Father’s Day Comes Early for Johnsons

Oh, Earvin. What you must be feeling. What a sentimental journey you have taken. Whenever you turn, wherever you look--there they are. Friends. Family. Familiar faces. You must feel like the guest of honor on “This Is Your Life.” You must feel 100 years old. Or maybe 10 again.

They are all here. All these reminders. All these misty water-color memories of the way you were. All around you, there are people who knew you when. People who knew you when you were just plain Earvin, just a gangly kid from the Michigan state capital. People who got to know you after you transformed into Magic, after you won your high school championship, your college championship, your four pro championships. People who still wanted to know the one and only Earvin (Magic) Johnson. People who knew you better than anybody ever did, or ever might.

Over in a corner of your locker room sits Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 41, and friendly now, but 30-something and a forbidding presence the day you first walked through the door.

“Yes, I remember the first time I met him,” Abdul-Jabbar says, serious or otherwise. “He strolled in carrying a ghetto blaster about the size of a television set, listening to the Parliament Funkadelics.”

You remember.

“He hated it,” you say. “That’s right. The Funkadelics. Kareem hated it. Especially because I started booming it about 7 in the morning.”

Meanwhile, somewhere out in the hall, collecting pans and leftovers, is Christine Johnson, your mom. She has fed you, as usual. Fed the whole team. Drove down the 50 miles from Lansing with loads of home cooking. Fried chicken. Cake. Potato salad. Homemade rolls. Sweet potato pie. A feast for all the Lakers, even if they did spoil Sunday dinner for everybody else in Michigan, by virtue of their 99-86 win over Detroit’s Pistons in Game 3 of the National Basketball Assn. Finals.

Magic, you should have seen your mother light up when the Rev. Jesse Jackson introduced himself. You should have seen her rise up on her tiptoes to hug Kareem when he came by with a hunk of potato pie. You should have heard her laugh when Mychal Thompson finked on Mike Smrek, A.C. Green and Abdul-Jabbar for hogging all the food.

“Mrs. Johnson,” Thompson said, “I’ll bet you didn’t know that Mike Smrek, A.C. and Kareem are the biggest pigs in the NBA.”

Your mom had a wonderful time.

And then, there was your dad.

He was here, too.

That was something special. Something rare. Something that really touched you, didn’t it?

Because after all these games, all these seasons, Earvin Johnson Sr. finally got to see you play a playoff game in person. First time. He sat right there in the Silverdome, second row up, next to former University of Detroit hero Earl Cureton and his wife. He sat there wearing his good-luck Laker cap, a brave man amid 39,188 Piston lovers in the audience, rooting for his son’s team to beat his second-favorite team.

Your dad does not come to many games, even though he is retired after 30 1/2 years as an auto worker for General Motors. “I don’t like flying, so I haven’t seen a playoff game,” Earvin Sr. said from his courtside seat, keeping one eye on the court. “I mostly get to see him when he’s here. Usually I can root for the Pistons, but today I can’t.”

Hey, remember when your father sent you on your merry L.A. way, way back in 1979, after all your wonder years in Lansing and East Lansing? Remember when he put you on a plane, and wished you luck in your NBA life, and advised you that as long as you would be making some decent money now, not to be afraid to take a nice apartment for yourself out there in Los Angeles, even if you had to splurge and fork out, oh, $400 a month?

Remember?

You remember.

It comes rushing back to you every time you rush back to Michigan on your summer vacations, doesn’t it, Magic? Back here where everybody calls you “E.J.,” or “Junior,” or “Big Fella.” Back home where you can play first base on your softball team and just be ordinary Earvin? Back where you and your father can talk and talk and talk, while your mother cooks and cooks and cooks, and eavesdrops from the kitchen.

Seeing your dad sitting there, 20 or 30 feet away, finally watching you go for a championship, it was a hard thing to talk about, wasn’t it? Hard to put into words. That’s why your first impulse was to say: “That’s something for later. It’s sort of hard to explain. It’s a personal thing. All this week we’ve been talking on the phone, and he’s really been excited. It’s a good feeling, but it’s a difficult feeling for me to talk about.”

We do not know why you changed your mind about this. Why you went ahead and did talk about it. Maybe just because you’re polite. Maybe just because it finally got to you after a while. All these smiling people around. Greg Kelser, your teammate from Michigan State, dropping by to shake hands. Jesse Jackson doing the same, saying he’d check back with you later, you telling him: “OK. I’ll see you. Be careful.” There was even an uncle who deposited a nephew on your lap, in a cute little suit with short pants--not unlike yours, come to think of it.

You bounced him on your knee. Stood him up. Tried to balance him on his feet.

“My dad . . . “ you said, haltingly. “He’s more than my dad, you see. He’s my best friend. He’s my partner. We hang out. It’s more like two buddies than a father-and-son thing with us. We go out together. We talk for hours. He knows I don’t always feel like talking. He knows me better than anybody . . . “

You trailed off. You were so glad he got see to see you at your best, got to see you make all but one of your shots, try only an unselfish 8 of them, create 14 assists, steal the ball three times, do your Magic act.

“See, he’s like a little kid,” you say of your father. “Just like me. He’s old and young at the same time. Just like me. He loves basketball. He has two great loves--basketball and his son. And here he is, mixing them all together.”

You’re sorry you worried mom and dad with that flu that left you so sick in Los Angeles last week. You smile at the thought of Christine trying to fatten you up because of the 7 pounds you lost. You don’t smile at Coach Pat Riley’s comical comment that the flu was a blessing in disguise, because it made you lighter and faster. “No,” you say. “No, no, no.”

You laugh when an old friend tells you he has detected your secret weapon--that the reason you and your friend Isiah Thomas swap kisses before a game is because secretly you are trying to give the Pistons the flu, too.

“You figured it out,” you say. “That’s why Isiah only wants an itty-bitty peck on the cheek from now on.”

You cradle your nephew in your lap, and think about Isiah’s wife, Lynn, whose first baby is due any time now, a baby to whom you will no doubt be godfather or Uncle Magic or something.

“I will. You bet I will,” you say.

You hand back your nephew. You motion to a slightly older child in the chair to your right.

“This is my son,” you say. “This is Andre. He’s 7.”

Andre says hi.

“Someday I hope to have another one, through marriage this time, and then Isiah can be uncle to him ,” you say.

And maybe you can sit in the stands someday, and see your son play, and make sure he’s got enough to eat afterward, and then go for a long walk and talk.

That’s really magic time.