Defying Death With Grace Is Magic

There are moments that exist outside of time and one of them is this: the game is on the line, the ball is in the air tracing an arc toward the basket. Time enough for a heart to stop, a fist to clench, a prayer to rise. Only when the ball drops softly into the net with barely a rustle of cord to mark its passing does time slam into motion again.

The sudden force of it is startling and you are so exhilarated you think you could fly. In such a moment, it seems altogether fitting and proper for grownups to believe with a fervor in …

Magic.

I’ve long wondered how I would feel in watching Earvin Johnson return to professional basketball after retiring with HIV in 1991. As painful as it was to see him go, it was even harder to see him afterward. Hard to spy him looking like a million bucks after taxes and yet know that somewhere in him lives the virus that causes AIDS. Hard to watch him flail about, trying to fill the gap in his life with other things. Hard to see him wanting to play, yet drawing back because he knew other men feared.

“Magic’s back.” I thought I might say those words angrily, disappointed in him for wasting precious time better spent with his family. I thought I might say them fearfully, worried about what playing could do to his health.

But now I know it’s easier having him back than watching him gone.

I have few heroes, man - precious few - but I don’t mind telling you Earvin Johnson is one of them.

I know that some would take issue with the idea of Magic as hero. They would agree with my friend Cynthia, who observed disdainfully the other day that Magic contracted the AIDS virus by “slutting around.”

That’s truth, but it’s pejorative truth. We would not, most of us, use phrases like “tobacco junkie” to describe a heavy smoker dying of carcinoma. We would not, in other words, intimate that she deserved her terrible fate because of her foolhardy behavior. It’s a small decency that, for some reason, some people have suspended with Magic.

Was his sexual promiscuity stupid? Of course it was. But I’ll tell you something: though I admired him greatly for his on-court wizardry and will, it wasn’t until after that stupidity led him to HIV that I became truly impressed with his character. Not until I saw the upbeat courage with which he faced this trauma that I thought him a hero.

For some people, human weakness precludes heroism. For me, it’s a precondition. Anyone can excel when the lights are green, the wind at his back and the odds in his favor. Heroism is about what you do and who you are in the face of adversity, the moment of trial, the aftermath of screw-up. Do you succumb, or do you reach beyond to a state of grace?

That’s what heroes do. That’s what Magic does.

In the end, his return is not about AIDS, morality, or even basketball. It’s about a simple question we all must answer sooner or later: What do you do with the time you have left?

Basketball is a game played against the remorseless ticking of a clock. Each possession offers only 24 seconds to take your best shot or else hear the buzzer sound and have the ball taken away. Some players panic when the clock ticks close to zero. Others become tougher, more resourceful and creative. They are at their best then. They bend the clock to their will and step outside of time.

Magic was always like that on the court. He’s like that now, facing AIDS. In his situation, maybe you would do the sensible thing. Maybe you would get your affairs in order, then retire to a quiet place to huddle with your loved ones and wait for death.

I like to think I’d do what he has: spit in death’s eye, shove a fist in death’s gut and say, catch me if you can. Time is what you make it.

He put it differently speaking to an interviewer Tuesday night after his first game back.

“Don’t stop living,” he said. “No matter if you’re handicapped, HIV positive, whatever it is, just keep living.”

He couldn’t stop laughing. Couldn’t find words to contain his joy.

What do you do with the time you have left? Watching that interview, you had to feel lifted, secure that Earvin Johnson has found the right answer. Play out the clock. Fill the time with feats of Magic and acts of faith.

xxxx