He Has Them in the Palm of His Hand

If I were an NBA player, the last sight in the world I would want to see is Magic Johnson coming downcourt with the basketball.

You imagine this is the way the captain of the Titanic must have felt when he saw the iceberg.

It’s like seeing Babe Ruth coming to bat with the bases loaded and your fastball gone. It’s like having A.J. Foyt in your rear-view mirror on the back straight with 10 laps to go. The feeling Al Capone must have had when he got on the intercom and they said, “There’s a Mr. Eliot Ness down here to see you. He’s got three men with him and he says it’s important.”

It’s like seeing a hand come up out of a coffin, or hearing a wolf outside the castle in the moonlight.

He starts out at 6-foot-9 and 225 pounds, which is frightening enough, but by the time he reaches the top of the key, he begins to look to the defense like something you’d call out the National Guard for while evacuating the women and children. Like something you’d send an expedition for if rumors of its existence reached civilization.

See him now as he brings the ball up the middle. He disdains the feeble efforts of the enemy guards to steal or harass, flicking them away contemptuously as though they were flies buzzing around a lion.

The ball is almost an extension of his hand as he bounces it around him. His eyes sweep the floor. You figure this must be the way Caesar looked over a battlefield or a wise old prizefighter peeked through his gloves. He is probing for weaknesses.

When he finds them, he is galvanized into furious action. He may trigger the fast break, that sudden, seemingly out of control dash to the basket that looks like a prison bustout or a raided crap game.

Or, he may whistle one of those 80-m.p.h. passes right by the ear of a defender into the hands of an open man. Or, he may throw one of those high lobs to his captain and center in the low post. Or, he may just take off and drive the lane, drawing the foul or making the basket--or both. Or, he may just stop, pump and throw in a three-pointer of his own.

Whatever he does, he’s as indefensible as a riptide. There is a law of physics that says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The great counterpunchers have it, and Magic goes into it instinctively. If the defense comes out, he goes around them. If they stay back, he goes over them.

He doesn’t play a game, he choreographs it. “He’s like a magnet,” his coach, Pat Riley, says of him. “He draws players to him like filings.”

He draws a crowd like a guy selling vegetable peelers on a street corner. When enough of them are around him, he knows there’s a man open. He finds that man.

He has the peripheral vision of a fish. And he throws the basketball around as if it were a grape. He can curve it, slide it, float it or slam dunk it if he wants. Sometimes he just makes it disappear.

There is no question who is in command when he is out there. He is the high command. He should wear a monocle and spiked helmet. He masterminds an attack like the German general staff going through the Low Countries.

He expects uncompromising obedience. His countenance, normally as clear and untroubled as a sleeping baby’s, furrows into annoyance when someone is out of position, that is, not where Magic wants him to be. Even the captain himself, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has to find his marks and get to them like an actor for a demanding director.

What he does is not always obvious to the casual fan. It’s just that every hometown fan knows that everything is going to be all right if Magic has the ball.

Historians of the future may be hard pressed to understand. Sifting through the sterile artifacts of statistics, the point of this guard may elude them.

Before Magic, the great playmaker of basketball history, the man against whom they measure all others was the great Oscar Robertson.

The Big O had gaudier statistics in his prime. The archeologists may pause at Magic’s 18.8 average this year, compared to Oscar’s 31.4 one year. They may compare his 1,384 total points this year with Oscar’s high-water mark of 2,480. Or his 426 rebounds this year with Oscar’s high of 985.

But Oscar was a soloist. Magic is a conductor. Magic gives you a symphony, not an aria. Magic is trying to win a war, not a medal.

The things he did to Houston the other afternoon at the Forum should bring the Geneva Convention down on him. He did everything but pull their fingernails out.

It is customary for the point man in basketball to bring the ball upcourt along the sideline. That way, you can be sure one flank is protected.

Magic brought the ball right up Broadway. He defied anyone to stop him. He invited triple-teaming. He made Houston look like a bunch of guys looking for a collar-button in the dark.

They kept showing up at places Magic had just been. They played their little walk-up game with their skyscraper offense and they used the whole 24 seconds to try to get off an inside shot. And then Magic would take the ball out of somebody’s ear and swish it downcourt for a five-second, or less, basket.

The game was kind of a sleepwalking Alphonse-and-Gaston act midway through the second quarter and Houston had ambled into a seven-point lead, 41-34.

Magic took the game out of idle. Almost before the minute hand made another sweep, he made Houston look like a bunch of guys who had just seen a spaceship. He not only tied the score, he swept the team into a six-point lead at halftime and Game 1 was over.

Some people have nightmares about tidal waves, vampires, earthquakes or falling from great heights. If I were a Houston player, I would have nightmares about this big, cheerful young man wearing No. 32, coming at me, bouncing a basketball as if he had some good news he couldn’t wait to tell me. You should at least get one call to your priest.