Health "It Can Happen to Anybody. Even Magic Johnson."

By Pico Iyer

For years he has been a walking -- no, a running, jumping, slithering -- suspension of disbelief. Not just on the basketball court, where he has all but remade the game and brought in a whole new dictionary to cover the moves that bear his monogram -- the "no-look pass," the "triple double," the "coast to coast" drive. And not just in America, but from Bali to the Bahamas, where many kids wear his picture on their chests. Hundreds in Paris were calling out for "Ma-JEEK" when he went to play in France last month, and everyone was preparing for the unprecedented prospect of seeing him, the consummate professional, bring an amateur's enthusiasm to the 1992 Olympics.

Even outside the world of sports, Mr. Showtime's enormous smile and unquenchable grace have become almost ubiquitous -- on music video shows, on billboards, at fund-raising dinners. For more than a decade, Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. has commanded the world of entertainment on the court and off with an irreplaceable blend of poise and surprise.

Last week, however, Magic delivered what was clearly his most serious shock. At a press conference on the ground he has made his own, the Great Western Forum, home to the Los Angeles Lakers, Johnson, 6-ft. 9-in. tall and 32 years old, at the top of his career, announced that he had been infected by the human immune-deficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS and would "have to retire from the Lakers today." Although he has as yet no symptoms of AIDS, the man who had defied gravity, and belief, for so long would suddenly, overnight, vanish from the court. "I'm going to miss playing," said Johnson, dry-eyed and dignified as ever, "but my life is going to go on. I'm going to go on a happy man."

The announcement left millions in a state of disbelief. It was not just a celebrity that was endangered by a life-threatening disease, but of all things an athlete whose strength and endurance had made him the most admired player in the world. "A situation like this just doesn't make sense," said Kevin McHale, Johnson's longtime rival from the Boston Celtics. "When you look at a big, healthy guy like Magic Johnson, you think this illness wouldn't attack someone like him. But it did." Many others were sobered at the thought that if even the most enchanted and mobile of bodies was vulnerable, it could, as Johnson pointed out, "happen to anybody." Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the thoughtful, soft-spoken 7-ft. 2-in. giant of the game, simply broke down and wept.

Yet Johnson's characteristic refusal to be cowed, even by AIDS, suggested that the star might, as so often before, alchemize disaster with his infectious hopefulness. He was, after all, not unusual in contracting the virus, but he seemed to recognize that he was in an unusual position to campaign for protection against it. Vowing to become a spokesman to educate people about AIDS, Johnson said he would use his plight to tell others that "safe sex is the way to go." Just by his announcement, he began the process: calls to AIDS hot lines and testing centers more than doubled in most places the next day.

The virus has already claimed the young, the old, the famous: symbols of Hollywood like Rock Hudson, symbols of youth such as 18-year-old Ryan White, even symbols of athletic prowess like the All-Pro former Washington Redskin Jerry Smith. Yet Magic is perhaps the first celebrity to come out instantly to admit to his condition, and unprompted. And he is certainly the most famous: even people with no interest in basketball recognize his name and smile. In addition, because he would not discuss how he might have contracted the disease but only implied it was from heterosexual contact, he drove home the fact that anyone is vulnerable.

Johnson is also ideally placed to speak on AIDS to the two groups that are most in need of counsel: impoverished minority communities and the young. Though blacks represent only 12% of the nation's population, they account for 25% of the AIDS patients: more than half the women with AIDS in the U.S. are African American. Yet even many of the best-intended AIDS-prevention programs have failed to speak the language of the groups that are most at risk. When Johnson made his announcement, it surely sent shudders deepest through locker rooms, high schools and inner-city homes across the country where teenagers idolize the smiling big man from Lansing, Mich., who managed to rise from a family of 12 to become a role model around the world. "Clearly this is tragic," said Norm Nickens, chairman of the National Minority AIDS Council. "But we couldn't ask for a better spokesman."

The Era of Magic could be said to have begun in 1979 with the first professional game Johnson won for the Lakers, which ended with his leaping into the arms of his startled and famously reserved teammate, Abdul-Jabbar. In the final game of the championship series that year, with Abdul-Jabbar injured, Johnson played all five positions, and somehow in his rookie season conjured a victory out of thin air. But even when the Most Valuable Player awards and championships became commonplace, and the miraculous expected, Johnson worked overtime to transcend all expectation, developing a three-point shot that was lethal, practicing free throws till he became the best in the league. It was not simply his ability that made him a star but his determination as well to recast and expand that ability daily.

Thus Johnson became not only the most successful player in the game but also, and more important, the most popular, whose brilliance played a large part in making N.B.A. basketball one of the success stories of the decade with fans across five continents. He had an appeal that earlier, more complex stars of the game such as Bill Russell and Abdul-Jabbar could never match. Even Michael Jordan, his only serious rival in stature and skill, prompted a few grumbles and questions around the league as Johnson never did. Though Johnson has become famous for his eagerness to parlay his success into a show-biz career and a $100 million business empire, he has also managed to exemplify the same winning unselfishness off court as on. Last year alone he raised $2.65 million for charity and gave up part of his salary to help his team acquire another player.

Because of his almost universal popularity, Johnson's swift and brave admission also casts light upon many of the darker issues shadowing the world of sports. It is not so much that many of our heroes have clay feet as that they often use their heroism to advantage and then almost boast of their immunity from consequence. One of the greatest kings of basketball, Wilt Chamberlain, devotes an entire chapter in his recent autobiography to elaborating upon his carefully calculated claim that he has slept with 20,000 different women. Football's Jim Brown, formally charged with violence against women, was equally unapologetic in his memoir about totting up his sexual scores. Johnson's fellow Angeleno Steve Garvey had hardly ended his All- American career before it was revealed that he was seriously involved with at least two women other than his wife. No one would begin to suggest that Johnson should bear the blame for the ways many athletes abuse their status, but his tragedy does raise many searching questions about the immortality we expect of our sporting heroes.

Last week, however, the big man's characteristic calm helped temper, a little, the sadness of the occasion. While there is no reason to deify the player or accord him any more sympathy than that lent to the roughly 1 million others in the U.S. and millions elsewhere in the world who have been infected, there is ample reason to feel grateful for his courage and his sanity and to hope that somehow, with his dauntless smile, he might even give us something more to cheer about at the saddest moment of his life.

With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Los Angeles and Dick Thompson/Washington