Lessons Lost In Fast Lane Promiscuity Remains Prevalent Despite Magic And Morrison

Rony Seikaly walked onto the Miami Arena court before a Heat game last season, before most fans had begun to stream in, and noticed a magazine on his seat. He thought it was a game program. It was not. It was a raunchy men’s magazine, paper-clipped to a particular page.

“I opened it up and the model had signed her picture,” Seikaly recalled. “It said love-and-kisses, with her phone number. I couldn’t help but notice that, in the picture, she wasn’t covered up too much.”

Seikaly figured a teammate had played a joke. Partly out of curiosity (but not entirely), the number was later dialed.

It was no joke.

“If they want to meet you, they will find a way,” Seikaly says. “And if you want to meet them, it is not a problem.”

Maybe that was a game program of sorts, after all. The game is called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Young and Athletic. If you are a sports star, sexual promiscuity is a ready option. Like free sneakers in the mail or the best table at a restaurant, it is a job perk. Unlike those things, it can kill you.

It is what delivered Magic Johnson to his fateful announcement almost 4-1/2 years ago. Now, even as boxer Tommy Morrison’s similar revelation last month reverberates like some ghostly echo, Magic is back in basketball, smiling as ever.

It is a metaphor for life back to normal, for things the way they were.

Magic Johnson is outwardly robust, yet the death virus simmers within. He is halfway through the time it takes a typical person with HIV to develop AIDS, after which only 20 percent of victims survive five years.

Magic used to be the wonderful basketball star who lived up to the impossible nickname. Now he is a man defined by his illness. Now he is a lesson in living. And dying.

Magic competes and thrives, and that tells others with HIV they can, too. His inspiration to the afflicted is unquestioned.

Yet he will not beat the disease that no one has, and this should tell others to be more careful - especially fellow sports figures facing the same temptations. Whether this lesson has been learned is questionable.

Seikaly, now a Golden State Warrior, has observed a gradual return to social abandon by his NBA brethren.

“When Magic first announced, he created a shock wave. It became too close to home,” Seikaly said. “He led a promiscuous life, but, still, you’d think he got the creme de la creme - not the type of women who might carry the disease. It really made players stop and think.

“As the years wore off, you saw the effect of his announcement wear off, too. All of a sudden it’s the promiscuous lifestyle again in the NBA. Players are still going out and chasing women.”

The hot issue now is whether the Human Immunodeficiency Virus can be transmitted via contact sports. But that shifts focus from the cause of Magic’s and Morrison’s misery and the larger threat to all athletes.

Sex. Temptation. Carelessness.

“Sex and the NBA still go hand in hand,” Chicago Bulls forward Jack Haley said. “We are primary candidates to contract the disease. You either take care of yourself, or play Russian roulette.”

Haley emphasized he is married and monogamous but knows many are neither.

“I haven’t seen a single unmarried pro athlete who says, ‘I’m not going to go out there and reap the benefits of being a star,”’ he said. “And women are forward and aggressive in the ‘90s. A guy like (the Bulls’ Dennis) Rodman, he has offers from gorgeous women, movie stars. Madonna came after him, not the other way.”

A woman once offered sex to Miami Dolphins security chief Stu Weinstein if he would tell her Dan Marino’s hotel room number. Weinstein declined.

A reporter who covered one NFL team recalled a prominent ex-offensive lineman showing up at camp one day with a stack of photos depicting the player and teammates engaged sexually with various women.

Some players say they can identify groupies by signs such as excessive makeup or clothing out of context with the ballpark. One recent day, a reporter asked a Baltimore Orioles player if he could point out a groupie attending a game at Fort Lauderdale Stadium. The player did. That night, the reporter saw the same woman at Chatz Lounge, the hotel bar at the Marriott where most Orioles live during the spring.

The woman, blond and in her mid-20s, said her name was Janice but later claimed it was not.

“It’s easy to get noticed at the ballpark. You just make sure you stand between a bunch of little boys and fat old men,” she said, laughing.

The smile vanished at the mention of the word groupie.

“I’m just trying to meet a great-looking guy who might want to meet me,” she said. “Who would I rather meet? Brady Anderson, or some local drunk?”

Tommy Morrison’s HIV infection through careless sex underlined boxing’s reputation as a sport that especially attracts women. Men more commonly give than receive the AIDS virus during heterosexual sex, but a man’s promiscuity increases the likelihood he will get it from others, and few men have more opportunity to be socially active than pro athletes.

Just as Johnson admitted to “hundreds” of sexual partners, Morrison described his lifestyle as “permissive, fast and reckless,” adding, “I thought I was bulletproof.” His trainer, Tom Virgets, called Morrison “the greatest bimbo magnet of all time.”

Boxing great Larry Holmes: “If I was heavyweight champion, and not married, I would jump on anything that moved. And if I weren’t protected, I would jump on it anyway. I can’t tell you I resisted all the time. You think, ‘Nothing could happen to me.’ That’s the way everybody thinks.”

Not everybody. Some athletes say the use of condoms has become more common since Magic announced - protection, if not discretion. Many teams even provide condoms.

An NFL study conducted last summer suggests football players, at least, are being more careful. The survey - conducted by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and by Dr. Lawrence Brown, NFL adviser on AIDS and HIV issues asked players anonymously how their lifestyle has changed “since Magic Johnson.”

