Los Angeles Lakers: Magic Johnson beyond Showtime

Magic Johnson is not just a product of the 80s, he is a man who extended his love for basketball at every possible edge.

Earvin “Magic” Johnson will forever be The Man in Los Angeles. Everybody knows and loves him. He entertained the city night after night with his playing style, leading the Los Angeles Lakers to five championships in the 80s.

But in his basketball career, there has been more than just the Showtime, albeit naturally obscured by his best days. Magic has really given all he had to the game. Despite obstacles and setbacks trying to stop him, he kept the joy for the game that was tried to be taken away from him.

There are chapters more and less known in his career that span beyond his days of glory and they deserve to be acknowledged.

Magic Johnson’s post-Showtime Lakers life:

Starting from that ominous November 7, 1991 date, when Earvin announced his to have contracted the HIV virus, the fight to regain the game he loved begun.

Albeit just retired, he was voted by fans to start in the 1992 All-Star Game in Orlando. He led the West to an overwhelming 153-113 victory, winning the MVP with 25 points, 9 assists, 5 rebounds. In the final minutes, while challenged by his friends/opponents on offense and defense, he hit three consecutive threes, sealing his spectacular performance.

It was seen like Magic’s goodbye to basketball and the perfect closing to his exceptional career. But it was far from over.

A few months later he was selected to participate in the Barcelona Olympics as part and captain of the historic team that would be remembered as the Dream Team, the greatest team ever assembled in the history of sport. Magic was the only one to start every game.

The team ended up with the gold medal, not winning, but crushing its opponents.

While they won easily in the tournament, as the members of the team declared, the real games were the practice games, where 11 Hall of Famers fought to prove who was the better NBA player.

The competition was particularly heated between Magic and Michael Jordan, disputing the scepter of best in the world.

The Olympic experience and the medical results were so encouraging that Magic announced his return to the NBA. His Los Angeles Lakers were basically the same team he left a year before in the Finals, but in 1992, they had been eliminated in the first round. They were just missing their general. A body without the head.

The enthusiasm of the city of Los Angeles was off the charts. The Magic Man was going to come back, turn on his show and lead the team to renewed success.

He took part in the Lakers’ training camp and played in preseason games. His first game and the Showtime was already back. He scored the first shot of the game, a 16-5 run to start, 14 assists overall.

He played five of eight Lakers’ preseason games, taking some day of rest for precaution reasons, averaging 10.4 points and almost 12 assists, per The Washington Post. But in the last game, he sustained a cut on his arm and the barely-controlled controversy exploded again.

Some of the Lakers and Dream Teams teammates of Magic had expressed themselves against his return to the league for concerns over contagion. Athletic Trainer Gary Vitti decided to treat the cut (or, more precisely, the scratch) without gloves, sending a strong message to the league, and he was put under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In the end, Johnson decided that he was causing too much distraction and canceled his return for the sake of the game. A big missed opportunity for the NBA. Earvin himself, more recently, declared that he should have never renounced, but, again, he did what was better for the game at the time.

Determined to still play the sport he loved, in 1994, Magic put together the Magic Johnson All-Stars, a team composed of former NBA and college players, touring around the world playing against national teams. They also played in the United States against teams from the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association.

By 1996, his team was still undefeated with a 55-0 record.

Finally, in January 1996, Magic Johnson made his much-awaited comeback to the NBA.  In his debut he had 19 points, 8 rebounds and 10 assists.

A massive Magic, who had raised his bench press from 135 to 300 pounds through the previous years, joined his Lakers, and at 36 years old, played backup power forward, averaging 14.6 points, 5.7 rebounds and 6.9 assists.

The team had a 22-10 record with Magic and finished with the fourth seed in the playoffs, but they would lose in the first round to the eventual champions Houston Rockets. However, he held averages of 15.3 points, 8.5 rebounds and 6.5 assists.

After this short stint, he finally retired from the NBA on his own terms. But yet again, his playing days were not over.

Still up to the challenge, in 1999, Magic Johnson went to Scandinavia to play for the Swedish team MagicM7, which he bought. In his debut he had a triple-double, scoring 11 points, 14 rebounds and 14 assists.

In five game he took part to, they were undefeated.

The following year he joined the Magic Great Danes of Denmark, playing two official games, where he averaged 8.5 points, 11.5 rebounds and 12.5 assists.

Both teams were renamed after his commitment. It originally was supposed to be just a one-game exhibition, but given the success of his participation, it was expanded to multiple games.

After that, his Scandinavian experience came to an end.

Over the years after his final NBA retirement, he kept playing with his All-Stars team, and in 2002, at 42 years old, he was still active and had a triple-double (12-10-10) in a victory over his former college Michigan State. In that juncture, his All-Stars team was composed by the Canberra Cannons of the Australian NBL, while he added for the occasion two former Michigan State teammates.

In 2004, Magic was invited to participate in the inaugural edition of the Shooting Stars Competition during NBA All-Star Saturday. With a current Lakers player and a WNBA star, they would have competed with other trios in a shooting contest. No disappointment from the Los Angeles team, comprised of Derek Fisher and Lisa Leslie, which won the contest with a 43.9 seconds time.

They failed to repeat the following year.

Magic had always been a minority owner of the Lakers since his retirement. In 2017, right after having been hired as a special advisor by Jeanie Buss, he was appointed President of Basketball Operations, following the firing of Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak.

Johnson was expected to raise the tragic situation he was handed, left by the previous front office, with a losing team composed of a bunch of young kids and some overpaid, underperforming veteran. On the heels of former agent Bob Myers’s success as an executive in Golden State, he decided to hire Rob Pelinka as General Manager and the two began to work, putting in motion their master plan to bring stars and success back to LA.

Magic Johnson stressed the importance of patience, knowing it was not going to be an easy way.

First of all, they needed to free the cap space. After drafting Lonzo Ball, Earvin’s first success as president was to get rid of Timofey Mozgov’s terrible contract at the cost of the unwelcome prospect D’Angelo Russell.

Thanks to a good season led by head coach Luke Walton and the development of the young group, the Lakers entered the 2018 free agency with high hopes. They stretched Luol Deng’s contract to free up more space and have a shot at two stars.

It was not the case, but the Lakers had the biggest home run of the NBA and of their recent history since Shaquille O’Neal joined in 1996. They signed LeBron James. The shift in culture and the project put in place by Johnson were good enough to convince The King to join a team that had won just 35 games.

The 2018-19 season began with high hopes but ended up in disappointment. After a promising start that saw the Lakers at the top of the Western Conference, James suffered a groin strain during the Christmas game, forcing him to miss 27 games. Combined with many other injuries that hit the roster, they failed to make the playoffs.

Shockingly, in April, Magic Johnson resigned as PBO, citing back-stabbing from his peers and his desire to return to be an ambassador of the game.

Much has been said and the causes have not been clear, but it does not matter. He put the team on the right course, and in the summer they traded the young nucleus for MVP and Defensive Player of the Year candidate Anthony Davis, bringing that second star to pair with LeBron. That is why, despite his short tenure, he had an enormous impact on the franchise, its culture and fortunes.

Magic will always be the embodiment of the Showtime, the leader of the team that won 5 championships and the most representative player of the 80s, and for these reasons, he is a basketball Hall of Famer.

But his career spanned beyond this. His role and mark on the Lakers franchise have evolved through the years and his passion for the game brought him on a journey that he probably did not imagine when he was drafted in 1979. But there is a reason that it took this way.

Magic Johnson, like his shining smile, is bigger than the Showtime, bigger than the Forum, bigger than the disease that seized him. He is bigger than life.