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A Magical Story
Nearly 10 years have passed since Magic Johnson announced that he had contracted the AIDS virus. In this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, senior writer Jack McCallum takes a closer look at the greatest comeback in sports history, namely how Magic has transformed his life since that November 1991 day. CNNSI.com asked McCallum for his thoughts on the assignment. More and more, it seems, our global culture reacts to cataclysmic changes with a collective "Wow," then almost immediately assimilates them, accepts them as routine. A company is red-hot on Monday, dead on Wednesday and no one remembers it by Friday. One day there's a Berlin Wall, the next day there isn't, and now hardly anyone remembers when there was. Magic Johnson's announcement that he had HIV was a truly mind-bending event in the sports world -- nay, throughout the whole world -- yet young people today have a hard time understanding why it was even a story, never mind an international headline-grabber. Duh, what is the big deal with one guy testing positive? The idea of catching up with Magic near the 10-year anniversary of his announcement had come to me several years ago. (The story appears in this week's Sports Illustrated, three months before the actual anniversary, mainly because my editors and I were afraid that other media outlets would be on the case by November.) The milestone afforded the opportunity to look at both the man and the disease in historical and contemporary context, something we don't do very often in a world where things change at the speed of a transmitted e-mail. I approached the assignment as journalists approach most assignments: with a measure of cynicism about the subject and hopefulness about the story. Probably the greatest misconception about journalists is that they begin with a preordained opinion and look only for information that support their thesis. But, in most cases, the process of reporting is a journey of discovery for the writer, just as it becomes one for the reader. (Boy, I hope I'm right about that.) From outward appearances it seemed that Magic was doing well, his 1998 foray into late-night talk show host notwithstanding. But I wasn't sure. As I say in the story, there was, still is, a tendency for people in my business to underestimate the man. We loved him as a player and liked him as an interview subject, but away from the court he didn't seem terribly serious or formidable. Before I spent extensive time with him in Los Angeles, I had read the stories about his business empire, but I believed I would find some holes in it, or, at least, find that somebody else was calling the shots and that Magic was just a figurehead, a bobblehead doll placed on the mantle to smile and nod his head. Well, that just isn't the case. Against all odds, Johnson is every bit as successful in business as he was in basketball. Maybe more so. As a Laker he was always measured against, first, Larry Bird , then Michael Jordan , and there were times when he didn't measure up. But in his particular domain of the business world, i.e., an African-American selling to primarily African-American consumers, he is clearly No. 1 -- without competition, sui generis. Writing about Magic as an HIV sufferer carried with it the same hazard it did a decade ago; to a certain segment of the reading public any kind of positive portrayal of the man by definition glorifies a vile lifestyle. There are those who will not forgive him his past sexual transgressions, no matter how myriad his accomplishments, no matter how wide his smile, no matter how much time has gone by. That is their prerogative. But the most important part of the Magic story, as one of the doctors quoted my piece says, is that Magic is not an anomaly, that there are millions of others like him, HIV sufferers who, because of pharmaceutical breakthroughs, no longer face the threat of slow, excruciating death from the terrible plague of AIDS. If you don't think that's positive news, I feel sorry for you.
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