#magic johnson

Earvin “Magic” Johnson [left]

< NBA player, athlete, >

Bow Wow [middle]

< rapper, actor, television presenter, broadcaster, child star, >

&

LeBron James Sr. [right]

< NBA player, athlete, actor >

— Jun. 18th, 2003

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On November 7, 1991, Magic Johnson, superstar basketball player, held a press conference to announce that he was HIV-positive and would be retiring from basketball immediately. Some of the sports writers in the audience wept openly at the news.

It was the top story on the national news broadcasts that night, and Tom Brokaw sounds like he’s reporting on a sudden death:

The news is so shocking and so unexpected, it is difficult to absorb it even as we report it. Magic Johnson has tested positive for the HIV virus: that’s the first step to AIDS. Magic Johnson, basketball superstar so beloved, so well-known, that his first name was all he needed well beyond the world of sports.

(emphasis ours.) At the time, there were far fewer treatment options, and many people still believed HIV infection meant an automatic death sentence. But even as late as 1991, many people didn’t understand that the risk of infection came from what you did, not who you were. To quote a Time retrospective on the 20th anniversary of Johnson’s announcement:

“It made people notice, for the first time, that you can get infected with HIV without being gay, without being a drug user, without being a sex worker,” says Kevin Frost, CEO of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. “A lot of people took notice, and that changed the perception of how people got infected, and who was at risk.”

The next day, there were four times as many calls as usual to the National AIDS hotline, and closer to Johnson’s home in LA, it was more like six times as many. The New York Times devoted 300 column inches to the story over the following three days, which by our back of the envelope calculations comes out to roughly four solid pages of text. That a healthy, heterosexual, black athlete was now HIV positive upset the image people had of the disease. It could even be argued that the announcement, coming just months before the start of clinical trials on combination antiretroviral therapy, marks the end of the early AIDS era.

Johnson’s announcement was met with outpourings of both affection and fear. In 1992, fans voted him on to the NBA All-Star team, but several of his former teammates said that he shouldn’t play, while others openly worried about the risk of infection if Johnson were wounded on the court. Johnson would go on to be voted the game’s MVP and also be part of the men’s Olympic “dream team” in 1992.

Johnson is still healthy, and the Magic Johnson Foundation, founded in the wake of his announcement, is still an active philanthropic organization, though its mission has grown. As the Foundation’s site says,

MJF was created to fight HIV/AIDS through grantmaking. Twenty-two years after its formation, the organization has evolved to address other powerful epidemics in urban communities, which include the lack of educational opportunity and the absence of empowerment.

This game was too easy for Magic Johnson. He posted a triple double of 31 points, 12 rebounds, & 13 assists. (1989)