The Magic Kingdom : He’s Got It All--Disco, Tub and Home-Court Advantage

From behind the disc-jockey console of his colossal sound system, Earvin (Magic) Johnson can pump disco-soul music so far out into the canyon behind his home that it would take a search party a week to find it.

Stretched out in his giant, jet-assisted bathtub, he can gaze out at deer climbing the steep sides of the canyon.

With the flip of a switch, he can lower a regulation glass backboard and rim, converting his racquetball court into his own private basketball arena.

Johnson is home. After five years in a Culver City apartment, he bought himself a two-story, six-bedroom, Tudor-style mansion in Bel-Air and moved in three months ago.

“It was time to stretch out,” Johnson says.

This would be a typical big-star-buys-big-house story, except it’s not. Just as nobody has ever played the game of basketball quite like Magic Johnson, I would bet that no athlete has ever been quite so knocked out by his own new home as Johnson is with his.

Not that this is a variation on the “Beverly Hillbillies” theme, with the small-town kid moving into the mansion and mistaking the hot tub for an open-air dishwasher. Johnson is a six-year NBA all-star, the highest paid player in the game, a team leader, a sober and thoughtful person, world traveler, businessman.

Still, conducting an informal tour of the house, he will stop, look around and say: “I still can’t believe it. I cannot believe it.”

Johnson smiles when he talks about the first time he showed his new place to his parents.

“My mom, she hugged me and just about squeezed all the air out of me,” he says. “She couldn’t imagine her son living in a house like this. She was so happy and proud.

“My father, he’s very reserved. He doesn’t show much emotion. He keeps it inside. But when he saw the house. . . . To see him smile!”

Johnson bought his parents a new home back in Lansing, Mich., with the money from his first pro contract, but he didn’t want to rush into buying himself a home. About a year ago, he decided it was time, so his attorney arranged a tour of five prospective homes.

“We started off with this one,” Johnson says. “I told him, ‘I don’t have to look anymore, George. This is it.’ All I had to see was one room (now his disco), the racquetball court and the bathtub. Where else am I really gonna be?

“I always wanted to own a home, but I wanted it to be different. I wanted a special place. Hey, I’m blessed. I never would have imagined this. The house I grew up in back home could probably fit into the gym (racquetball court), and your imagination can only go as far as what you’ve seen.

“I am thankful for it, that’s for sure.”

How about a tour, hitting the highlights of the home?

Magic’s place sits at the very end of a winding road. Canyon walls slope to the house on both sides, and the canyon stretches far into the distance, hundreds of green acres with no sign of civilization.

That’s the view from his back yard, which features twin barbecue grills and a swimming pool with red-brick deck. Johnson has yet to take his first dip.

“I’d love to go in, but even though it’s temperature controlled, I can’t risk getting a cold or getting sick during the season,” he says.

Still, there’s nothing like a poolside breakfast with a sensational view.

“I almost missed practice a couple times. I’d be out here eating breakfast. I’d be daydreaming, just kind of in a trance, and then I’d look at my watch and see I was almost late for practice.”

Inside, the business of furnishing is still in progress. Johnson and his decorator, Marilyn Ressler, are sticking to a basic country-French style, but he wants to give each room a different flavor.

The accent, as they say in the decorating magazines, is on the casual, for informal living and entertaining. The downstairs family room, for instance, will feature a video game and backgammon game, and there is an adjoining card room, with poker table and paneled ceiling.

The master bedroom is huge, with a marble-and-polished wood fireplace, huge wood headboard and a wall of remote-controlled stereo and video equipment.

The master bathroom has that sunken bathtub with a five-window view of the wilderness.

“This comes in handy, especially after games like the Philly game,” Johnson says. “I was sore after that one.”

Now, to the heart of the home--the disco. It’s nothing more than a large room with wood floors and beamed ceilings, a couch, a bar . . . and the fabulous wall of disco.

“I don’t just like music, I love it,” Johnson says, quietly. “When I saw this room, I said, ‘Oh, man, I know what I want to do with this .’ I spend an hour or two in here every day. This is where I live .”

During his college days, Johnson worked at a Lansing disco, where he was known as EJ the DJ. Now he has got his own disco. To him, the only sensation that can compare to dribbling upcourt at full speed, at the controls of a great basketball team, is sitting at the controls of a disco console.

“It’s the same feeling,” he says. “You’re controllin’. It’s the greatest, to see people react to what you say and play. You either got ‘em or you don’t.”

He slips a Jeffrey Osborne album onto a turntable and works the dials and switches. Forty various-colored spotlights on the ceiling begin to flash to Magic’s commands. Four large speakers mounted on the ceiling go to work.

“That’s not even halfway (to full volume),” Johnson shouts. He turns it up a little. The room is literally pulsing to the beat, like a giant heart. He turns the volume up a little more, and, if I read lips correctly, says, “ That’s half way.

“I’ve never turned it up all the way. I’d be afraid to.”

The deer and squirrels of the canyon are thankful.

Now Johnson shuts down the system and walks to the other side of the dance floor, opens a sliding glass window, flips a light switch and illuminates an indoor racquetball court below, with its gleaming hardwood floor. He electronically lowers the hoop.

To a true basketball junkie, anyone who has ever played on cracked pavement, shot at bent rims by dim moonlight, this is a glimpse of heaven. Gym rats have an old expression for somebody who plays well on a certain court. “He owns the gym,” they say. Now Magic really owns a gym, and he is appropriately awed.

“You can play HORSE all night long ,” he says with a sigh, slipping on a pair of sneakers. Early in his Laker career, Johnson returned to Lansing each summer. Gradually he began to spend more of each off-season in L.A.

“I’m here now,” he says, swishing a patented 22-foot set shot from behind the racquetball service line. “I’m home.”

He swishes another, takes a pass and drives to the hoop as if he owns it.