson never did. Though Johnson has become famous
for his eagerness to parlay his success into a show-biz career
and a $100 million business empire, he has also managed to
exemplify the same winning unselfishness off court as on. Last
year alone he raised $2.65 million for charity and gave up part
of his salary to help his team acquire another player.

    Because of his almost universal popularity, Johnson's
swift and brave admission also casts light upon many of the
darker issues shadowing the world of sports. It is not so much
that many of our heroes have clay feet as that they often use
their heroism to advantage and then almost boast of their
immunity from consequence. One of the greatest kings of
basketball, Wilt Chamberlain, devotes an entire chapter in his
recent autobiography to elaborating upon his carefully
calculated claim that he has slept with 20,000 different women.
Football's Jim Brown, formally charged with violence against
women, was equally unapologetic in his memoir about totting up
his sexual scores. Johnson's fellow An geleno Steve Garvey had
hardly ended his All-American career before it was revealed that
he was seriously involved with at least two women other than his
wife. No one would begin to suggest that Johnson should bear the
blame for the ways many athletes abuse their status, but his
tragedy does raise many searching questions about the
immortality we expect of our sporting heroes.

    Last week, however, the big man's characteristic calm
helped temper, a little, the sadness of the occasion. While
there is no reason to deify the player or accord him any more
sympathy than that lent to the roughly 1 million others in the
U.S. and millions elsewhere in the world who have been infected,
there is ample reason to feel grateful for his courage and his
sanity and to hope that somehow, with his dauntless smile, he
might even give us something more to cheer about at the saddest
moment of his life.