His Expertise Produces Wins

The game was ultimately lost on the bench. The coach left the rookie backup center in the lineup with predictable results. The Lakers were leading, 124-120, at the time. There were only 39 seconds left. Their path to victory and a commanding playoff lead of 2-0 over the Golden State Warriors was clear: Make Golden State work hard for one basket, get the ball back with fewer than 24 seconds left and use up the clock or dare them to foul.

It should have worked. It was the way Magic Johnson had planned it.

The game was all but in the hangar when Warrior Rod Higgins grabbed a rebound and went up for a basket. Two things happened: The shot went in--and rookie Elden Campbell fouled him in the act of shooting. It was 124-123 with 28 seconds left.

The Lakers did the right thing--unless you count leaving Campbell in the game. They ran the clock down to the last tick of the 24 seconds you get to shoot. But when James Worthy missed that jumper, the Warriors’ Mario Elie grabbed the rebound--and the unthinkable happened. Elden Campbell reached in and committed a backcourt foul. There were only 3.1 seconds left to play. The only way the Warriors could have moved the ball upcourt was with the referee carrying it. Elie made the two free throws. Even though the Lakers managed to squeak through in Game 3, 115-112, the fact remains that they threw away a game they thought safely won and it could come to haunt them.

There were two things at play here. First, a raw rookie should not have been in a game like that at that juncture. Second, given the old-boy network of the NBA, it is doubtful a similar foul would have been called on a veteran player. Bear in mind, Wilt Chamberlain never fouled out of a game.

Elden Campbell may be on his way to being the next “Big E” in basketball, but on this night he was the “Big O”--as in “Oops!”.

In the dressing room later, the media flocked around the locker of the real Big E (for Everything) of the Lakers. They wanted to see how Magic Johnson would take it. After all, this is Magic’s team. He had personally seen to it that the Warriors would be defeated that night--44 points, 20 from the free-throw line; 11 rebounds, and nine assists. A point-a-minute night. A four-point lead with seconds to go.

Magic skirted the controversy. He surveyed the assembled cameras, microphones, notebooks and TV crews and changed the subject. Magic is not into criticizing rookies. Or coaches. He graciously moved the spotlight.

“When God wanted to create a basketball player, he made Chris Mullin,” Magic said cheerily, alluding to the Warrior player assigned to him most of the night. “He doesn’t know how well he plays this game.”

Chris Mullin had scored 41 points, most of them from long range. The closest he was to the basket all night was the free-throw line, from where he made five of six. He kept his team in the game. He scored 10 points once in a little more than a minute.

Magic scored 42 points in the last three quarters.

The feeling persists that if God set out to make a basketball player, it would be a good deal more like Earvin Johnson than Chris Mullin.

Some players score a lot of points. Others grab a lot of rebounds. Some excel in assists.

Magic Johnson specializes in winning. Whatever it calls for.

Whatever team you put Magic Johnson on, whatever its makeup, it will win. It always has. Put him on a team with a dominating center and the suspense goes out of the game.

What Joe Montana has been to football, Sandy Koufax was to baseball, Magic Johnson is to his sport. All he needs is the ball. If he doesn’t have it, a terrible mistake has been made somewhere.

It’s interesting because, 50 years from now, when an archivist is attempting to reconstruct what made this Johnson Magic, it’s not going to leap off the page for him. The 17,239 regular-season points to date are way down a list from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 or Wilt Chamberlain’s 31,419. They may not even end up a threat to Elvin Hayes’ 27,313. Magic’s single-game standard, 46, is a far cry from Chamberlain’s 100, David Thompson’s 73 or even Pete Maravich’s 68. His free throws, 4,788, are a long way from Oscar Robertson’s 7,694.

But Herculean prowess is not always visible in statistics. A historian of the future, looking at Nolan Ryan’s so-so won-lost record may be hard put to understand his genius--until he looks at the no-hitters and one-hitters and two-hitters. Some years ago, when I was in the magazine business, the San Francisco bureau chief, Dick Pollard, and myself used to have no luck at all persuading the New York office that a center for the University of San Francisco team, fellow by the name of Bill Russell, belonged on our cover. The editors would check the results from the night before, and instead of looking at the won-lost column, they would consult the stat sheets where they would notice Russell had a six-point or 10-point night, and would instead put a Tom Gola or a King Lear on the cover. It was not until Russell led his team to consecutive Final Four championships that they took notice.

Magic’s giveaway is his record of 9,921 assists. Magic comes to score more than the other team, not the other guy. Magic doesn’t care who makes the basket so long as the team does. You look in the win column, not the points column to assess his contribution. As with all good magicians, there’s more to his play than meets the eye.

In the opening playoff game against the Warriors this week, Magic assayed the situation. With Chris Mullin out, heroic scoring was not called for. Astute quarterbacking was. Accordingly, Magic dealt the ball off like a riverboat gambler. He scored 21 points but dished off 17 assists. The Lakers won breezing, 126-116. As he figured they would.

Wednesday night’s game was a new shuffle. With Mullin back, the Warriors had chips to back their play. Magic knew he had to go to the basket.

He went to it with a will, making 12 baskets and drawing 22 fouls. He and Mullin had an old-fashioned “High Noon” shootout. Before the game, someone told Warrior Coach Don Nelson, “You’re not going to get near the basket with that small lineup.”

“We may not have to,” Nelson is said to have replied.

He didn’t have to. In one of the most impressive displays of perimeter shooting since the old Bradley-Lucas-DeBusschere Knicks, Mullin shot 75% from the floor, making 12 regular baskets, four of four three-point attempts and five free throws. Laid end-to-end, his baskets would have reached Santa Fe.

As awesome as it was, Magic outscored him. Johnson muscled his scores in but delivered the game to his team, 124-120, with only a half a minute remaining. The Warriors won the game the only way they could have won it--from the free-throw line. The game was handed to them. It wasn’t a victory, it was a charity. If the Warriors win the series, the Lakers should get to take it off their income tax. And Magic should say to his prodigal teammates: “Look! When I hand you a playoff game all gift-wrapped and ribboned, don’t go throwing it off the back of a truck on me!”