Can’t Rekindle The Magic

First things first: If Magic Johnson does return to the Los Angeles Lakers, “He won’t be one of the top four or five players in the league,” says a Western Conference club executive. “Which, honestly, he probably doesn’t think he is, anyway.

“But Magic probably does believe that he can come back in as one of the 10 or 15 best in the league, and he’s not that, either, in my opinion.”

So what is he?

A pause.

“Well,” the executive replies, “he’s better than any player they currently have.”

The Lakers may need Magic Johnson, last season’s 48-34 record and second-round playoff advancement notwithstanding. If the team’s interest in reclaiming the 36-year-old Johnson is as genuine as it appears, it is because general manager Jerry West has concluded that his bunch can get closer to a title with Magic back on the floor.

Undoubtedly, West believes that coach Del Harris can find a way to place Johnson among the young members of a team that appeared to discover itself this year. Johnson, so say the cognoscenti, is willing to let Harris be the coach. He wants to play.

But all of this is practicality, which has almost no place in an argument over aesthetics, that increasingly irrelevant component of the modern sports biosphere.

And it is for aesthetic reasons that Johnson’s return to the NBA after a four-year absence looms as a terrible, unredeemable mistake.

Now, this is no discussion of Johnson’s right to do anything; he can do what he likes. Nor is it a prediction of some tragicomical result, Ali so far past his prime that it was painful to watch, Steve Carlton getting pounded by guys who shouldn’t even touch him. No one who has recently seen Magic play basketball, even in the quasi-intramural games that dotted his barnstorming world tour, believes he would return to the NBA and embarrass himself.

He is still Magic Johnson.

But is he?

I see this as the question - the only question. Clearly, Johnson does, too. As one longtime NBA observer put it, “He’s watching some of those guys out there, thinking, ‘Hell, I’m better than that.’ And as long as he thinks that, the feeling will always be there.”

The feeling … Johnson was forced out of the game prematurely in 1991, retiring on the advice of his physicians after he contracted the HIV virus. Based upon what he knows now, he needn’t have done it. He might have played on.

What draws Magic back to the NBA, more than anything, is the notion that he did not control his departure in the first place. Julius Erving went out when he was ready. Larry Bird went out because his back and his declining statistics told him to. Charles Barkley, from all appearances, will get to call his shot.

Michael Jordan was able to go one better, essentially signaling a yearlong timeout; but the efforts to compare Johnson’s situation to Jordan’s are useless. There IS no comparison. Jordan became one of the league’s best players the minute he stepped back onto the court.

Magic Johnson? It just isn’t so.

This is the loss - the aesthetic loss, of course. Place it in context. There are those for whom the return of Johnson in any form is reason for cheer, and how do you argue with that?

But here is a lonely vote for the fabulous career left intact - the five NBA titles, the three most valuable player awards, all of it. Here is a vote for the ascending curve of Johnson’s athletic work as is, no chaser. We have the opportunity to see how Magic would do in the NBA at age 36, after four years of semiretirement. Does it mean that we should?

Johnson has tried on too many hats since 1991: the aborted player comeback in ‘92, AIDS activism, frustrating days as an unsuccessful interim coach, minority owner of the Lakers. It is the most understandable restlessness in NBA history.

Now Johnson wants back in to play, probably for a single year - possibly, some suggest, as a means of making the 1996 Olympic basketball team for the Atlanta Games.

He won’t be lousy, but neither will he be the brilliant Magic of the legacy. Consider the legacy. Respect history. Preserve the unflawed memory. Time, hard as it is, to move on.