WHEN HE REPORTED TO THE scorer's table at the Great Western Forum, the game clock was stopped with 9:39 remaining in the first quarter. Yet it was after his entrance, and after the clock began ticking away, that time stood still. Earvin Johnson may have been 4 1/2 years older and 30 lbs. heavier than when he last played in the N.B.A., but the Magic we saw last Tuesday looked an awful lot like the Magic we remembered as he passed and deked and shot and led the Los Angeles Lakers to a 128-118 victory over the visiting Golden State Warriors. "It was great," the 36-year-old Johnson said after the game. "It was so much fun. Man!"
Man, indeed. In 27 minutes, the Lakers' old point guard and new power forward scored 19 points, assisted on 10 other baskets and pulled down eight rebounds. As impressive as those numbers were, it was the transcendent smile he flashed throughout the game that made the night so special--not just for the 17,505 who were there, or for the 3 million households that watched the game on TV, but also for the 19 million people around the world who are trying to cope with the fact that they, like Magic, are HIV-positive. Says Sean Strub, the founder and publisher of Poz, a bimonthly magazine with a readership of 315,000: "This is going to tell tens of thousands of people with AIDS and HIV that they don't have to give up. They don't have to believe the death hype. They can go on with their lives."
Johnson's debut performance set the stage for a tantalizing matchup Friday night between the Lakers and Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. Alas, Los Angeles found out the hard way why the Bulls are off to the best start in N.B.A. history (41-3). Chicago won by a score of 99-84, disappointing such celebrities as Jack Nicholson, Denzel Washington and John Cusack. Magic wasn't nearly as dazzling as he had been against the Warriors, but he did score 15 points--2 fewer than Jordan--and he showed he wasn't afraid to tangle with the likes of Dennis Rodman, Chicago's rebounding master.
If there was a bittersweet feeling to Johnson's return last week, it came from the realization that his exile from the game had been largely unnecessary. When Magic announced to the world on Nov. 7, 1991, that he had contracted the AIDS virus, it seemed to many that he was pronouncing his own death sentence. Michael Cooper, a teammate at the time, left the press conference crying. Johnson had to quit basketball then, supposedly for the sake of his own health and definitely for the peace of mind of his peers. He made cameo appearances, first at the 1992 N.B.A. All-Star Game and then as a member of the USA's Dream Team in the Barcelona Olympics, but when he tried to make a comeback in the fall of '92, the fears of some outspoken N.B.A. players forced him to call it off.