NBA 1990-91 : He’s Still TAKING CARE OF Business : Magic Is No Longer Just a Superstar, He Is Approaching Tycoon Status

The owner, president and CEO of Magic, Inc., back on his day job, works his way upcourt in an airless University of Hawaii Quonset hut picturesquely named Otto Klum Gymnasium.

“What we got?” yells a teammate, asking the play.

“I’ll let you know in just a minute,” the young magnate answers, sharply. The fiddlers didn’t rush Leonard Bernstein, nor will forwards hurry Earvin Johnson Jr., 31 and still Magic.

He is home. The floor is a universe only he comprehends. The game is a symphony only he hears.

He was born for this, but there’s a problem: It isn’t forever, or even for long. The dream is finite, the sand never stops running out of the glass and suddenly he’s closer to the end than the beginning.

The whole, incredible run that took a wide-eyed kid from East Lansing, Mich., to 13,000 amenity-crammed square feet of Beverly Hills mansion, that made him an American icon rubbing elbows with figures so great that it took his breath away, only to discover in amazement that they were more thrilled to be meeting him --has only a few years left.

Three, he says and then he’ll reassess. Has anyone ever so dreaded the prospect? Did anyone ever pour so much of himself into the game? Was there ever a man so consumed by it, so nurtured and fulfilled?

Was there ever anyone more certain he needed an alternative as challenging and needed it now?

So, the real transition game begins.

MAGIC: THE EMPIRE

I’ve been backstage with him, in a room with 35 people and they’re all taking a shot at him. This is a town of hustlers, cynical people, guys trying to grab a piece of you. He has the ability to distance himself, but to give everybody the impression he understands what they’re saying, he’s listening.

He doesn’t travel with people. When Sinatra enters a room, it looks like an invading army. M . C . Hammer has bodyguards that look like the Raiders. Magic just kind of moves. To me, he’s the biggest and most recognizable star in this town. I’ve been in Morton’s when Warren Beatty and Clint Eastwood were there with nobody paying any attention to them. Magic comes in and--bang!

--JOE SMITH, president of Capitol Records

Magic Johnson is going into business, big time.

His off-court earnings--$9 million a year according to an associate--dwarf his $3.1-million Laker contract. He has deals with eight companies, one of them in Spain. His representatives include Mike Ovitz, Creative Artists’ “King of Hollywood” and Capitol Records President Joe Smith.

His agent, Lon Rosen, estimates that Johnson took 12 days off this summer. He spent the rest of his time on appearances, trips, meetings and his first giant deal, purchase of the Pepsi distribution facilities in Washington. Johnson, a general partner, committed an estimated $20 million.

“I mean, Magic Johnson Tees (a T-shirt company), he endorses it and he owns it,” Rosen says. “But Pepsi is a big business.”

Ovitz set up the deal but Johnson did his homework, too. He made calls with the salesmen, negotiated with retailers for shelf space--Rosen says he got four more feet at Andrews Air Force Base--did an appearance at the White House, where he encouraged the Chief Executive to keep belting the product.

If he needed something new to make his heart beat fast, he has found it.

“When I wrote the check for my house, I couldn’t bring myself to write it,” Johnson says. “It was like the most unbelievable thing. I mean, I had to truly back up and just look at the amount I was about to give them.

“So I’m sitting here and my accountant and Lon, they bust out laughing.

“I never dreamed, first, I’d have all this money in the bank. Then--OK, I got it, now I’m getting ready to give it to somebody?

“OK, now we got past that and I’m getting ready to get this business. Oh, man. . . .

“I tell you, I had to literally tell them to do it (sign the papers). You know how you just can’t?

“But when I go to that warehouse and I see all that Pepsi, it’s the greatest feeling anybody could have.”

Momma, he’s home, again.

EARVIN: THE BOSS

It’s funny, Earvin’s very shy. To know the real man takes several years. He has that smile and easy manner with people, but that’s not really him. That’s an image he can put out there at will, that kinda gets him by.

If you know the real man, he’s a very complex person. He’s very difficult to know. It was years before he and I talked.

Magic has a son my youngest son’s age. I didn’t find that out till about four years ago. Weird stuff like that. He has little secrets.

--KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR

Being the leader is a very difficult thing. It’s a fine line. While you have to be one of the fellows--you keep punching what I call that membership card--you have to motivate players, to get players up.

The only problem is, who gets him up?

Being a leader is a tough job ‘cause you’re out there alone.

--PAT RILEY

By now you might have heard that Magic’s intimates rarely call him Magic, but Earvin. True intimates call him neither, but Buck. Even his nickname has levels of entree.

If you want to know the man, watch his game. It’s not everything but it’s a start.

First of all, he’s in charge.

If you ever saw pure will dribbling a basketball, here it is. His stern expression is like a force shield. He gives the orders. You post up and shut up.

Does he get angry? Did Patton wear six-shooters?

“Oh, a lot,” croons Johnson sweetly as ever, now that practice is over. “That’s me. And they know it’s me. Anybody can tell you on our team, that’s how I am.

“I think everybody understands, sometimes I might say something because it’s in the heat of the battle and I hate to lose. But I explain to them, especially the new guys like Terry (Teagle) and Sam (Perkins) who don’t know me, ‘This is how it’s gonna be.’

“Now, when it’s over it’s over. But my thing is, I lead this team on the floor. It’s on me to get everybody in position. If I come down and let guys just fire up shots, then I feel that’s on me. I’ve let Coach (Mike) Dunleavy down.

“When they take a bad shot--’Hey, that was a bad shot! C’mon, let’s move the ball!’ Sometimes you don’t have time to be nice.”

Second, he works hard.

Like, real hard. He practices like a madman. His worlds are conquered but a few days ago when Larry Drew was sent in for him, he told assistant coach Bill Bertka, “Put me back in, Bert, I need the work.”

Every summer he finds something to work on: the junior skyhook, the three-pointer, free throws. Every season, he comes back a little better.

Every game, he hurls himself down the lane over and over, getting tripped, kneed, battered, stepped on, until at night’s end, he crawls into his clothes and limps home. That’s in the exhibition season, too.

Pat Riley gets rhapsodic at the memory.

“That’s the difference between a winner--OK?--and somebody who just . . . doesn’t . . . get . . . there,” Riley says.

“You can hear--I used to hear it till I was blue in the face, ‘You’ve got to maintain these guys, you’ve got to take care of ‘em, you’ve got to make sure you don’t wear ‘em out.’ All that bull.

“Great players demand direction. They demand discipline. They don’t want to waste time. They don’t want you to come out and waste their time for eight months and be easy on ‘em.

“I mean, hard work never guaranteed Magic anything, but without it, he never would stand a chance. Nobody would. That’s what he’s about and that’s why the team works so hard, because of his great example.”

Third, Johnson is a genius with people in a people business.

His warmth and sensitivity defuse potential time bombs. Norm Nixon, whose point job he was awarded, started out resenting him and wound up a close friend.

Johnson deferred to Abdul-Jabbar, a natural rival since new owner Jerry Buss so doted on his first draft pick. They coexisted at first, even through the Paul Westhead affair, which Abdul-Jabbar, Westhead’s chief ally, calls Magic’s “one blunder.” Later they, too, became close friends.

“In the beginning, I didn’t say anything to Kareem (on the floor),” Johnson says. “When I did, I just watched and saw where I could stick little things in, OK? ‘Nice hook! Block that next time, big fella!’

“At the end, I could say anything to him. He knew when I’d get mad, when he let guys lay it up or he wasn’t getting the board or some guy was pushing him around.

“He was a special guy. He was a guy we needed, so it wasn’t like you picked your spots. Like even before the game sometimes, I might say, ‘Kareem, you need to dominate the game today. Just the first quarter, get us off to a fast start.’ You had to rev him up but once he was revved up, he was ready.

“At the end, we were tight. Now we’re real tight. It took us five years and the latter five was great. Before that, there wasn’t a whole lot said. There was no tension. We were friendly. I was a young guy and he didn’t know if I was trying to come in, take over, what. And Kareem doesn’t open up to people, so you’ve got to show him you’re a for-real guy.”

Says Abdul-Jabbar: “At first, I didn’t know him personally, so I could only read him from his game. He had an ability to do the right thing under fire. You don’t see that. That type of maturity is very rare. I saw the cunning and the total preparation that is belied by the smile and the laugh.

