The incredible thing was that the man on the pitch was the one with the number 32 on his back.
The brightest star
Sunday 9 February 1992, Orlando (Florida). All Star Game of US basketball, the usual challenge-exhibition between the best players from East and West. After the first quarter of the game, the point guard of the West selection has already scored 10 points, and various spectacular plays that the commentators underline with more emphasis than usual. His name is Earvin Johnson Junior: but for everyone he is Magic Johnson, the ace of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the strongest basketball players ever.
The incredible thing is not that he is the best in the game of stars. But the fact that, to give that great class test, he is the first man in the world to officially take the field with the AIDS virus. One who, three months earlier, had been considered a finished athlete. Worse: a death row inmate.
It's no exaggeration to say that Magic Johnson's HIV-positive announcement changed history. Of sport and health. At the very least, the way we looked at HIV and infected people. The thirtieth anniversary of that historic announcement is occurring in these days.
"I intend to live long"
Thursday November 7, 1991, Los Angeles. The sports reporters are called up for a press conference by Magic Johnson, who has not been seen on the pitch with the Lakers for a few days. The subject is very secret, but there is always someone who interprets the concept of secret in a very relative way. Filter out the rumor that Johnson will announce his retirement, at only 32 years old and still in full strength. Cnn, at the last moment, manages to anticipate the reason. But the news is still patchy. The journalists of the live-connected TV networks show a growing tension on their faces. There is an omen of a drama.
Then he comes. With the usual bright smile, just a little more drawn than usual. A few sparse phrases: “Good afternoon. Since I contracted the HIV virus, I have to retire from the Lakers today. I clarify that I do not have AIDS, and my wife is negative. I plan to live long, pissing everyone off as always, so you'll still see me here at Lakers games. But I believe that now I will be able to enjoy some other side of life ”.
Difficult, at that moment, not to consider them words of circumstance. “Hearing him, I thought: he's a dead man walking,” confessed years later Karl Malone, opponent of the Utah Jazz. Probably many think so. The shock is enormous all over the planet. The president of the United States, George Bush Sr., tells the press: "It is a tragedy, I am very sad". The next day Pat Riley, former Lakers coach who joined the Knicks, convinces the two teams and the entire Madison Square Garden audience to recite the Our Father together for his friend in need before a game.
Perhaps Magic Johnson himself, during the press conference, little believes what he says. She later admits that she thought she had to prepare for death and make things right for Cookie, who was married only two months earlier, and her upcoming son.
But at the moment of the announcement, he adds prophetic words. “I want to become a spokesperson for the fight against AIDS, so that young people understand that they can have safe sex. Sometimes you're a little naive, you think it can't happen to you. Now I have to deal with this thing. But life goes on for me, and I will be a happy person ”.
Thirty years later
That's exactly how it went. The former yellow-violet number 32 appears today as a realized man; he was coach and president of the Lakers, he is an entrepreneur, he has owned a baseball team, he often spends his holidays in Italy (several times also in Sardinia). Its history has contributed a lot to change the general perception of evil in the (twentieth) century.
In 1991, AIDS was still a relatively recent scourge, considered the disease of homosexuals and drug addicts. Magic Johnson was neither. And with his return to the field, in that All Star Game of February 1992, he immediately showed the possibility of a normal life even with HIV. It was not easy: the first to contest his presence on the court were two of his teammates, AC Green and Byron Scott, on the pretext that those who had now retired from the NBA could not participate in the game of the stars. In reality they feared contagion. The aforementioned Malone was more sincere on this. But in the end the man with HIV played, and best of all. And a few months later, at the Barcelona Olympics, he led the unforgettable Dream Team - with Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and other big names - to a hands-down gold medal.
It wasn't easy after that either. Magic tried to restart with the Lakers the following season; but he sensed the fear of his companions. He saw it in their eyes, once he got injured on the pitch: he went home and told his wife that he would stop. He resumed playing in January 1996, for the last 36 games of his career: the class had not flown away.
His contribution to the fight against AIDS, however, goes far beyond what he has done on the pitch. As soon as it became known that he was HIV positive, tens of thousands of young people rushed to take the HIV test. Johnson has toured and still travels all over the world, always with his overwhelming smile, to explain how to defend oneself from an evil that remains very insidious. His successful image has helped to lessen the social stigma on the sick, which nevertheless persists. And the three decades of successful struggle against the virus (at the cost of constant treatment and checks) give hope to all infected.
"Let's not let our guard down"
“His is certainly a positive example”, reflects Sergio Babudieri, director of the infectious diseases department of the Aou of Sassari: “Over time, the management of HIV has changed a lot. Suffice it to say that now every year in Cagliari there is a conference entitled: Living and growing old with AIDS ”. Of course, one could not imagine growing old with that disease, when Babudieri arrived in Sassari in 1986 as the epidemic exploded: “I remember that in a night on guard duty, from 8 to 8 in the morning, we counted four AIDS deaths. Then came the first drugs, and in the mid-nineties the treatments with multiple molecules ”, the famous cocktail of medicines.
Therapies are being improved more and more, and the quality of life of HIV-positive people is increasing: "New drugs are on the way to be administered monthly or bimonthly, compared to the current, daily one," explains the professor. “Now you can lead a normal life. Things get complicated if one has other pathologies, but life expectancy has increased a lot ". However, drugs retain side effects: “For example, they can cause lipid diseases. How many HIV patients have officially died of a heart attack, but actually caused by decades of treatment? "
In short, letting your guard down remains a mistake: “Unfortunately, having now become a sexually transmitted disease, there is a lower perception of risk”, Babudieri continues. “The infection can initially cause a mild discomfort, like a small flu, so it can take ten years before the symptoms of AIDS arise: if in the meantime one has several partners, it can spread the virus a lot. Every year between 3,700 and 4,000 new official cases are registered, but we do not know how many are submerged ”.
The woman who inspired him
Young people are always the age group most at risk: this is why Magic Johnson's activity was so important to suggest protection and checks. Shortly after learning of the infection he met Elizabeth Mayer, wife of actor Paul Michael Glaser (another myth of the 70s and 80s: it was David Starsky, in the telefilm Starsky and Hutch). She was one of the very first infected in America, in 1981, from a blood transfusion while giving birth to her first daughter, Ariel, who later died of HIV at the age of 7. By 1991 Elizabeth had long been an anti-AIDS activist, and to Magic she said, “This evil needs a face. I want you to be that face ”. To make it clear that the risk was for everyone, not just heroin users.
Mayer was right. Also on another thing: "He told me - Johnson told me in 2016 - that I would live a long time, thanks to the drugs that were being developed". They did not arrive in time to save her too: she died in 1994, at the age of 47. His legacy is in the inspiration he passed on to the Lakers giant: he has never forgotten his unfortunate friend. And in these days, celebrating thirty years of resistance to the virus, he will surely remember her by dedicating one of his magical smiles to her.