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.

He’s too intense.

He’s too serious.

He’s too arrogant.

He doesn’t show his opponents enough respect.

He’s taking all the joy out of winning.

Is that about it for Kobe Bryant or can we find something else to complain about?

Good thing he didn’t snub the media and opponents a la LeBron James. In Kobe’s case, that might have raised calls for his banishment.

All the nitpicking is about as damaging as throwing paper airplanes at a tank. Kobe just rolls over it the way he has rolled over the Orlando Magic in the NBA Finals.

He’s less than a week away from solidifying his place as the best basketball player on the planet and among a handful considered the best of all time. In the last year, Kobe has won an MVP award, an Olympic gold medal and will add his fourth NBA title this week, his first without Shaquille O’Neal.

“I want it so bad,” Kobe said after Game 1, as if he had to explain his intensity.

He’ll even make his critics happy next week after his mission is accomplished and the pressure is off. He’ll crack a huge smile when he raises the championship trophy over his head, embrace Dwight Howard, hug his own wife and kids and even joke with the media.

To be sure, Kobe was deserving of criticism in the past.

He was immature when he first turned pro, a teen-ager firing up those ill-advised airballs against Utah in the postseason of his rookie year.

But he was 17 when he was drafted and never had the benefit of college. Andrew Bynum has gotten more understanding about his immaturity and he’s in his fourth season.

Kobe got criticized for his share of the Kobe-Shaq feud.

Both men should have put the best interests of the team ahead of their own egos, but what did Kobe ever really demand of Shaq? That he stay in shape. Wow, what a radical idea.

Kobe was criticized for his give-me-the-ball-and-get-out-of-my-way or you-take-the-ball-and-leave-me-alone attitude and those detractors were justified.

Kobe seemed to struggle for a long time with the intricacies of integrating himself into the offense Feeling he could score any time he had the ball in his hands, he figured, why not?

Kobe, when he was on one of those tears, never threw a premeditated pass.

When he bowed to pressure and tried to share the ball with teammates, his method was to give it to them and get out of the way.

And certainly he received criticism when he was charged with sexual assault in Colorado. But, as we all know, those charges were dropped.

So now, what’s the beef?

Kobe has matured. He has become the consummate teammate, both on and off the court, sharing the ball and his advice, serving as Phil Jackson’s surrogate when necessary, equal parts cheerleader, disciplinarian, strategist and intermediary with the guys in the striped shirts. It is Kobe who makes sure the ball is evenly distributed and the scoring column as well when possible.

And when a sure-handed touch is needed in the scoring department, when the clock is running down, when the closer is needed out of the bullpen, Kobe is there as well, scoring at a pace and in a variety of ways that matches anyone who has ever stepped on the hardwood.

Even at the international level, it was Kobe who set the tone for the defensive mode that smoothed the path for the U.S. to Olympic gold in Beijing.

Last year, it was Chris Paul who was supposedly challenging Kobe’s place as the game’s best player. This season, it was LeBron. Next year, it’ll be another hot gunslinger.

Kobe is 30. He’s not going anywhere. The only people he should be compared with are Kareem, MJ, Wilt and Bill Russell.

To say that Michael Jordan is automatically the best who ever played is ludicrous. Russell had far more championships (11 in 13 seasons, including eight in a row). Kareem had six, the same number as Jordan, and is the league’s all-time leading scorer. You like numbers? Wilt was the greatest offensive force the game has ever known.

And now, Kobe has entered the conversation, clenched teeth and all.

David Stern,

NBA Commissioner

New York, New York

Dear David:

I know you’d never admit it in public, but this is clearly not the NBA Finals you dreamed of.

It’s not Lakers vs. Celtics once again.

It’s not Kobe vs. LeBron for the first time.

But that doesn’t mean the Lakers and Magic can’t put on a show that grips the basketball nation and keeps the ratings respectable if not record-shattering.

It’s still Kobe in search of redemption, in search of bragging rights to a title procured without Shaq, in search of another rung on his life-long quest to top MJ.

It’s still the power of Dwight Howard against the finesse of Pau Gasol. Oh yeah, and Andrew Bynum might show up too, but don’t bet on it. (Sorry about that, David. I know you don’t even like to see your name in the same sentence as the word bet.)

It’s still an historic franchise looking to add to a near-record number of banners against one with no championship banners and little history worth remembering.

It’s East against West, Disneyland against Disney World, the team of Magic Johnson against a team with plenty of magic of its own.

It could be a great series. But you control that, David. You really do.

So do us all a favor and blow the whistle on your refs. Tell them to let these guys play. Remind them again that nobody -- but relatives, and we’re not even sure about them -- pays to see them run their zebra-striped bodies up and down the court.

Net-swishing three-pointers by Kobe? Yes.