Results have not yet been published, but, “Far and wide, players say they have modified their behavior,” Brown said. “Granted, we weren’t in the bedroom with cameras, but we think the anonymity gives us an accurate result.”

Perhaps not.

“Man, I talked to guys about that survey and they didn’t tell the truth,” Tampa Bay Bucs running back Errict Rhett said. “Nobody is going to say they have sex with a bunch of people in this day and age, even if they are.”

Neither Brown nor any AIDS expert believes Johnson is the only HIV carrier among the nearly 3,000 active athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL or baseball. The CDC’s Dr. Peter Drotman estimates there may be approximately 30 active, HIV-infected players in the four major contact sports of boxing, basketball, football and hockey, based on national averages for age group, gender and race. With Morrison banned from boxing, Johnson simply is the only active known carrier.

The idea that dozens of active athletes could have HIV kept secret or unknown to them - fuels emotional debate on the subject of transmission through competition.

None of the four major team sports requires testing for HIV. Only 15 states require pro boxers to be tested.

Experts say the chance of transmission during competition via exchange of blood, even in boxing, is negligible. The CDC likens it to the risk faced by health-care workers, a likelihood one study put at 0.35 percent.

To some athletes, though, the concern is more than negligible.

Armon Gilliam of the New Jersey Nets, Vernon Maxwell of the Philadelphia 76ers and Steve Smith of the Atlanta Hawks are among NBA players who have expressed reservations this year about playing against Johnson.

“Most guys are politically correct about it in public,” said the Hawks’ Grant Long. “But guys, behind closed doors, will admit they are frightened to play with (Magic).”

Even Seikaly, who makes it clear he is not fearful of competing against Johnson, acknowledged, “The thing some players are thinking is, if this was just an average player, not Magic’s caliber, would the NBA have allowed him to come back and play?”

The NBA says yes. Dr. Michael Johnson, consultant to the NBA Players Association on AIDS matters, tries to alleviate and acknowledge concerns.

“The concept of zero risk is a fallacy. Because of the stigma and hype and history of HIV, people aren’t able to put it in the same perspective,” he says. “Is there a risk of transmission during a game? Yes. But, is the risk less than getting struck and killed by lightning? I believe it is.”

The NFL commissioned a study that estimated its players have one chance per 85 million “game contacts” to contract the AIDS virus. The study observed 155 games and found 575 bleeding injuries, or 3.7 per game, then calculated the odds of two bleeding players colliding and sufficiently exchanging blood.

“It’s theoretically possible,” said Brown, the league medical adviser. “But the odds suggest there would not be an infection in the entire NFL for at least 50 years. It’s a lifestyle issue, not a football issue.”

Anyone who has watched two skaters drop gloves and fight bare-fisted and bloody during an NHL game might wonder if it is a hockey issue. This is the one team sport in which fighting is considered part of the game.

Hartford Whalers center Mark Janssens: “Trust me, I’ve thought about it. I hope nobody in the NHL is HIV-positive, but you’re talking about 700 players. The chances are there.”

In only one sport, though, has the anxiety of transmission during competition reached a near-panic level.

Blood is the color of boxing, and the fear of AIDS is in the gym now, strong as the smell of liniment and sweat. Since Morrison acknowledged last month he is carrying the killer virus - with Olympic diver Greg Louganis the most prominent athlete since Magic to do so - the round-ending chimes of “the sweet science” have sounded like Requiem bells.

“The possibility of getting AIDS through boxing was never a concern to me before,” said journeyman heavyweight Wesley Watson, who was to have fought Morrison. “Now, I think about it.”

Since Morrison, nine states have adopted mandatory testing for pro boxers. Only six had it before. Respected voices such as Dr. Ferdie Pacheco call out for testing; others, like Holmes, say, “I wouldn’t fight against Morrison. I wouldn’t risk my life.”

The debate could intensify. Some in boxing believe Morrison, inspired by Johnson’s comeback, will challenge the legality of his banishment. HIV-infected persons are protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act, which prevents someone from being denied a job based on his illness unless it can be proved the illness affects his job performance. The law makes no mention of the risk of transmission.

The WBC adopted mandatory testing in 1992, but only for title fights. WBC President Jose Sulaiman shares Hazelton’s view that the problem is not inside the ropes, noting, “The few (boxers) that have the disease acquired it in their private lives.”

Their private lives.

When the subject is sports and AIDS, it always comes back to that. More than a dozen prominent athletes have died from AIDS or are living with HIV, but only Arthur Ashe, who got the disease through a blood transfusion during heart surgery, became a victim unrelated to his sexual behavior.

“When it happened to Magic, and now Morrison, it became something we as athletes could relate to, and it made you think about your lifestyle,” Orioles pitcher Roger McDowell said. “Until now, I think most athletes had the feeling, ‘I can’t get it because I’m not homosexual.’ Or, ‘I can’t get it because I’m an athlete. I’m invincible.’ After Magic, you knew it could hit anybody. The guy that delivers the milk. Lawyers. Or us.”

Except one cannot imagine the news of that mailman testing positive for HIV reverberating beyond his circle of family and friends.

Now here come Johnson and Morrison, only the most famous victims of the most infamous virus.

And their lessons are still out there, waiting to be learned.

“If you’re not careful,” as Seikaly puts it, “you’re next.”