Time for magic: Magic Johnson details his life’s ups and downs

“You can reinvent yourself,” Johnson says during a Zoom interview. Magic’s key? Use the tools that made you a winner on the court.

“I was blessed enough to know two guys who looked like me in Lansing, Michigan, and showed me that African Americans could actually own businesses,” he says. “That’s when my dream changed. When I met them. I said, ‘Wow, I want to be like them.’”

Those businessmen – Joel Ferguson and Greg Eaton – were the first mentors. Dr. Jerry Buss, who owned the Lakers, came next. Agent Michael Ovitz and studio head Peter Guber followed.

And then it was important to use his own skills. “I’m not a ‘doubt myself’ person,” Johnson says. “I’m solution-driven. I meet challenges head on. Even in negative situations, I try to find the good out of it and try to say, ‘OK, hey, I failed.’”

When Johnson was diagnosed with HIV in 1991, he didn’t hide the news. “What I tried to do was ask my doctors, ‘What do I have to do to be able to live for a long time?’ And everything they told me – take my meds, have a positive attitude, work out – I did those things. I also needed to be comfortable with my new status. Because I was giving up the game that I love, that was hard for me to do. But the most important thing – and this is why I’m probably still here – is my support system: my wife, Cookie, my kids, my parents, my brothers and sisters. It’s been an amazing journey. You think about 30 years (since) I announced that I was HIV. That’s incredible.”

Attitude, Johnson says, has been key.

“I’m all about winning,” the 62-year-old says. “I was always a guy who dreamed bigger than where I was at the time. It blows my mind to sit here and think about all the things that I’ve been through, all the different doors that I walked through that were closed to a lot of African Americans, closed to a lot of athletes. For me to walk through those same doors and open up access (for others)? No way I could have dreamed of a situation like this.”

To detail all those ups and downs, the Lakers superstar sat for a series of interviews for a documentary, “They Call Me Magic,” which airs on AppleTV+ beginning April 22. Johnson is also a key character in the Showtime series, “Winning Time,” which chronicles the rise of the Lakers dynasty.

Projects that failed – like his talk show, “The Magic Hour” – aren’t glossed over.

“There was some good that came out of that,” Johnson admits. “I’ve always been the leader of my teams on the court. If we lost games, I’d say, ‘OK, we just got to make sure we don’t lose the next one’ and find out the reason why we did.

“Every morning, I’m excited. God has blessed me to wake up. That’s why I’m excited about this documentary. It gets to tell people I’m a guy who loves to live life and live it to its fullest. I’m just a positive person. That’s in my DNA. That’s who I am.”

Johnson says he was lucky to thrive in a time when social media wasn’t a force. “I was focused on basketball and winning. It wouldn’t have affected my basketball playing but it would’ve affected my life. Now, everything that you do, there’s a camera phone waiting. It makes our life easier and better but, at the same time, it could be just a tool that’s not good, too.”

Players today see it as a way to extend their brands. Johnson sees the strategy but still wouldn’t have mined it. “I would’ve just focused on the same thing – playing the game the right way and hoping to put my team into a championship situation. It wouldn’t have changed none of that.”

And those rivalries from the Lakers’ heyday? That’s changed. Larry Bird, he says, is a great friend. “I’m so glad that God put Larry Bird into my life because he made me a better basketball player as well as a better man,” Johnson says. “I think I did the same for him.”