Rim-rattling dunks by Howard? Yes.

Gravity-defying steals by Trevor Ariza? Yes.

Mind-numbing trips to the foul line? No.

An enthusiasm-smothering clampdown on trash talking? Please no.

A bewildering series of technicals, flagrant fouls, ejections and suspensions? Enough already.

You have a great game, David. Why throw a blanket over it? If you were in charge of the Kentucky Derby, would you tie plows behind all the horses?

That’s the equivalent of what you’ve done here by creating ridiculous guidelines for your officials. Fouls are called that are sometimes imperceptible on replays. Floppers get rewarded for going into a swan dive every time an opposing player breathes on them.

Trash talking is a technical. That’s right, trash talking.

And hard fouls all seem to be flagrant fouls. There are flagrant 1s and flagrant 2s.

Is a torture category next?

It’s ruining the game, David. Kobe gets in Shane Battier’s face after scoring and Kobe gets a technical. J. R. Smith celebrates. Another technical. Ron Artest shoves Gasol to prevent a sure basket and Artest gets a flagrant 2.

That was lowered to a flagrant 1 after the league office had a day to reconsider.

That’s another silly trend. We must now wait 24 hours for league disciplinarian Stu Jackson to hand down a ruling, like an appeals court, before we can be sure what the final verdict is on any call.

I guess you don’t trust the refs on the floor, David. But if they’re so incompetent, why not do away with them altogether and just have Jackson call the game from his office?

It’s been four seasons since Artest jumped into the stands in Detroit to fight with fans, but it seems like the fear still lingers that every game is one hard foul away from a riot.

If your current clampdown had been in effect in the 1984 Finals, Kevin McHale’s clothesline tackle of Kurt Rambis would have at least earned McHale a lifetime suspension, if not prison time.

And Larry Bird and Michael Cooper, two of the great trash talkers of their era, would have been stuck on the bench talking to themselves.

The league was entertaining and fun back then, two words you seem determined to expunge from the NBA vocabulary.

Talk to old-timers. They just shake their heads at the newer, stricter NBA.

It shouldn’t be this difficult. If you go for the ball, contact should be no worse than a foul. If you go for the head, that’s flagrant. If you want to trash talk or pound your chest or throw chalk in the air, that’s entertainment.

You’ve got a great product to sell, David. Take the wrapping off and put it on the shelf as is.

Believe me, the customers will be standing in line.

On the set of Wednesday night’s TNT postgame show, Charles Barkley ducked out of sight while a discussion of the just-completed L.A. Lakers-Houston Rockets playoff game was going on.

What are you looking for? asked co-host Ernie Johnson.

“Andrew Bynum,” replied Barkley.

Good luck.

Oh there’s no question where Bynum is. It’s not hard to find a 7-foot, 285-pounder. He’s sitting on the Laker bench, moving further and further down the pine. At this point, he’s about to slip past Kurt Rambis in the rotation. It’s been 14 years since Kurt last played, but he could at least still put his body between an opposing player and the basket without automatically triggering a referee’s whistle.

Bynum, it seems, cannot. In this postseason, he has become a foul machine, hacking and banging and stumbling his way through a thicket of Rocket and Utah Jazz players. In the Lakers’ first-round playoff series against the Jazz, Bynum had 16 fouls in 77 minutes. Against the Rockets, he had three in 15 minutes in Game 1 and picked up his pace with three more in only eight minutes in Game 2.

But it’s more than just fouls. It’s not Barkley in search of Bynum so much as it is Bynum in search of his game. He’s totally lost out there.

Bynum keeps fouling because he’s trying to make up for the fact that he’s slow to react on defense.

And he’s no better on offense. When the ball goes into Pau Gasol, the offense clicks, the cutting and rolling functioning as smoothly as Tex Winter designed it. When the ball goes into Bynum, forget it.

The worst part is Bynum’s attitude. When he’s called for a foul or otherwise screws up, he pouts, his shoulders drooping, his usefulness to the team lost.

I know, I know. He’s:

-- still young.

-- still inexperienced.

-- still rusty from missing 32 games because of a knee injury.

-- still not fully recovered from the injury.

-- still bothered by the knee brace he is forced to wear.

That may all be true, but it doesn’t answer the still lingering question of when -- and even if -- he will reach his potential. There’s no question the potential is there. He’s not Shaquille O’Neal, but he’s not Benoit Benjamin, either.

The one-word answer to all his problems is: Maturity.

Not only is this a 21-year-old who didn’t go to college, but he played sparingly in high school. When Kobe Bryant made the leap from preps to the pros, he was out of control. Jermaine O’Neal, who also skipped college, struggled with the culture shock as well. By his fourth season in the NBA, he was playing only around 12 minutes a game, averaging 3.9 points and 3.3 rebounds.

