An Icon Falls and His Public Suffers the Pain

Depending on your age, depending on whether you fancy sports or music or politics, the news was reminiscent of hearing that President John F. Kennedy or John Lennon had been shot, or that Lou Gehrig had been forced to suddenly retire from baseball because of a fatal disease with a long name.

One commonality held, though. It hurt.

“All the wind went out of my lungs when I heard,” said Steve Lowe, a 46-year-old lawyer in the mid-Wilshire district. “I’m devastated. Why him? Mister Lovable, that’s what I always think about him. He’s been the best part of living in Los Angeles in the ‘80s.”

“It almost feels like you’re losing a brother,” said Derek Burris, a 26-year-old Inglewood hardware salesman who watched Earvin (Magic) Johnson’s press conference on a giant television screen at Julie’s restaurant near USC.

“It’s kind of like finding out there’s no Santa Claus,” said Scott Robinson, a Los Angeles photographer.

Johnson took pains to stress that he is very much alive, that being HIV-positive is not the same as having AIDS. But the part of him that was pronounced dead on Thursday--his presence on the basketball court--had held Southern California so spellbound for so long that a funereal pall descended. An icon had been shot down in mid-stride.

He had captured the public’s imagination by playing basketball in a way that transcended the sport, and then for good measure applying those same values to life, cutting a classy swath through the worlds of charity and entertainment.

The people who watched him play felt a kinship. You had to see his game to understand. He was the dominant artist of his era, an astounding combination of uptown flashiness and unflagging mental discipline, of childlike enthusiasm and an elder’s tested awareness of how long the journey really is.

He sponsored annual basketball charity games that raised $1 million a pop for the United Negro College Funds. He kicked back $100,000 of his $3.1-million salary last year so the Lakers could afford to sign a new player, Terry Teagle. He swooped into MTV’s annual video music awards with as much poise as he demonstrated on court. He attracted 17,000 Spaniards last summer to two basketball clinics held in one whirlwind day. His charisma sold basketball to Europe.

For illness to force retirement on a man who worked with such zest was more than his admirers could bear.

Mark Rosenbaum, a 43-year-old American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who has shared a Laker season ticket with friends for the last five years, remembered one of the first things he put up in his newborn daughter’s room three years ago. It was a Magic Johnson poster with a yardstick for measuring children’s height.

“It wasn’t to teach her about basketball,” he said. “It was to teach her about being happy. Magic showed people how to connect with one another. When you talk about Magic you talk about those old-fashioned virtues you were taught as a kid and spent your life trying not to become cynical about. . . . When you talk about him, you sound like this school kid. . . . It’s old-fashioned hero worship.”

At Inglewood High School, where the Lakers occasionally practice, 17-year-old Richard Holloway understood.

Holloway is 5 feet 3 and weighs 107 pounds but he is a foot soldier in the brotherhood of basketball, a member of the Inglewood High varsity team, proud to be a “point guard,” the same position Magic perfected.

“I tried to be like Magic,” said Holloway, who said he chatted with Johnson frequently and had written him about 20 letters over the last three years, including a request for a pair of sneakers--a request that Magic granted. “I tried to give assists. I’m still going to try to be like that.”

Last year, one of Holloway’s teammates asked Johnson to buy a candy bar to pay for new uniforms. Instead, Johnson donated $2,500 to pay for all the jerseys.

“Magic was like a folk hero, particularly around here at Inglewood High because he’s done so much,” Principal Ken Crowe said.

Even before the press conference began Thursday afternoon, several hundred people, desperate for communion, gathered in the Forum parking lot in Inglewood.

Arrie McKinney, 37, of Hawthorne, arrived with her 4-year-old son, Luis. She is not a basketball fan, but she wanted Luis to meet Magic.

She got there at 1:30. The press conference came and went. About 4 p.m. a heavy fog rolled in.

“It’s devastating news,” McKinney said. “You can see why there is a cloud hanging over the Forum.” She waited longer. What was holding her?

Magic, she explained, “is a black person who didn’t forget his roots. We have a saying in the black community that when you get rich you are no longer black, you are green. Magic didn’t change colors.”

In Cerritos, on the asphalt playground of Martin B. Tetzlaff Junior High School, basketball coach Mark Hankinson huddled with a group of gangly 12- and 13-year-olds who were trying out for the Trojans, the school’s seventh-grade team.

“Boys, there is some bad news today,” Hankinson said. “Magic Johnson is very sick. He has the HIV virus.”

The boys stare at him.

“It means that his body can’t fight sickness, his immune system can’t push off bad viruses,” Hankinson said.

Is he going to get better? they ask him. Is he going to play again? How did he get it? Is he going to die?

These boys know Magic. They can tell you about his “baby skyhook,” about the behind-the-back pass. They remember when he was kicked in the head by the Chicago Bulls’ Horace Grant last winter, and when he pulled a hamstring in a game against the Detroit Pistons. Most have at least one poster of Magic smiling down at them from the walls of their rooms, a couple of them have four.

“I hope they are all wrong and I hope he comes back,” said 12-year-old Chad Tsubaki.

“No matter what happens to him, he is always my favorite and I will always love him,” 13-year-old Jamar Perrigan said quietly. “Tell him I love him very much.”

“Let’s play,” another boy interrupts. “Let’s play in honor of Magic.” And, shouting, they ran onto the courts.