“So I had to take scones out of my Starbucks and put in pound cakes, Sock-It-To-Me cakes and sweet potato pie. It’s called knowing your clientele.”
As much of the audience roared, it was obvious Johnson knew Monday’s clientele, as well, when he took the stage in Central State University’s Beacom/Lewis Gym as part of the athletic department’s heralded Leadership Speaker Series.
Watching the crowd of Miami Valley business people, educators and CSU students respond to Johnson, you had to figure it may have been something similar for those folks at The Spectrum in Philadelphia on that May night in 1980.
It was the sixth game of the NBA Finals and the Los Angeles Lakers were without towering center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who was sidelined with a bad ankle. To take up the slack, Lakers’ coach Paul Westhead called on the team’s 6-foot-9, 20-year-old rookie who he hoped would live up to that Magic moniker.
Although Johnson would go on to have many great games in his hall-of-fame career – he’d average 19.1 points, 7.2 rebounds and 11.1 assists per game over his 13 years — the 1980 game may have been his greatest performance.
He played all five positions — even center — and finished with 42 points, 15 rebounds, seven assists and three steals as Los Angeles beat the 76ers and took the NBA crown.
Monday, Johnson came close to equaling that feat. He again played every position — entrepreneur, mentor, cheerleader, preacher and story teller.
People ate it up because the 52-year-old Johnson has quite a story to tell.
He has put together one of the most successful post-playing-day careers of any professional athlete — ever.
“I was trying to decide what I was gonna do after wearing those tight, little hot pants with the Lakers,” he said. “As you know now, the shorts are all the way down to the floor almost.
“After winning five championships and creating a brand on the basketball court, I had to reinvent myself. I said ‘I don’t know anything about business, but I want to be a businessman.’ I thought ‘I have all those businessmen who come to Lakers games, why don’t I take them to lunch and dinner and they might give me some advice that I sorely need.’ ”
After convincing Starbucks chairman Howard Shultz to let him open three Starbucks stores in the inner city, he built his operation to 125 stores and finally a year ago sold them back to Shultz for a hefty profit. Before that he had done the same in a partnership with Sony chairman Peter Guber to open his chain of Magic Johnson Theaters in South Los Angeles.
Today he has real estate holdings across the nation, he is partnered in numerous business ventures, recently sold his share of the Lakers, is still an ownership partner of the Dayton Dragons and just last month was part of the group of investors who bought the Los Angeles Dodgers for a record $2.1 billion.
It’s not the shoes
The CSU Speaker Series is the brainchild of Marauders athletics director Kellen Winslow, who said it has a two-fold purpose:
“We wanted to bring people to campus who don’t normally come here so they can meet people of different backgrounds, exchange ideas and gain some new perspectives about Central State. That way I think they become ambassadors of our school.”
At the same time Winslow said the speakers who come in “expose our students to successful people who are willing to share their message, their success and their values.”
Johnson certainly did that.
“He was wonderful,” said Ryan Drayton, a graduating CSU senior from Des Moines, Iowa. “He’s got his head on straight and he showed his heart to us. That was inspiring.”
Fellow senior Dejuan Pratt, a marketing major and CSU football player agreed: “He didn’t act as if he was a billionaire. He was one of the common folk.”
And that wasn’t an act.
“I grew up poor,” Johnson said. “I was from the ghetto, from the hood. I had two pair of pants and three shirts to wear every day to school. I had one suit from Robert Hall that I wore every Sunday to church.
“I couldn’t get Dr. J’s, the most expensive tennis shoes. My father said, ‘Nope, we’re going to Woolworths,’ and I got $1.99 specials. But you know what? Even in those shoes I was playing better than the other guys and that’s when I realized it’s not the clothes and all that that makes you. You gotta love yourself.”
His dad worked at General Motors and had a trash hauling business on the side.
Johnson said he worked on his dad’s trash truck every day in the summer and on Saturdays in the winter.
He told how his job was to pick up the trash that fell around the outside of the cans, but one cold winter day he skipped most of his job to stay warm in the truck cab: “My dad dragged me through the snow back to those barrels and said, ‘Son, you can’t do this job half way. You won’t be a good basketball player or student either because you’ll only put in half the effort there, too.’ My dad taught me my work ethic and to this day I’m a perfectionist with whatever I do.”
His mom, he said, gave him his smile, his personality and his empathy for others and that parental combination has made him a good partner for businessmen, as well.
It was Guber, who initially convinced him to become a Dayton Dragons partner.
“At the time you really had to see the vision because if you couldn’t, you weren’t gonna write a check,” Johnson laughed. “I saw (Guber’s) vision and what they hoped to do in downtown Dayton. And that new stadium, I tell you, has been amazing. We broke the sell-out record held by the Portland Trail Blazers and it’s been amazing the way it’s affected change in the city.”
Stage presence
One vision he didn’t see beforehand was his life being portrayed on a Broadway stage.
Two weeks ago the play “Magic/Bird” opened at the Longacre Theater. It’s the story of Johnson’s longtime rivalry turned lifetime friendship with fellow hall-of-famer Larry Bird.
“No way in my wildest dreams — growing up a poor kid in Lansing, Michigan — did I ever think somebody would write a play about me and my life and my friendship with Larry.
“I sat there (at the show) and Larry was behind me and I kept hitting his knee and saying, ‘Can you believe this?’ My wife was there and my mother, too. It was a great moment though, truthfully, I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.
“But I do tell Larry ‘thank you’ because without that relationship and that rivalry there would be no play. I needed Larry to make me a better player. To push me.”
Now away from the game, Johnson is still pushing harder than ever. Sunday he broadcast two NBA games, then caught a night flight to Ohio. He spoke at CSU and another Ohio stop, as well as in Saginaw Mich., Monday. He has another Michigan speech this morning, then flies back to California where he said he’ll be in the gym at 4:30 Wednesday morning before he starts his day.
His fitness regimen along with daily medication has enabled him to keep the HIV he was diagnosed with 21 years ago from advancing. His Magic Johnson Foundation, which he started to help combat HIV, has now expanded to include several other charitable projects, as well.
He’s now a grandfather of two and he’s launching several other new business ventures including a cable network called Aspire that he has said will “present uplifting images of African-Americans.”
He closed Monday’s talk with a couple of basketball stories including one about Michael Jordan.
“It was the ’91 Finals,” he said. “Michael goes up with his right hand and we all jump at his right, saying ‘Oh, we got him.’ We know we’re gonna block it.’ His tongue was (hanging out) to the right side, too.
“But we should have known when the tongue went to the left side we were in trouble. While he’s floating through the air, he switches the ball to his left and then spins it up against the glass and it’s good. It was one of the greatest shots ever. He switched in mid-flight. How good was that?”
Almost as good as Magic was Monday when he showed the crowd how he had switched — from ballplayer to businessman — in mid-flight, as well.
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