An Icon Falls and His Public Suffers the Pain

Magic Johnson took pains on Thursday 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--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.

“I’m hurt, man. It almost feels like you’re losing a brother,” said Derek Burris, a 26-year-old Inglewood hardware salesman who watched Johnson’s press conference on a giant television screen at a restaurant.

This was bigger than basketball.

Mark Rosenbaum, a 43-year-old American Civil Liberties Union lawyer from Los Angeles, remembered that one of the first things he put up in his newborn daughter’s room three years ago was a poster of Magic with a yardstick for measuring children’s height.

“It wasn’t to teach her about basketball,” said Rosenbaum, who has shared a Laker season ticket with friends for the last five years. “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. . . . Magic taught the world about joy and creativity and friendship and that’s what he touches in everybody.”

Johnson 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 remembered the names of kids in wheelchairs who visited his basketball camp. 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.

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

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. He has a B-minus average and wants to go to college to be a teacher or a lawyer.

“He stood out: Magic. Mister Showman. I tried to be like Magic,” Holloway said. “I tried to give assists. I’m still going to try to be like that. What got to me was that he even gave (some of) his paycheck to let Teagle be on the team.”

In the last several years, Holloway said, he wrote about 20 letters to Johnson, including a request for a pair of sneakers--a request that Magic granted. They are hanging on his bedroom wall.

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,” Inglewood High 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.

Nina Beason, 41, an Inglewood insurance agent and Laker fan, was going to take her daughter to a movie but changed her mind.

“I don’t know why I came. I just know this is where I ought to be,” she said. I know why other people are here. I have a kindred spirit about the Forum and about Magic, and so does everybody else.”

She stood staring straight ahead.

“It is devastating to see this flower in a matter of an hour just die,” she said.

Arrie McKinney, 37, of Hawthorne arrived with her 4-year-old son, Luis. McKinney is not a basketball fan, but Thursday 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.”

The news was treated like the death of a head of state or the outbreak of war. All seven Los Angeles VHF television stations preempted their normal afternoon programming of talk shows, reruns and cartoons to air Johnson’s news conference. Thursday night all three major network newscasts made Johnson’s announcement their top story. CBS spent 14 minutes on it.

The entertainment industry, a fraternity that had virtually adopted Johnson, gasped. The announcement hearkened back to 1985, when actor Rock Hudson acknowledged his illness from AIDS, sending shock waves through the industry.

Talk show host Arsenio Hall, a friend of Johnson’s, scheduled him on tonight’s show. Johnson’s agent and close friend, Creative Artists Agency Chairman Michael Ovitz said he was “devastated” by the news, which he learned Wednesday night in New York. “But as saddened and surprised as I am, I never cease to be amazed by the courage and grace with which he handles himself,” Ovitz said.

Indeed. Had a celebrity ever announced he was HIV-positive one day after receiving the test results, and on top of it told a press conference: “I’m going to beat it and I’m going to have fun”?

For children, the truth took longer to sink in.

In Pasadena, 10-year-old Aaron Israel was with a group of friends when a reporter asked if they had heard the news. Aaron couldn’t believe it.

“No, no . . . he has the flu,” the boy protested. Eventually he understood, and he cried.

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 stared 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 asked 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 “junior 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 in 1989. 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 interrupted. “Let’s play in honor of Magic.”

Shouting, they ran onto the courts.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Bob Baker, George Ramos, Henry Weinstein, Charisse Jones, Paul Feldman, David Wharton, Donnette Dunbar, Collin Nash, Lisa Omphroy, Sherry Joe, David J. Fox, Michael Arkush, Hugo Martin, Steve Herbert and Marc Lacey.

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