In 13 NBA seasons, Magic Johnson donned a Lakers jersey for over 900 games. He’s known as one of the greatest Lakers players ever but apparently he almost became a Knick in the 1990s.
“I wanted it to be (with the Knicks), but we couldn’t work it out,” Magic Johnson told the New York Daily News in early February 1996. “It was a little bit more than just talk. We had talked about it, what would it take, the whole thing and the Lakers said no. And that was the bottom line.”
“Pat (Riley) always thought that I could add the leadership, bringing the team together, that whole thing,” Johnson said. “And he thought I could make some passes to (Patrick) Ewing because of my size and then add something down low, another scorer down low. If you go back to that (Houston) series, if they had one more scorer, they win that series. That’s what he was looking for the one guy to give him that 15-17 points, but, from the inside, that could make everybody else better. He was trying to win.”
Interestingly enough, Johnson’s long-time agent Lon Rosen denied that Magic ever requested such a trade.
“He did not try to arrange a trade,” Rosen said when he stopped laughing. “That did not happen. Something else happened but more of a friendship thing between Pat and Earvin and a driver hearing them talk. How’s that? It was never going to happen.”
“There was no talk of setting up a trade between the Knicks and the Lakers,” he continued. “Trust me, I was the one that was involved deep in the middle of anything that would have happened and I know what happened. There was nothing. It was a made-up story back then.”
So, then, what do we make of the conflicting comments by Magic and his agent? It’s hard to say.
The Knicks certainly have the means to appeal to a guy like Magic. They are the highest market in the league and, at the time, they were very close to securing a Championship.
It’s possible that the dream of becoming a Knick might have been Magic’s alone, but it’s clear that he thought about it at some point, even if it never became a reality. It’s a move that, obviously, would have rocked the NBA forever.
