YouTube Gold: Magic Johnson’s Michigan State Highlights

A transformative player emerges

In 1978, the top three players in high school were considered to be, in order: Gene Banks. Albert King. Magic Johnson.

You could reasonably flip the first two because both had their supporters, but they were supposed to be the great ones.

Instead, Johnson turned out to be the Hall of Famer.

When he arrived at Michigan State, everyone knew he was good, but he was an oddity who would become a revolutionary: no one had seen a 6-9 point guard before. The idea seemed ludicrous.

And perhaps it was, because while we now celebrate positionless basketball, we’ve never seen anyone like him since. Not even close.

In these Michigan State highlights, we see Johnson’s genius beginning to emerge. He was never a Michael Jordan/Dominique Wilkins type of athlete who could dominate you just because he had talent you couldn’t dream of having.

Johnson was a very good athlete but he was never elite. His talent was superb court awareness and vision and also a desire to work hard and to win. That Showtime stuff with the Los Angeles Lakers only came from tens of thousands of hours of hard, lonely work.

For Johnson, winning was the ultimate thing. He wanted the ball in his hands, to be sure, but when he had it, he was happy to give it to someone else to score.

As long as his team won, it was all cool. There aren’t many teammates who are more fun to play with than guys who want you to succeed.