“We were polite. It’s funny, though. I got to know Earvin’s family very well. I got to know his mom real well. She used to cook for me and all that stuff. So I always felt like Earvin was family, even though he and I really personally didn’t share much time together.

“It was funny, that bond grew and grew, regardless of what our fortunes were on the court and that was nice. That was part of the reason that I decided to stay in as long as I did.

“My being out there made Earvin’s job a lot easier. Earvin’s being out there made my job a lot easier. Look where we took it--all the way to the top, and we kept it up there.”

Last, Johnson is out there to win, not to accumulate points, assists, triple-doubles, MVPs or even as much money as he can.

In fact, he kicked back $100,000 of his $3.1-million salary so the Lakers could sign Teagle.

The amount was barely significant--.8% of his overall income--but his attitude was. There had been speculation that he would be offended by Perkins’ $3-million-plus salary.

Of course, $100,000 is still a lot of money.

“I feel all right,” Johnson says, smiling.

RILES: PARDS NO LONGER

Not everything ends the way you’d like, nor did the Riley era, with its four titles and all of Johnson’s three MVPs.

This time Magic was the last loyalist.

“I think some of the guys just grew apart from him, basically,” Johnson says. “Sad to say, it’s just--some things that were working before just weren’t working anymore.”

Were his teammates hoping he’d stand up against Riley?

“Of course, you hear the grumbling. I think so, in a subtle way, yes. But on the other hand, I like Riley. So, I was caught in the middle. But if the guys weren’t going to perform, we were going to be in trouble.”

Was that what happened to them against Phoenix in the playoffs?

“Well, I think there was some tension there. I really can’t say what happened, why we went into an offensive slump, when we hadn’t all season. There was definitely a lot of tension there. It’s too bad. We played under that. But (the Suns) played great.”

Another era was soon upon them. If Johnson needed any last challenges in the game, launching Dunleavy’s will suffice.

BUCK: THE MAN

When Earvin Johnson was a kid making delivery runs in East Lansing, he used to sit behind executives’ desks in vacant offices and dream of being a big businessman.

Of course, he also dreamed of being a basketball star, a rock star, a movie star, an astronaut and President of the United States.

“I was a dreamer,” he says. “And when you’re a dreamer, I think, you dream about everything, almost, on the face of the earth.”

His was always the gift of appropriateness. He had a child’s delight in the world that is still as bright and new today, but he has an adult’s understanding of responsibility. He worked all the time, just like his father, Earvin Sr. He put in time at the Boys Club, with Big Brothers.

Imagine a 19-year-old college sophomore calling up his idol, Julius Erving, out of the blue, to ask his advice about turning pro.

Now the world opens up to Johnson like a big theme park. He’s tight with the Jacksons, with Arsenio, with half of Hollywood. He’s a regular on the sideline for Raider games. He’s backstage at concerts. He jams with M.C. Hammer, or at least gets up on stage with them and dances, even if he’s supposed to be presenting a new, more dignified, corporate image.

Who ever sees so many of his dreams come true?

Ah, there’s another rub: What happens when they do? Not everything you thought, probably.

For one thing, Johnson thought he’d be married by now but he has been twice engaged to his college sweetheart, Cookie Kelly, and has twice broken it off.

“I’m not going to get married till after (basketball) is over,” he says. “No more marriage. No more talk about it. We’ll just leave it right there.

“A lot of times, you don’t like to talk about your private life but I will say this--I won’t get married till it’s over.”

He’ll have to divorce the game before he can marry anyone and that will come soon enough. Goodby to little-boy dreams, hello adulthood. Who needs to make the jump before it’s time?

“Basketball is going to be all I dreamed,” he says. “I never thought that all this would happen.

“You find out about the bad things, but they don’t compare to the good side: being in the finals eight out of 10 years, winning five. Playing Boston in the championships. Having that intensity. I mean, there’s nothing that can replace that. Nothing. I mean, I’ve been hurt--fingers, knees--that’s nothing. Because when you watch those films, you go back to Philly, you go back to the (1980) championship.

“It’s scary when your dreams come true. The basketball one comes true. Now the business one is beginning to.

“You say, ‘Wow!’

“But you do say, ‘What’s next?’ ”

He’ll think of something.