When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [142]
The Lakers won 53 games that season, but lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Houston Rockets. When the series ended, Magic stepped on the team plane, turned to assistant coach Larry Drew, and told him, "I'm done."
He announced his retirement and vowed this time to stick to it.
"I'm glad I came back," Magic said. "I wanted to end it on my terms, not on someone else's terms."
Johnson has come to accept that his legacy will always include the fact he is HIV-positive. It has become his mission and his responsibility. When tennis star Arthur Ashe contracted AIDS following a blood transfusion after heart surgery, he called and asked Magic for his help preparing his public announcement.
Since his 1991 diagnosis, Johnson has maintained a rigorous workout schedule and a carefully monitored diet. In 2003 doctors told him there was no detectable evidence of the virus in his system, prompting Cookie to declare in a published interview, "The Lord definitely healed Earvin." While Cookie noted that her husband's physicians credited the medicine for his robust health, she said, "We claim it in the name of Jesus."
Her comments triggered an outcry from HIV and AIDS activists and the medical community. The message, they stressed, should not be that Magic was cured, but that his virus was dormant. They were gravely concerned that Cookie's comments would impede the message of how to treat and manage HIV.
"People needed to look closely at what Cookie said," Magic said. "She said, 'I feel he is cured.' She feels in her heart this is so, and God played a role in that.
"I have my own faith, but I didn't stop taking my medication. That's what the AIDS community was worried about. Their fear was people would read that and say, 'Oh, Magic says he's cured, we can stop taking our medicine now too.'
"That wasn't our message. We went out and corrected that little thing. We said, 'Everyone is entitled to their faith. Please respect that.' People calmed down once we clarified things."
Johnson is acutely aware that people remain skeptical about his explanation for how he contracted the disease. At the time he was diagnosed, the majority of HIV cases were among homosexuals, and there are many who still believe he was involved with another man.
"I've been a straight shooter all along," Magic said. "I never denied I contracted the virus, and I didn't lie about the fact I had been with many women throughout my career, even though I knew it would be hurtful to Cookie, and to my reputation.
"It was the truth, and the truth needed to be told, especially with the disease starting to run rampant in our society. If I was engaging in gay sex, don't you think somebody would have come forward by now? I'm Magic Johnson. I was only at the top of my game when I got my diagnosis. If there was someone that had been with me, don't you think we would have heard about it, just like all those politicians who keep getting themselves in trouble?
"Believe me, the tabloids tried. The [National] Enquirer had a whole fleet of people on the story. They contacted all of my friends, my family members, and a good number of my acquaintances. But they couldn't find anything about a gay lifestyle because it wasn't there.
"Honestly? I don't care what people think at this point. I know the truth. That's all that matters.
"My whole mission is to educate people. That's how I felt then, and that's how I feel now. It hurts heterosexuals if they think this can't happen to them. Here's a statistic for you: 80 percent of all new cases of HIV are heterosexual. The homosexual community has worked hard to curb the problem. They practice safe sex. They use condoms.
"It's the Latino and black population that's being hit hard now. That's why I'm still out there speaking to schools and churches and companies, because there is too much false information circulating."
There are new advances in HIV research each day, so whenever Johnson speaks to schools, businesses,