The Los Angeles Lakers icon needed to retire from the NBA and Chicago Bulls celebrity Scottie Pippen was “devastated.”
“The information got here from Los Angeles on Thursday, November 7. Magic Johnson had been recognized with HIV. He has he would instantly retire,” Pippen wrote in his ebook. “Simply 5 months earlier, we confronted him and the Lakers within the NBA Finals. He couldn’t have regarded any more healthy. Now he was dying. At the very least, that’s what we feared. I used to be devastated. I want I might have spoken to him. To consider he would get via this. To consider we’d get via this.
“Magic and I didn’t get pleasure from that sort of relationship. He got here into the league eight years earlier than I did. Eight years is a technology within the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation. To me, him contracting the virus was one other reminder of how rapidly every little thing may be taken away. Not that I wanted any extra. I simply had to think about my circle of relatives.
“Nobody displayed a pure love for the sport as enthusiastically, and as genuinely, as Magic Johnson did. Then or ever since. As unbelievable as he was on the court docket, I like him extra for a way he has performed himself off the court docket. A dying sentence? Hardly. There is no such thing as a one I’ve ever met who’s extra alive.
“We knew so little about AIDS in these days. Paradoxically, only a week earlier than, Phil Jackson had burdened the significance of being cautious with members of the alternative intercourse. A couple of guys made jokes, as younger males are likely to do in these sorts of conversations. There have been no jokes this time. Everybody was involved. Like many individuals, they assumed solely homosexuals contracted the virus. Now that it had claimed Magic Johnson, the epitome of heterosexuality, it dawned on them AIDS might declare anybody.”
Fortuitously, Johnson didn’t die. The NBA nice performed on “The Dream Crew” with Pippen in the summertime of 1992 and returned to the NBA for 32 video games in 1995-96 earlier than retiring for good.
Arguably the best level guard in NBA historical past, Johnson averaged 19.5 factors, 7.2 rebounds, 11.2 assists, 1.9 steals and 0.4 blocks with the Lakers. He made 12 All-Star groups and 10 All-NBA groups and received three MVPs, 5 championships and three Finals MVPs.
Each Pippen and Johnson are within the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame.
