Magic and me
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 22: MoneySexPower
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Martin McKenzie-Murray
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Many things changed for me on November 7, 1991. I was ten and watching Magic Johnson speak at his most famous press conference.
‘Because of the HIV virus I have obtained, I will have to announce my retirement from the Lakers today,' he said.
Magic was flanked by friends and medical authorities and, as he continued the conference dry-eyed, Boston Celtics superstar Larry Bird began crying off-camera. You can pick it up on the tape, as you can pick up muffled sobs amongst the body of stunned reporters.
‘How long do you have to live?' Magic was asked by teary journalists. ‘Months? Weeks?'
In 2001, ex-pro basketballer Eddie Johnson wrote of his reaction to the announcement in USA Today: ‘When Magic stated that he was retiring because he had contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, I just stared at the television feeling numb, not hearing anything he said afterward. I just fell back on the bed, tears flowing, wondering how this could happen to this special man who always seemed to have destiny on his side.'
At the time of the conference, Magic Johnson was one of the most famous men in America. He had played twelve seasons with the slick Los Angeles Lakers, appearing in nine championship play-offs, and winning five of them.
‘Magic Johnson's greatest contribution to basketball is that he freed up the mind of every big man who has ever played the game,' said George Raveling, head basketball coach at the University of Southern California. ‘Big men were always discouraged to handle the ball or improve their ball-handling skills. He demonstrated that they could handle the ball. He revolutionised the game. He made other superstars better.'
He also made the league better – when Magic and his great friend and rival Larry Bird turned pro in 1979, the National Basketball Association (NBA) was on the cusp of bankruptcy. A decade later, the league was enjoying an enviable popularity and profitability, fortunes largely ascribed to Magic and Bird.
After Magic's announcement, the National AIDS Hotline received 40,000 calls in one day, up from its daily average of 3,800, and shares in Carter-Wallace Inc., makers of the popular Trojan condom, increased by US$3 when Magic announced he would become a spokesperson for safe sex. In outer Los Angeles, a sixty-seven-year-old retired nurse, Irma Reed, was interviewed in one of Magic Johnson's shopping centres. ‘I've been crying for two days. Everyone is devastated for him and his whole family,' she said.
In New York, one doctor said that it felt like every guy in the city who had had unprotected sex was calling in asking for a test, and with good reason; Magic's announcement marked the moment AIDS was consummated within the American popular imagination. In another hemisphere, I too responded deeply to the news, but for very different reasons. Twenty-four hours before Magic's press conference, I had been sexually abused and thought – incorrectly – that I had contracted AIDS just like my idol.