Show Stays on Broadway, Magically

OK, Ms. B, think we can pull together a memo for CBS? Something they should know? Slug it “Attn. Network Sports.” Ready?

“Dear CBS,

“Boy, did you guys dodge a bullet! A cannonball.

“I bet you thought a week ago you had coming up in the NBA finals, Dempsey-Tunney, Notre Dame-Army, Borg-McEnroe, Germany-Russia. I mean, you had the Celtics-Lakers, basketball’s version of World War III, right?

“Then, shockingly, you lost the Celtics to that funny little team in Detroit. The Cylinders, or something like that.

“And, then it looked as if the Lakers were going to succumb to the same paralysis, the same malady--sudden old age. The Dallas Mavericks spotted them two games, then caught them and almost passed them.

“All of a sudden, you didn’t have Dempsey-Tunney, you had a club fight in Toledo--or Bonecrusher Smith against Tim Witherspoon.

“I mean, you weren’t going to get Magic Johnson, you were going to get Derek Harper. Forget Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, how does James Donaldson grab you? You want Dennis Johnson and you settle for Dennis Rodman. How many cars you think he’s going to sell for you? He might bring back the Edsel.

“You almost got Dallas-Detroit. Think about that for a minute. You think Jack Nicholson’s going to go watch that?! You think Billy Crystal, Dyan Cannon, John McEnroe, Michael Jackson are going to fly in to be courtside to see how Rolando Blackman matches up with Joe Dumars, whoever they are? Gimme a break! They could have played in masks.

“What you would have had is one of those art movies. Attended by a lot of college women in glasses. You would have had to release the game with subtitles.

“Well, you don’t have Dempsey-Tunney, but you still have Dempsey. It’ll play in Dubuque. It’ll sell razor blades, fill the Silverdome, sell basketball.

“You can send the check to Earvin Johnson. He saved your show for you. He usually does.

“You see, Magic Johnson doesn’t play a game, he orchestrates it. No one ever took charge of a basketball game the way Magic Johnson does, not Oscar Robertson, Walt Frazier, not even the great Bob Cousy.

“He takes over a basketball court the way General Lee did a battlefield, if he’ll pardon the allusion. The game’s over when Magic arrives on the scene.

“When he first came to the Lakers nine years ago, the Lakers were an excellent team, given to a kind of mechanical perfection, disinterested efficiency. They played their game with a shrug, hurried into the shower, gave perfunctory, one-syllable answers to the press and disappeared into Hollywood. They never smiled or laughed or even changed expressions very much. It was hard to tell if they cared.

“Magic changed all that. He brought a smile as wide as a canyon, and he brought a joy to the game it hadn’t seen. He woke up the stands, lit up the locker room. Hell, he lit up the league. He would sit in his cubicle after a game as long as anyone wanted to talk about it. Nobody ever got a short answer from Magic Johnson.

“He could do whatever he wanted to with a basketball. You needed 40 points, you got 40 points. You needed 20 rebounds, you got those, too. But he was probably the most unselfish great player in the history of the game. Magic didn’t play for the numbers, he played for the championships.

“As the years rolled on, it became harder to be Magic Johnson. The league got better, the stakes got higher, but the Lakers never lost their Magic. The supporting cast was good, but you sometimes had the feeling you could take any cast in the league (or out of the Yellow Pages) and put it around Magic and the results would be the same. Kareem, for example, was able to remain permanently stalled at age 35 because of the Magic. Norm Nixon was a great player alongside Magic and not so great away from him and so were a half-dozen other guys. When Magic fed them the ball, they were all 60% shooters.

“The great ones all have this game-day look about them. It’s the faraway look of a lion who suddenly sees a movement in the bush. Ben Hogan used to get it when he came to the back nine of an Open only one shot behind. It’s the look of a hawk in a chicken-yard, a gunfighter at high noon watching the approach of the guy in the black hat.

“ ‘If you had any sense, it’d scare you.’ Laker Coach Pat Riley said after Saturday’s game in which Magic Johnson saved the title and your network ratings next week that ‘Earvin had this look when he showed up in the locker room in the morning.’ Magic, typically, showed up for a 12:30 game at a quarter to 9 and he had what Riley calls his ‘see through’ look. ‘He looks at you, but he doesn’t see you,’ is the way Riley explains it. ‘He’s looking through you. Magic has his individual game plan. You measure Magic on the games that count. He has a plan for Game 58, too, but you dial it up for Game 7 of a playoff.’

“Dallas never had a chance. ‘It was our game all the way,’ Magic was to tell us after the game. ‘I felt good all the time. I felt I could set the table for everyone else, but I felt the game going the way we wanted. I could see it.’

“In the third period, with the score seesawing, the Lakers went ahead, 67-65. Magic could see Kareem under the basket, too. He was a full length of the court away. But Magic uncorked a pass like a guy throwing to home plate from center field. He hit Kareem where the captain was able to stuff the shot and draw the foul.

“That was the old ballgame. That did it for Dallas. The score was suddenly 70-65, and the Lakers never looked back.

“Magic sits in a locker room after a game, and he’s got more ice around him than the Titanic, but he’s saved more than L.A.’s season. He’s saved your show for you. You’re going to miss Larry Bird. But not much. If Magic gets that look, Detroit may start to wish it had lost. Or Dallas won. But Magic kept the show on Broadway.”