When the Game Was Ours (33 page)

Their off-season workouts became a tradition, along with annual visits with Aguirre to an amusement park in suburban Detroit. They flew to Hawaii together twice a summer: the first time to vacation with their girlfriends (later wives) and the second time to train. In between, they met in Chicago, Lansing, or Atlanta to push each other with new workout routines.

Aguirre, Thomas, and Johnson woke up each morning and ran four to five miles. They chugged up hills, lifted weights, ran through cardio drills, then went to the gym and did three-man weaves, full-court, and 1-on-1 competitions, also full-court.

After they were done, they sat in the gym and traded stories, bragging about their accomplishments and dreaming aloud of winning it all.

When Magic built his mansion in Bel Air, he nicknamed his guest quarters "the Isiah Room." If the Lakers were on the road and the Pistons were coming to town to play the Clippers, Johnson would leave Isiah the keys to his house or have his car waiting for him at the team hotel.

"He was like my brother," Johnson said.

But now the brothers stood poised to win a championship, and one of them was going to come up empty.

Isiah and Magic shared a pregame kiss before Game 1 as a sign of their respect and affection for each other. Bird, watching from his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, turned away, disgusted.

"I wanted to throw up," he said. "It was all show. I knew how bad they both wanted to win."

Pat Riley wasn't too happy about the public display either. He wanted the proper focus from his star, and he was concerned he wasn't going to get it. Michael Cooper, Magic's oldest friend on the Lakers, expressed similar doubts. Those questions lingered as Detroit stole a Game 1 win behind Adrian Dantley's 34 points. Before each game, Magic and Isiah reenacted their kiss, but at a price. Teammates in both locker rooms began wondering where their leaders' loyalties lay.

Those questions were answered in Game 4. The Pistons had emulated their enemies, the Celtics, by employing a physical style against the Lakers. But the difference, as Magic saw it, was that Boston hit you once on every play and Detroit hit you twice. Mahorn would deliver the hard foul, then Laimbeer would deliver another blow after the whistle had already blown.

"It was a line you shouldn't cross, and the Pistons crossed it all the time," Magic said.

Johnson was getting leveled every time he drove to the hoop, and he was growing tired of it. In the fourth quarter of Game 4, with Detroit enjoying a sizable lead, Magic was tomahawked by two Pistons at the same time. It was time to make somebody pay.

Magic chose Isiah. As Thomas drove to the basket, Magic delivered his friend what he called a Laimbeer special—an elbow to the kidney. Thomas popped up, threw the ball at Magic, and went for his throat. The two friends raised their fists, ready to come to blows, before they were hastily separated. After the game, Magic told reporters he hadn't singled out Thomas and was planning on fouling the next Detroit player who drove to the basket.

"But that wasn't true," Magic admitted later. "I did target Isiah. Pat Riley had questioned me in front of the guys whether I'd take him out. I needed to show them I was willing to do it."

Before Game 5, Isiah and Magic again exchanged a pregame kiss, but suddenly the ritual was an uncomfortable formality. Both stars were still seething over their scuffle, and neither had picked up the phone to clarify what had happened.

Thomas responded with one of the gutsiest performances of his career in Game 6. He suffered a badly sprained ankle during the game but still returned to pump in 25 third-quarter points to keep his team afloat in the series. After the game, he left on crutches.

Isiah was hobbling badly in Game 7, and Magic exploited his lack of mobility. The Lakers became the first team since the 1968 and 1969 Celtics to win back-to-back championships. In the final seconds of the Finals, with LA up three points and Thomas hoping to sink a miracle three-pointer to prolong the action, he and Magic accidentally collided at midcourt. There was no call, no foul, no shot.

Johnson and Thomas did not speak after the game. There were no trips to Hawaii that summer, no shopping sprees in New York, no workouts in Lansing, no marathon phone calls. Thomas's son was born during the playoffs, and Magic never even went over to see him.

"I saw things differently," Magic said. "Our relationship was changing."

