Tyson Gets Some Magic, How About NBA?

Magic Johnson, who rode in on his charisma and credibility Monday to help restore Mike Tyson’s boxing career, now should turn his attention to an area in which he has more expertise, resolving the NBA labor dispute. Considering that the players’ union has called a meeting Thursday in Las Vegas, he wouldn’t even have to change hotels.

Unless he feels obliged to visit Kosovo first for a closer look at that situation.

In case you missed it, the United Nations named him a messenger of peace this year.

After his appearance during Tyson’s first hearing before the Nevada State Athletic Commission last month, Johnson was asked why he had become involved.

My question was, “What took him so long?”

Since finally retiring as a player in 1996, he has exhibited a propensity for tackling lost causes--from redeveloping the inner city to bringing pro football back to Los Angeles. It was only a matter of time before he joined all the king’s lawyers and all the king’s psychotherapists in trying to put Tyson together again.

It would be giving Johnson too much credit to say that his appeal before Nevada’s boxing regulators Monday was the reason Tyson’s request for a license to fight again was granted.

Tyson, after all, met all the commission’s conditions, apologizing for the ear-biting incident that cost him his license in the first place, undergoing extensive psychological testing to determine the probability of it happening again, and answering all questions about an ongoing criminal action against him in Maryland. At most, Johnson swayed one vote, meaning Tyson still would have won by a 3-2 count instead of 4-1.

But Johnson’s presence in Tyson’s corner no doubt made the commissioners feel more comfortable with their decision, knowing it’s possible he will steer the former heavyweight champion’s second comeback, instead of Don King. Or even Shelly Finkel, who meant well as Tyson’s advisor in recent months but almost advised him into another year of exile by pleading his case first in New Jersey instead of Nevada.

“Magic Johnson was a very important part of the package, for lack of a better word,” said Michael Berger, the analyst for “Court TV,” which over the years has become as familiar with Tyson’s proceedings as ESPN’s “Sports-Center.”

“Magic is a very compelling and charismatic figure. It was very important for the whole presentation to give further evidence to the commission that Mike Tyson is turning his life around.”

For the knockout punch, Tyson’s lawyer, Jim Jimmerson, called upon Muhammad Ali, who sat next to Johnson in the row behind Tyson. Because Ali cannot easily be understood when he speaks because of his Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Lonnie, read a statement from him.

“As the proverb states,” she read, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Dr. Elias Ghanem, the Nevada athletic commission’s even-handed chairman, sounded as if he very much liked the notion that Johnson could become that teacher. Ghanem even suggested that Johnson would be an appropriate successor to Cus D’Amato, the legendary trainer who, until his death in 1985, was the lone stabilizing influence in Tyson’s career.

Asked after the hearing about the role that Johnson might play, Tyson appeared in no rush to formalize it. But Johnson, who has boxing promoter’s licenses in California and New Jersey and has applied for one in Nevada, insinuated that he and Jimmerson will head Tyson’s new management team.

“Mike knows money, but he doesn’t understand money,” Johnson told the commissioners. “Hopefully, I will be there to help him understand money.

“Mike is the only guy I know who can make $100 million or $200 million and would rather not have it. He’d rather give it away. He doesn’t want the burden of talking to an accountant and so forth.

“He has to talk to an accountant, he has to get a money manager, he has to sign his own checks and know where the money is going.

“He has a wife and four beautiful children. This money has to take care of them after he’s done boxing.”

It was refreshing to hear someone talk of Tyson’s life after boxing. The voluminous report the Nevada State Athletic Commission received last week from a team of psychologists at Massachusetts General Hospital dealt extensively with Tyson’s need to return to the ring as soon as possible to relieve emotional and financial stress. The doctors, however, didn’t address life after boxing for the 32-year-old Tyson.

What then?

Tyson himself fears the worst, saying in this month’s Playboy that he expects to die violently. Perhaps that is a logical assumption for someone who has lived so violently, that he will become his generation’s Sonny Liston.

But as someone who has been less than charitable toward Tyson since his 1992 rape conviction and his subsequent lack of remorse, I can’t help but feel somewhat encouraged by Monday’s events. All men should be afforded a chance for redemption.

Maybe Magic is due for another assist. Maybe he can help Tyson rewrite the ending, help him become as good a boxer as he used to be and a better person than he’s ever been.

Any advice Johnson gives Tyson will be better than he’s received from anyone else lately, unless Magic starts talking to him about becoming a talk-show host.