Magic Johnson 50 and still magic

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Magic is celebrating 50 years of life. Sure you will read all about Magic Johnson and how his real estate and business empire is worth over 1.5 billion dollars, you will read all about Magic and how he lifted the Lakers to the NBA title with Kareem in his rookie season, you will also read about how Magic had those magnificent battles with Larry Bird and the powerful Celtics, but what you may not read about is Lansing Michigan.

Magic and Bird first faced off in the NCAA finals

Earvin grew up in Lansing Michigan and attended Michigan State University at the same time as Kirk Gibson went there and at the same time your humble author was gaining his MSU degree. We knew even then that Magic was born for greatness and yet he always took time to be everyone’s friend. He is special beyond just magic and deserves every ounce of love that he gets from the Lansing area.

Magic still comes back to Michigan State Spartan basketball games every year to see Tom Izzo and all the Spartan fans that remember how Magic and Greg Kelser brought an NCAA title to Michigan State University.

Magic also played in Jenison field house, the home of the Spartans before they built the Breslin center, while he was in High School and drew over 11,000 fans, your humble author lucky enough to be one of them. The battle that day was between Jay Vincent, two time scoring champ at MSU, and Magic Johnson. Jay won the day that day, but Magic managed to beat him on the way to the Class A High School title that year.

Nobody knows how he does it, but Magic Johnson just seems to continue to draw the love everywhere he goes and he deserves it. It is hard to believe there are basketball players today with no memories of Magic playing basketball.

We’re into the second generation of his influence now, the players who grew up watching the players who grew up watching Magic, something that didn’t dawn on me until I asked 24-year-old Trevor Ariza about Johnson and he said, “Baron looks up to him a lot, and I look up to Baron.” The notion that there are adults without a direct recollection of Johnson in his prime is jarring to those of us who were around to see it. To Johnson, it’s actually reassuring, a sign of lasting impact, the closest thing to immortality.
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You see, Magic always did the little things and made them big, like passing to the open man instead of having to score. In his prime, everyone wanted to be a passing point guard. It did not stop there; he did the little things in all parts of his life. He used to come home from Los Angeles and advertise for the local Quality Dairy store where he worked as a kid. It is a small convenience store chain, but Magic never became too big to help them out.

Magic never became too big for anyone. He is always just Magic!

Image: Zuma Press

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

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As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.