Almost immediately after the title was secure, Riley was gunning for a three-peat, even securing a patent on the phrase. He was obsessed with the Lakers legacy he was creating, and his approach with his players became even more controlling. Riley had become a national celebrity and was handsomely paid for it. He had more endorsements than most of his players, with Magic as the notable exception. His relationships with Cooper, Scott, and Worthy deteriorated. Johnson remained a Riley loyalist, but often he was a party of one.

Although LA advanced to the championship against the Pistons again in 1989 with a perfect 11–0 postseason record to that point, Riley made a tactical error. He took his team to Santa Barbara for a mini–training camp before the Finals and put his guys through two-a-day practices. Byron Scott tore his hamstring prior to Game 1, and Magic pulled up lame with a hamstring injury in Game 2. The Pistons swept the Lakers, ruining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's final season.

Kareem retired in 1989, and the Lakers tried to make do with Thompson, Orlando Woolridge, and a young Serbian rookie named Vlade Divac in the middle. As Riley's demands increased, his players' patience wore thin. The Lakers still won 63 games in 1989–90, but in the second round of the playoffs against the Phoenix Suns, the tension between the coach and his players bubbled to the surface. The Lakers had difficulty containing point guard Kevin Johnson and were allowing journeyman Mark West to shred them inside. After a Game 4 loss that left the Lakers trailing in the series 3–1, Riley exploded in the team dressing room.

"Usually his outbursts were orchestrated," Magic said. "This time it wasn't."

As Riley disparaged his club for not getting back on defense, not following the game plan, and repeatedly allowing Kevin Johnson in the lane, he looked and saw a sea of blank faces. His players weren't listening. They had tuned him out.

Riley turned and slugged the mirror in frustration, shattering the glass and gashing his hand. As the blood began flowing down the sleeve of his custom-tailored white shirt, Riley walked out and closed the door. No one said a word. The Lakers silently dressed and exited to the bus, where they sat and waited. After 20 minutes, their coach took his customary place in the front seat with his hand heavily wrapped in gauze.

"It was never discussed," Magic said. "We couldn't discuss it. That would require Pat admitting he had a weakness, and he wasn't going to let us see that."

Two days later, the Suns ended the Lakers' season. Riley poked around aimlessly in his office behind his Brentwood home, the same room where he used to pore over Boston game film and excitedly call Magic at three in the morning when he discovered a new nugget on how to stop the Celtics.

Johnson was still his leader, still his trusted friend, but even Magic, he sensed, had grown weary of his coaching style. Once he realized that, Riley knew his days were numbered.

Owner Jerry Buss called his coach in and told him he thought it was best if he relieved Riley of his duties. It was an emotional meeting, with Buss thanking Riley profusely for his dedication to the Lakers and providing him with a handsome financial settlement. Buss agreed that Riley's exit would be worded as a "mutual parting of the ways."

Magic heard his doorbell ring and was surprised to see his coach standing in the foyer.

"Buck, I'm leaving," Riley said. "The guys aren't responding. It's time for me to go."

Tears formed around Riley's eyes. For the next hour, he sat on Magic's deck and wept.

They talked about the season that had just ended so badly and the ones that ended so much differently. They laughed at Riley's thinly veiled motivational techniques and lamented the passing of the days when their lives revolved around Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics.

Magic knew Riley was making the proper decision. He had lost the players, and even his treasured relationship with Jerry West had suffered. When his coach talked about a future without the Lakers, Magic wondered aloud if there was such a thing.

On the day Pat Riley's resignation was announced, Larry Bird felt a tinge of sadness he couldn't quite explain. Even though he had never played for Riley, Bird believed he was the best tactician he'd ever seen. Riley's innovative responses to Boston's offensive sets had earned Bird's grudging admiration, although he never—ever—admitted it publicly.

"So he's gone," Bird thought. "That's good for us."

Riley's departure turned out to be immaterial to Bird and the Celtics. Although neither Larry Bird nor Magic Johnson would have ever believed it at the time, they had already played in the final championship of their careers.

"Y
OU'VE GOT TO CALL
Larry," Magic Johnson told his agent, Lon Rosen.

"Right away," Rosen assured him.

