COMMENTARY : Earvin Johnson Gets Magical by Making It All Look So Easy

For basketball traditionalists, the true magic in Earvin Johnson’s performance through the years has been the ability of a man that big to play so small. In an era of outsized athletes thrashing above the rim, the Lakers’ point guard has excelled while keeping both feet on the ground. Only his imagination has soared.

At 30, he remains the largest, tallest, strongest individual to dominate his position in NBA history. And yet the Johnson who presented himself at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night was, relatively speaking, an economy model. The style was secondary to the substance.

Whereas a host of Magic imitators have succeeded mostly in making the easy look difficult, Johnson has refined his own game to the point where he appears not even to be laboring. Instead of emphasizing flamboyance, he is doing the simple things better than they have ever been done. It is as if he had conducted tests in a wind tunnel and discarded all the excess baggage that has hampered him and his team from the swiftest possible trip to the basket.

“He conserves more now than ever,” said Pat Riley, Johnson’s coach for the last nine seasons, “though he’s producing more with what he does.” Sometimes, less can be better.

Playing slightly more than half the game against the Knicks, Johnson scored 11 points, grabbed seven rebounds (as many as Patrick Ewing), amassed 13 assists and contributed three steals. He had no turnovers. But beyond the numbers, which only begin to suggest the dimension he has brought to his position, there was a subtlety about his play that ought to be committed to an instruction video. He rarely did more than was necessary.

Oh, Johnson played yo-yo with the basketball on a couple of occasions, but only when challenged on the fast break. Left to his own devices, he made the right pass with a minimum of fuss. “I guess with age you accumulate things,” he said after leading the Lakers to a devastating 118-97 victory over the reeling Knicks. “You learn you can do this instead of that. Instead of taking 20 steps, you can take five and still get there.”

Especially if you let the ball do most of the work. Johnson’s passes led directly to seven Los Angeles baskets in the first quarter, where the outcome was decided.

The best example of his efficiency may have occurred in the final possession of the second quarter when Ewing jumped out to cut off a Magic drive. Without so much as a pause, Johnson flicked a bounce pass off the dribble to Mychal Thompson, who Ewing had been guarding. Thompson missed the layup just before the buzzer, costing Johnson another assist, but his instinctive reaction was a wonder to behold.

“Sometimes,” Riley said, “you tend to take him for granted.” Recall that it wasn’t until his eighth season in the league that he was honored as Most Valuable Player. In retrospect, it is clear he was the most significant player on the most successful professional team in the 1980s. The Lakers survived the decline of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Now they have compiled the best record despite the absence of a force in the middle. They win with Magic.

Even Riley marvels at how much Johnson continues to improve in his 11th season. “He has developed an incredible hook shot,” he said. “He has acquired the mentality of a scorer. And his defense on point guard has gotten better.”

But so little of that can be documented by statistics. Even as he leads his team into a new decade and a new era, Johnson is a victim of numbers. The man was content just to sit and cheer his teammates for the entire fourth quarter at the Garden, occasionally leaping to his feet to exchange high-fives. He may be too good for his own good in the long run. His 11 points against the Knicks lowered his scoring average to 21.4 per game.

Johnson conceded Ewing is the front-runner for the MVP award that Johnson has won in two of the last three years.

“I know it’s going to be tough for me because I don’t score a lot of points,” he said. “Patrick has been playing sensationally, the best I’ve seen him. I can’t get caught up in a competition with him because my whole thing is just winning games. I want us to have the best record.”

The man’s ease of movement is equaled only by his grace off the court. After the game Tuesday night, Johnson managed, in short order, to advise Trent Tucker on altering the downward course of the Knicks, exchange kisses with television newswoman Connie Chung, entertain a Yugoslav TV crew with the virtues of first-year teammate Vlade Divac (“He’s one of the boys . . . a delightful person”) and discuss, with some expertise, George Perles’ decision to turn down the Jets’ head coaching job. Johnson still has ties to Michigan State, where Perles will double as football coach and athletic director.

“I help him recruit,” Johnson said. “I usually go to the first two (football) games before the start of training camp. (Perles) is a good man and tough. He’s been good for that program. I can understand why at his age he wouldn’t want to leave.”

In the manner of a great point guard, Johnson distributed his answers well. He gave everyone who stopped to chat something to take to the basket. It was the performance of a man thoroughly in tune with himself and his times.