NBA CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES : Magic Didn’t Have Leg to Stand On and Now Lakers Don’t Either

Sunday, there was silence. Because there will be no triple crown.

You know it. I know it. The Laker Girls know it. The Laker Boys know it. Inglewoodians know it. The Jerries, Buss and West, know it. Worm, Spider, Zeke, Buddha, Microwave and the rest of the Garbage Pail Kids from Detroit know it. We all know it. Winning another championship is not going to be as easy as one-two-three for the Lakers after all. We know now, there isn’t gonna be any three.

Worst of all, Magic (Earvin) Johnson knows it. Knows it, but can’t say it. Knows it, and has to face it. Knows it, the way a child under a Christmas tree sees only one box left and knows that it is too small to hold the toy that topped the list.

Magic (Earvin) Johnson, America’s biggest kid, put on a happy face Sunday, somehow. The Lakers were hurting. He was hurting. Yet, he made his face smile, forced it to obey. Forced those wide shoulders to shrug this off. Forced that upper lip to stay stiff. He would not turn into Tragic Johnson, no matter how miserable things got.

“I had to accept it,” he said Sunday at the Forum, after a Game 3 of the NBA Finals that more or less went on without him. “I guess I cried enough the last couple of days. Reality has hit. I have to accept that or my feelings will get the best of me. I guess I’m smiling not to be upset. I’ve been crying for two days and it’s time to stop.”

His Lakers lost, 114-110, to Detroit, with Magic helpless to do anything about it. He “played” fewer than five minutes, without so much as a rebound or a point. He “played” until his hamstring begged him to stop. He “played” basketball, like a man entered in a one-legged race at a company picnic, for the first 4 minutes 46 seconds, then took a seat and endured, along with everybody else present, the unusual sight of a third straight Laker loss.

His mind raced, which is more than his legs could say.

Nine seconds remaining, Lakers behind by three points: The NBA’s most valuable player sat there wondering if maybe he should grab Pat Riley by the lapels and yell, “Put me in there! I can make one shot!” Visions of Kirk Gibson, limping to home plate, danced in his head.

“I was designing plays for myself,” Magic said.

Then, he got real.

He knew there was no way. No way he could function at a standstill. No way he could get free so he could catapult a decent shot. Not even one of those magical, 40-foot, buzzer-beaters of his.

“The only reason I didn’t volunteer to go back in,” Johnson said, “was that I knew Detroit was going to pressure me. And with this thing here. . . . “

He tapped his bad leg.

” . . . no way I could get away. I can’t get away from nobody.”

For hours before tipoff, he tried to convince himself that this wasn’t so. From the moment his alarm went off at 7:45 a.m. at his house in Bel-Air, to the moment just after 9 that he pulled into the Forum parking lot, to the warmup drills and sprints down the hallways that he began at 11 under the watchful eyes of doctors and trainers, Magic Johnson tried to tell everybody, himself included, that he could cut it.

“You know I’m gonna lie,” he said. “Whatever it takes to let me play.”

He didn’t have time for the pain. There was a game to play, a game the Lakers needed like no other. Already the team had lost Byron Scott with a similar injury. Why him, too? Why both? Why now?

“I kept asking myself those things: ‘Why is this happening? What else can go wrong?’ Then you try to get past it, try to deal with it. Because it’s too late for that stuff now,” Johnson said.

“I don’t get angry. I’m the type person, I don’t really get angry. I’ve been down before--more than this, too. It’s just frustrating, is all.

“You know yourself, so you start thinking that maybe something can get you going, make you forget your troubles. Maybe the crowd might make some electricity after a great play. You tell yourself: ‘Maybe I can play over it.’ Sometimes you make two baskets, then three baskets, and that gets the crowd going, and the crowd helps you get that fourth basket, and that fifth basket.

“I was looking for anything I could get. For a miracle, I guess.”

So, when they left it up to Magic--to play or not to play, that was the question--he naturally said he would.

He didn’t want a shot of anything, didn’t want a needle. “I’m not too big a shoot-up guy. I can tolerate a lot of pain. I’ve played before with so many injuries. A shot wouldn’t have done nothing for me, no way. Everything I need to play basketball, I already got inside of me.”

He went out there. He dribbled twice. He lobbed a pass to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He looked like Magic. But he didn’t move like Magic. He moved like a Magic impersonator.

He tried to change speeds. Couldn’t. Tried to backpedal. Felt the pain. Tried to drop back on defense. That was the worst. Within one minute, Magic said, he knew he was going nowhere except back to the bench.

“The longer I went, the badder I felt,” the big guy said, in his best little-kid voice.

For a few more minutes, Johnson gutted it out. Then he came out. He said he didn’t ask to come out, but only because he didn’t need to. “They knew. The doctors, the coaches--they knew.”

They knew Magic was done, just as they know now that the Lakers are done. Nobody will say as much aloud. Like Magic, they yearn for a bolt of electricity, a miracle. But, this is Detroit’s showtime. The Pistons know they will not lose the next four games, Magic or no Magic. Just as they know that Magic probably will play in the next game, even though he probably should not.

Magic (Earvin) Johnson hurts too much to play, hurts too much to quit.

Hurts badder, as he might himself say, than he has in a long while.

He was asked which hurts more--his hamstring or his heart?

“I think my heart,” he said. “Because I feel for my teammates.”

Magic Johnson, nevertheless, remains questionable for Game 4 because of an injured hamstring. There is nothing wrong with this person’s heart.