"Make sure you reach him before the announcement," Magic persisted. "I don't want him to find out about this on the news."

For 11 days Johnson had been harboring a harrowing secret: he had been diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The condition was detected during a routine blood test, and Magic spent the next week meeting with specialists, undergoing additional examinations, and mulling his options. His wife Cookie was pregnant with the couple's first child, and although initial tests indicated she was not HIV-positive, it would be months before the baby could be pronounced risk-free with certainty.

How could he do this to her? He loved her and had planned to spend the rest of his life with her since his freshman year of college when he spotted her dancing at a nightclub in East Lansing, Michigan. But Magic couldn't commit. He had been swept up in the Hollywood scene, intoxicated by the beautiful, desirable women who
propositioned him in the parking lot before games, in the hotel lobby after road games, in the stands
during
games. He broke off his engagement with Cookie twice, hurt her deeply, but then, finally, provided her with the wedding of her dreams. And now, some eight weeks after the day he pledged to love her forever, he had placed their happiness—their lives—in jeopardy.

Although Johnson had not contracted AIDS, only the virus that causes it, he knew so little about his condition that in conversations with Rosen he mistakenly kept referring to his illness as the fatal disease that was just beginning to creep into the public consciousness. An AIDS diagnosis would be an explosive story once the public became aware of it, and Magic wanted to keep it quiet until he knew all the facts. He needed to give his wife time to process what was happening. Cookie was frightened and upset and fretted about how she and her husband would be received once the news hit.

No secrets are safe for long, particularly in Los Angeles. Magic planned to hold a press conference on Friday, November 8, but the morning before, a reporter from KFWB, an all-news station in Los Angeles, called Rosen and told him they had learned Johnson had AIDS and planned to retire.

It was time to go public. Magic had already shared his condition with a small cadre of people—his parents, Cookie's parents, owner Jerry Buss, general manager Jerry West, assistant GM Mitch Kup-chak, and commissioner David Stern—but none of LA's players had been apprised of what was ailing their star.

Magic compiled a short list of people who needed to be notified immediately: his former coach Pat Riley, now with the New York Knicks; his confidant Isiah Thomas; talk-show host and close friend Arsenio Hall; and former teammates Michael Cooper, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Kurt Rambis.

It was also critical, Magic stressed, for Jordan and Bird to be contacted as soon as possible. Those two would be asked to comment more than any other current NBA player on his startling personal crisis.

As he ticked off the names, Magic paused to consider how each
of them would react. They would be stunned, he was certain. Would they also be disappointed? Disgusted? Would it change the level of respect he enjoyed with each of them?

"You don't have a lot of time to think about it, because everything is happening so fast," Magic said. "But at some point I was wondering, 'What will Larry think? What will Michael think?'"

The unpleasant task of informing them fell to Rosen. He called Celtics public relations director Jeff Twiss and asked him to contact Larry with an urgent message. Twiss dialed Bird's number at his Brookline, Massachusetts, home shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon East Coast time with no expectation that Bird would pick up.

He didn't. After the Celtics were throttled the night before by Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, Bird had come home from practice that morning cranky, tired, and hurting. His Airness had scored 44 on Boston, and while Bird (30 points, 9 assists) had acquitted himself admirably, his chronically injured back had flared up, preventing him from sleeping most of the night. In fact, many nights the only way Bird could alleviate the searing pain was to sleep on the floor. When Dinah answered the phone call from Twiss, Bird was napping.

Dinah poked her head in to wake him.

"You need to call Lon Rosen," she said. "It sounds important."

Bird pulled himself up and dialed the number.

"Hey, Lon, what's going on?" Bird asked.

"Larry, I'm just going to tell you, because we don't have a lot of time," Rosen said. "Magic has the HIV virus. He's going to announce his retirement this afternoon. He wanted you to know before the news hit."

Bird grabbed on to the wall to steady himself. He wasn't sure what he was expecting—an endorsement opportunity perhaps?—but this revelation literally took his breath away.

"I felt like someone had sucked the air out of my lungs," Bird said. "I had this terrible empty feeling, like how I felt when my dad took his own life."