Magic Johnson

Magic Johnson, joking about tabloid stories that he was too ill to get out of bed, squelched the rumors yesterday by shooting baskets for 30 minutes at Madison Square Garden in New York -- with former Lakers coach Pat Riley as his rebounder.Johnson retired Nov. 7 after testing positive for HIV.He recalled former teammate Michael Cooper used to buy sensationalistic newspapers and read them on the team bus."I'd catch myself thinking, 'Wow, an ape gave birth to a tiger,' " he said. "Now I'm on the front pages of them every day. My wife and I just laugh at those things, reports that she's sleeping in the basement in the maid's room, things like that.

If you're at the track today and are suddenly blinded by money, there may be a reason. The combined worth of the owners of the Preakness starters is stunning.The list starts with the Summa Stable partners -- Bruce McNall, Wayne Gretzky and Magic Johnson -- and works its way through other owners who made their fortunes in a variety of endeavors including banking, communications, cattle, insurance, doughnuts, supermarkets, real estate, aircraft, Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary. (For owner biographies, see Page 4C.)

The Lakers' Kobe Bryant suffered a broken finger on his shooting hand in Friday's win over the Timberwolves. He wore a splint on his index finger in the second half of the Lakers' 11th straight victory. He hurt himself reaching for a pass late in the first quarter, and he played through it briefly before leaving in the second quarter to get X-rays. It's not his first avulsion fracture, in which a small piece of bone tears away near a ligament or tendon. Bryant started as the Lakers, an NBA-best 18-3 after playing 17 of their first 21 games at home, began a five-game trip Saturday in Utah.

Believe in Magic Shandel Richardson Sun Sentinel Kobe Bryant is great but hardly the greatest Laker of all time. The title has to come from the Showtime era because that always will symbolize the franchise. Magic Johnson is No. 1 on this list. He redefined the point-guard position, brought Hollywood to basketball and is still the face of the organization. Most important, Johnson always will be more beloved by fans in Los Angeles than Bryant.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is being treated for a rare form of leukemia, and the basketball great said his prognosis is encouraging. The NBA's all-time leading scorer was diagnosed last December with chronic myeloid leukemia. The 62-year-old Abdul-Jabbar said his doctor didn't give any guarantees, but informed him: "You have a very good chance to live your life out and not have to make any drastic changes to your lifestyle." Abdul-Jabbar is taking an oral medication for the disease.

Only one MagicJud Heathcote, who coached Magic Johnson at Michigan State, asked journalists yesterday not to use the nickname of "Magic" for Michigan's star wide receiver, Desmond Howard."

Magic Johnson has taken away our denial. He is not Rock Hudson or Liberace, whose homosexuality gave us distance. He is not Max Robinson, about whom there were drug rumors. He is Magic Johnson, who was our vision of eternal youth and health and joy.If he has been struck by this virus that brings on AIDS, then all of us must move past our denial stage. It's been with us for a decade now. It's how we tell ourselves that we're safe from this disease: It's always somebody else, some other group, those gays or those drug abusers, those people whose lives are different from yours and mine.

The message of Magic Johnson's return to the NBA was that an HIV-positive person can function in normal life. The message of his latest retirement is that too many people are afraid to grasp that fact.Medical experts remain convinced that the risk of Johnson infecting another player is almost nonexistent. But no matter how strongly they make their case, the question always returns to one simple emotion:Fear.Johnson retired not because of the risk, but the perception of the risk. Karl Malone pointing to scabs and cuts on his body as if they were HIV magnets.

Strange as it seems, Mike Tyson's rape conviction is as important a symbol as Magic Johnson's AIDS virus. Too often we misplace the significance of our athletes' triumphs. The real lessons, time after time, come from their misdeeds.Magic Johnson is living proof of the dangers of promiscuity and threat of AIDS to every segment of our society. Mike Tyson is living proof that a major celebrity can be judged guilty of rape, even if he's the most feared boxer on the planet.Perhaps it's unfair comparing Johnson, a gentle soul, to Tyson, a criminal thug.

THE LAST time we heard so much about a smile was when those ridiculous buttons surfaced a decade ago, the ones with the happy face and the legend "Have a nice day."Those were phony; Magic Johnson's smile is real, a grin that says feelgood as surely as the rest of him says basketball.Some basketball players, because of their height and a certain hauteur, seem to demand genuflection. Magic Johnson always looks to me like a guy you should hug.That was especially true when he told the world he was infected with the AIDS virus, said he was going to become a national spokesman and flashed the grin.