That’s what made LeBron James so unique. He hit the NBA hardwood out of high school running and has never looked back.

The level of Bynum’s maturity, or lack thereof, was clearly demonstrated one day in his rookie season when he disappeared -- there’s that word again -- from practice at the team’s El Segundo training facility.

No one could find him. Sound familiar?

Coach Phil Jackson dispatched Rambis to look for the wayward center.

Rambis indeed found Bynum, sitting in the trainer’s room, eating sugar-soaked cold cereal.

What are you doing, Rambis asked. You just can’t leave practice without telling anyone.

I don’t have any energy and I thought this might give me some, Bynum replied.

It turned out Bynum, on his own for the first time 3,000 miles from home, was living on fast food and depleting his body.

Although he’d never admit it, nobody on the Lakers could be more frustrated than Bynum’s mentor, Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He has constantly been by Bynum’s side, tutoring him in all aspects of the game.

Abdul-Jabbar himself knows about growing up fast. No pun intended. He was already in the national spotlight as a New York high school star named Lew Alcindor. By the time he was Bynum’s age, Abdul-Jabbar was leading UCLA to its third consecutive NCAA title.

Bynum says he has the ultimate respect for Abdul-Jabbar. How does he show it? When the NBA’s all-time leading scorer first started working with Bynum, Bynum stiffed him, showing up late for a practice session.

Nobody is suggesting Bynum doesn’t have a future with the Lakers. Look how long it has taken Lamar Odom to realize his potential. And there are still nights when he is lost out there.

Nobody is saying Bynum won’t be a productive center in the NBA.

The agonizing question is: When?

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.

“Beat L.A! Beat L.A!”

The chant has reverberated across the nation for nearly three decades in large stadiums and small arenas, echoing off hardwood and ice, uttered by men in business suits, women in tank tops and kids in oversized jerseys.

Doesn’t matter if it’s the Lakers or the Dodgers or the L.A. Angels of Anaheim. Heck, even the Clippers get subjected to it.

When the Boston Celtics clinched the championship last June at the TD Banknorth Garden, stomping the Lakers in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, delirious Celtic fans didn’t know what to do first, cheer their favorite sons or chant “Beat L.A!”

This week, it’s being screamed at an ear-numbing decibel level in Salt Lake City’s EnergySolutions Arena where the Jazz are hosting playoff games against the Lakers.

The Lakers were the first target of “Beat L.A!” and they weren’t even within earshot when it began. It started in the old Boston Garden, the memorable, but now-demolished home of the Celtics, their arch rivals. But it was directed at the Philadelphia 76ers, who were about to eliminate Boston in the 1982 Eastern Conference finals.

That victory would pit the Sixers against the Lakers in the NBA Finals.

And so Boston fans, who had no great love for either Philadelphia or the Sixers, nevertheless were rooting them on against an enemy who instilled even greater hatred.

“Beat L.A.? That’s great,” said Dick Stockton on the CBS telecast, giving the network stamp of approval.

A game was lost that day, but a chant was born.

What’s next? Beat Tiger because he’s from L.A.? Or the Rams and Raiders because they once were in L.A.?

So what’s the deal? Why not beat New York? Beat Chicago? Beat Green Bay?

It’s not as if L.A. has been a dominant sports town on the national landscape. Yes, the Lakers have been a force in the NBA, winners of three titles this decade and the favorite to add a fourth this spring.

But the Dodgers hadn’t won a playoff series in 20 years before beating the Chicago Cubs last season, and they haven’t won a World Series since 1988.

The Angels won a world championship only once and aren’t even an L.A. team. Neither are the Ducks. The Kings are a perennial joke. The Clippers are worse. And soccer in town will again become inconsequential with the departure of David Beckham.

L.A. doesn’t even have NFL teams. It does have USC, an annual contender for an NCAA football championship, and UCLA, a frequent Final Four participant.

But “Beat L.A!” doesn’t sound quite right in a college venue.

People may hate the Yankees, but, when they do, they chant “Yankees suck,” not “New York sucks.” So no, it doesn’t have to do with dominance.

It doesn’t have to do with personalities. The same crowd can chant “Beat L.A!” when the Lakers are on the floor, yet come back with “MVP! MVP!” when Kobe is at the free-throw line.

So what is it?

Jealousy, that’s what it is.

The rest of the country looks at the sunshine, the ocean, the Hollywood stars, the laid-back style (never mind the fact California is broke) and seethes with envy.

It’s not just “Beat L.A!” It’s beat those smug, arrogant Tinseltown prima donnas who are living the life we want.

The Lakers could lose to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Finals. But when’s it’s over, the Lakers get to come home while Cavalier fans have to stay in Cleveland.

Disagree? Shoot us your take below with your reason for chanting “Beat L.A!”

I’m betting it boils down to one word: Envy.