END OF THE MAGIC ERA : Teammates Past and Present Are Hit Hard : Lakers: Worthy speaks of a ‘numbing feeling.’ Chick Hearn says he sensed something serious when Johnson had to return from exhibition trip.

Laker eyes were red and watery, the way Laker eyes have looked five times in the last 12 seasons. Then, however, the look was joy-induced, and someone, usually Magic Johnson, was nearby, hoisting the NBA championship hardware.

Thursday, though, the Lakers found that all the lifting of that Lawrence O’Brien Trophy had not prepared them. Their hearts were too heavy to lift.

“We’re lower today than we have ever been, this L.A. Laker family,” radio-TV announcer Chick Hearn said.

Some close friends, former teammates Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Cooper, joined Johnson on the podium at the Forum as he announced his retirement. They had been told only hours earlier.

Others, such as Jerry West and A.C. Green, watched or listened, but preferred to keep their thoughts to themselves.

West said he will talk about it today. Others talked Thursday, even though they did not know quite what to say.

“Right now, it feels like my heart has been ripped out,” said Larry Drew, a Laker until he was released in training camp. “I really don’t have a lot of words for it. I have tried to put it into perspective. This is something that has an effect not only on the city of Los Angeles, but the entire world.”

Said James Worthy, a teammate since 1982-83: “This is something much bigger than basketball. This is something that’s real, and it’s a numbing feeling. The foremost thing we’re concerned with is Earvin and his family, and that’s where the focus is right now for the players and coaches.”

Cooper, Johnson’s former running mate in the Laker backcourt and now a special assistant to West, was told by Johnson at the Forum. Drew, Abdul-Jabbar and Phoenix forward Kurt Rambis, a former Laker, were there, too.

Hearn was the only one who said he suspected something serious, something more than the flu-fatigue-dehydration problems that the Lakers had been saying forced Johnson out of the final two exhibition games and the first three regular-season contests. His concern began, he said, with the exhibition games at Salt Lake City and Vancouver on Oct. 25 and 26, respectively, not when Magic missed the official beginning to his 13th NBA season.

Johnson, said to be worn down after the Lakers’ trip to Paris for the McDonald’s Open, accompanied the Lakers to Utah. Not long after the team charter landed, however, he decided to return to Los Angeles. When he didn’t go to Canada, it was a red flag to Hearn.

“I knew for him to not stay there and make a personal appearance--not even play--something had to be wrong,” Hearn said.

So when he got the news Thursday morning?

“I cried like a baby,” he said. “And I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

The announcer who introduced Johnson at his first Los Angeles news conference, not long after Magic had left Michigan State in 1979 and become the No. 1 pick of the draft, was there to witness the end of the era.

Fans waiting in the Forum parking lot huddled around Hearn when he left the building.

Back inside, someone asked Cooper if there was a way to explain the feeling around the Forum. He paused for a moment, searching for the right words, then answered:

“As they said in ‘ol ‘Casey at the Bat,’ it’s a dark day in Mudville.”