The problem with an appreciation is that is can read like an obituary. It helps when the subject is alive, as Magic Johnson indeed is, and there are a lot of other people doing the appreciating, as there were Wednesday evening outside Staples Center.
The occasion was the unveiling of a statue of Johnson, not quite a full-court pass from the one of the Great Gretzky. For any athlete aspiring to his own statue in Los Angeles, a snappy nickname apparently furthers the cause. There might be one of Sandy Koufax outside Dodger Stadium if only he had been known as "Big Train" or "Catfish."
Looking on was a crowd of several hundred, including speakers such as Mayor James K. Hahn, NBA Commissioner David Stern, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy, while Johnson ripped the purple cloth cover from the 17-foot bronze statue.
As for whether the Israeli sculptor, Omri Amrany, has created a work of art, that is for a critic in another section of the newspaper to determine. But Johnson seemed to like it.
He mentioned in particular the smile.
It wasn't the "winning time" smile, the one that emcee Brent Musburger declared "turned around the NBA."
That was the smile that Stern mentioned first this week when asked to explain Johnson's enduring popularity, as evidenced by the number of times he's being honored this week as the NBA's best and brightest (and some of the not so bright) arrive for the All-Star game Sunday at Staples Center. Stern said Johnson took him back to a much simpler time, when it was possible to believe that a player could love the game so much "that he would play for nothing. It was written on his face."
This smile, the one the sculptor deftly captured in his depiction of Johnson throwing a no-look pass, was the gotcha smile Johnson would ever so briefly flash when he realized there was a teammate at the end of an open passing lane.
"How can I help you?" Johnson said he recalls thinking to himself at those moments. "James, here's the ball. Kareem, here I come."
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When Johnson revealed in November 1991 that he was HIV-positive, it might have been possible to predict that there someday would be a statue of him in Los Angeles. Less predictable was that he would be here to see it.
Little was known then about the virus and its treatment. The assumption was that it would evolve into AIDS, which meant death -- maybe within five years, almost certainly within 10.
