Spring Loaded

Magic Johnson is turning 50.

Amazing.

I didn’t know if he’d see 33.

Has it really been nearly 18 years since I walked out of a Forum press conference seeing something I had never seen before, or since: Cynical, sarcastic, know-it-all reporters shedding tears.

Has it really been nearly 18 years since we sat around talking about how hard it was going to be to watch this guy with the broad smile and the bubbly personality die in public?

When Magic stood up in front of the gathered media and a worldwide audience to announce that he was retiring from the Lakers because he had the HIV virus, I thought it was a death sentence.

Back in those days when knowledge of the disease was relatively meager although it had been around for nearly a decade, I thought HIV and AIDS were the same thing. Interchangeable terms.

So too, Magic later admitted, did he.

When he said he was going to beat the disease, we thought he was living in a fantasy world. This wasn’t an opponent like the Boston Celtics or the Chicago Bulls, a foe with weaknesses to probe and strengths to overcome. This was a deadly virus that wasn’t going to be faked out by no-look passes.

But we knew Magic well enough to understand that he wasn’t going to fade away, to spend his final days in some remote hospice.

He gravitated to the spotlight like a moth, in good times and bad. So he was going to fight the good fight in our faces as long as he was physically able.

As it turned out, of course, the odds against him weren’t as long as they first seemed. If this wasn’t a winnable fight – there is still no cure – it was at least a battle Magic could take into overtime after overtime after overtime.

With a positive outlook, a vigorous work ethic, a healthy diet and, most importantly, cutting-edge medication, Magic has kept the virus under control.

Eighteen years later, it’s still there, but, according to doctors, barely detectable in his blood.

The public’s attitude has changed dramatically since those dark days in 1991. Back then, both Karl Malone, then of the Utah Jazz, and Phoenix Suns executive Jerry Colangelo, publicly questioned whether Magic should dare to step on a basketball court.

The wife of one player told Magic he could score whenever he wanted to. All he had to do, she said, was to slash his wrist and drive down the court. Nobody would dare touch him.

And indeed, when Magic did suffer a cut on his arm on the court in his first attempt to return, a hush came over the crowd and some in the arena looked at him as if they were Superman and he was a big, glowing mass of kryptonite.

I have to admit, I had my moment of hesitation. I’ve known Magic for a long time. His rookie year in the NBA was my rookie year as a Laker beat writer.

Whenever I see him, he opens his arms for a big hug. But the first time we came face-to-face after his jaw-dropping announcement, and those arms opened up, I paused.

Just for an instant.

But, I paused.

Then common sense took over and I opened my arms as well.

There is no way to gauge how many similar sufferers from the HIV virus have been bolstered in their own struggles by the shining example of Magic. No way to chart how many have remained active and visible in society because he did.

Ask him if he’s a hero and he’ll laugh. No way, he’ll say, just living life as I told you guys I would.

And to think we doubted him.

Happy birthday, Magic. And here’s to 50 more.

The Staples Center crowd at Monday night’s Laker-Jazz game stood and cheered, showering affection upon their subject.

And that subject wasn’t even wearing purple and gold.

Deron Williams? Carlos Boozer? Andrei Kirilenko?

None of the above. The darling of Monday’s crowd wasn’t even wearing a uniform, although, when he did, it had the Laker logo across the front.

It was Utah Jazz play-by-play broadcaster Hot Rod Hundley who was being saluted Monday night as called his last game, the team’s exit from the playoffs marking his own exit from behind the microphone. At 74, after broadcasting over 3,000 games across 35 seasons for the Jazz, Hundley is retiring.

No longer will Utah fans hear about players grabbing “the cowhide globe” for a “leapin' leaner” or a “yo-yo dribble.”

Hundley goes so far back, he was the voice of the team when it was the New Orleans Jazz, when the team name actually fit. Calling a Salt Lake City-based team the Jazz makes about as much sense as calling an L.A.-based team the Lakers.

Come to think of it, the Salt Lake City Lakers and Los Angeles Jazz would make a lot more sense.

But, I digress.

Monday night’s Staples Center crowd wasn’t just being kind to a visiting team’s announcer. Those with long enough memories were applauding a man who is very much a part of Laker lore, who was a member of the crew that first introduced pro basketball to L.A.

Before New Orleans, before Salt Lake City, before a stint as a Phoenix Suns broadcaster, even before he served as Laker announcer Chick Hearn’s sidekick, Hundley played the game. And played it reasonably well.

Not at the level of a Jerry West. Or an Elgin Baylor.

But coming out of West Virginia, Hundley was good enough to be the first pick in the NBA draft in 1957, long before the word lottery had ever been associated with a basketball.

He was selected by the then-Cincinnati Royals, who traded Hundley’s draft rights to the then-Minneapolis Lakers. It became a perfect fit a few years later when West, another West Virginia product, joined the team as did West Virginia’s coach, Fred Schaus.

All that and the bright lights of Hollywood as well. Hundley became as familiar a figure on the club scene as he was on the court.

A slick ballhandler and crowd-pleasing entertainer, Hundley often flashed the acerbic wit and attractive charm that would later serve him so well behind the microphone.

On the night at New York’s Madison Square Garden when Baylor scored a then-league record 71 points, Hundley added two more.

As the pair jumped into a taxi after the game, Hundley told the driver, “Be careful. You’ve got 73 points in this cab.”

After Frank Selvy missed a 15-foot jump shot in the closing seconds of regulation play in the seventh game of the 1962 NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics, the Lakers went on to lose in overtime.

“It could happen to anybody,” Hundley told Selvy afterward. “Don’t worry, baby. You only cost us about $30,000.”

About three million in today’s dollars.

For decades after that, Hundley would periodically call Selvy when he knew his former teammate wasn’t home, in order to leave a simple biting message on Selvy’s answering machine: “Nice shot.”

Hundley was the first former player to be inducted into the writer/broadcaster wing of basketball’s Hall of Fame.

He never had the ballhandling skills of a John Stockton or the size and strength of a Karl Malone. But for Jazz fans, Rod Hundley will be missed every bit as much.