Magic Johnson Magic Johnson Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. (born August 14, 1959) is an American retired professional basketball player and current president of basketball operations of the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played point guard for the Lakers for 13 seasons. After winning championships in high school and college, Johnson was selected first overall in the 1979 NBA draft by the Lakers. He won a championship and an NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award in his rookie season, and won four more championships with the Lakers during the 1980s. Johnson retired abruptly in 1991 after announcing that
Magic Johnson forever"; during Johnson's Hall of Fame ceremony, Bird formally inducted his old rival. In 2009, Johnson and Bird collaborated with journalist Jackie MacMullan on a non-fiction book titled "When the Game Was Ours". The book detailed their on-court rivalry and friendship with one another. The following year, HBO developed a documentary about their rivalry titled "", which was directed by Ezra Edelman. Magic Johnson had an extremely close relationship with Lakers owner Jerry Buss, whom he saw as a mentor and a father figure. Calling Buss his "second father" and "one of [his] best friends", Johnson spent five hours visiting