THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : Is This Really a Closing Ceremony?

They are retiring Magic Johnson’s No. 32 today while the guest of honor ponders . . . a comeback?

Maybe they can hoist his jersey up on a pulley so they can roll it down if he needs it?

Here’s what happened, insofar as we can reconstruct it.

The Lakers wanted to honor Johnson.

He had an idea in the back of his mind about returning but not enough to say: “Not so fast, guys.”

As time went by and he developed no apparent side effects from AZT, and some experts on AIDS suggested he might not be best served by forgoing the things that give his life purpose, he became more serious.

Last weekend, asked if he would come back if the Olympics went well for him, he said: “Probably. Maybe.”

Friday, asked what he thought would be most significant about today’s ceremony, he said: “That I might come back.”

The Lakers were caught in the middle. If the ceremony was awkward, it would have been more so to call it off.

Their problem, your problem, most everyone’s problem pales before Johnson’s.

He’s the first famous athlete to acknowledge being HIV-positive, so no one can help him through this.

He has to figure it out as he goes, while people ask why he can’t make up his mind.

“I wish it was that easy,” he said last week. “It’s easy for you guys (reporters) to say that, but it’s not that easy.”

So, let’s party.

Larry Bird, a recluse when he’s injured, is expected to cross the country to attend, along with the greats of the Laker pantheon.

Demand for tickets is hot. Murray’s Tickets is quoting $125 for the Forum’s “cheap” ($8.50) seats.

Courtside?

Try $1,500.

Any way you slice it, this is a very popular man. If there was nothing heroic about living a prolonged adolescence, what can you say about a man who stands up in front of the world and tells the story? He could have said he had a heart problem, ducked a million controversies and left the education to the educators.

The old standards of his life no longer apply.

The Laker titles of ‘80, ‘82, ‘85, ’87 and ’88 are no longer his greatest moments.

He never had one to match last week’s All-Star game or hit a bigger shot than that curtain-closing, backing-up, 25-footer that sprinkled Magic dust over the world’s bubbling caldron of toil and trouble.

In Orlando, rather than winning a championship, he championed a cause. Thousands of similarly afflicted people with problems bigger than who wins a game saw him don their colors and face down the world.

In the stands sat Dr. David Rogers, vice chairman of the President’s AIDS Commission.

Two days before, Rogers and doctors from Cornell and Johns Hopkins held a news conference to allay fears. They told of a study showing health-care workers who were splattered by HIV-positive blood, or got HIV-positive saliva in their eyes or mouth and didn’t get the virus.

Yet in that morning’s Orlando Sentinel, the risk the doctors had called so slim as to be “unmeasurable” was described by Orlando guard Scott Skiles, a friend of Johnson’s, as “very, very, very small”--which he said was too high for him.

Two NFL players, Dallas’ Troy Aikman and Denver’s Steve Atwater, told the Sentinel they thought the risk was too high, too.

This was a crowning irony, since in their game they have to ignore a real, measurable chance of spinal cord injury, such as those that paralyzed Darryl Stingley and Mike Utley.

Safety wasn’t the only issue, or the Sentinel the lone forum. Johnson’s appearance in an exhibition game, to which the fans selected him, was still being debated all over sports pages and airwaves.

“That was the day I was feeling a little blue,” Rogers said last week.

“We went through it with Ryan White and the school thing. I thought, ‘Why do we have to inflict these tortures on humans? Oh my Lord, why does history have to keep repeating itself?’

“Once you’re asked the question, ‘Could it (transmission of the virus through basketball) possibly happen?’--if you’re honest, you have to say yes. But in the real world, the answer is no. . . . You’re in much greater hazard of being electrocuted in the rain.

“I confess, I had my fingers crossed. He came in the auditorium and 15,000 people stood and cheered for him. And then, that incredible performance! I thought, ‘Wow! What a contribution!’ ”

That was a week ago and a continent away.

Today is homecoming, before the people who shared his triumphs and now sit in on his tragedy.

When halftime is over, the runoff from the tears may flood Inglewood anew.

It may be confusing, but this isn’t just a story from the tidy world of sports anymore. It’s real life. This is history. These are moments that will live forever.