Magic Johnson Was Born Here

Earvin Johnson Junior was born in Lansing on August fourteenth, nineteen fifty-nine, the fourth of ten children. His father Earvin Senior worked a day shift at a General Motors plant and a second job nights. His mother Christine worked as a school custodian. The family lived on the south side of Lansing, the side walled off from the rest of the city by the new Interstate Four Ninety-Six expressway.

Earvin Junior was on the court at seven-thirty in the morning before school. He played in the driveway, in the street, at Main Street School, and eventually at Everett High School on the south side. It was at Everett in the fall of nineteen seventy-five that a sportswriter for the Lansing State Journal named Fred Stabley Junior gave him a nickname after watching a sixteen-year-old sophomore score thirty-six points, grab eighteen rebounds, and dish sixteen assists in a single game. Stabley called him Magic. The name stuck the way only true nicknames do.

In his senior year Magic Johnson led the Everett Vikings to the nineteen seventy-seven Class A state championship with a record of twenty-seven wins and one loss. He earned first-team all-state honors three consecutive years.

He chose Michigan State over the University of Michigan, led the Spartans to the national championship in nineteen seventy-nine, and then played thirteen seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers, winning five National Basketball Association championships. He is widely considered the greatest point guard in basketball history.

He grew up here, about four miles from the state capitol, on a side of town that the rest of Lansing had structurally tried to wall off. The city takes credit for him now. It should also take account of what his neighborhood had to overcome.