Fight Night With LeBron
T
he Lakers have played home games at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles for nearly two decades, and in that time, bronze statues have popped up, like mushrooms, on the pavement surrounding the arena. The first and best depicts Magic Johnson on the first dribble of a fast break. His eyes are fixed downcourt, looking for openings in a shifting geometry of backpedaling defenders. His left hand points, sending an imaginary wing on a fly route to the basket to receive an impossible bounce pass.
This superpower of Magic’s, his ability to see the future, brought “Showtime”—and five NBA titles—to this city, the global capital of the performing arts, where basketball arenas are routinely compared to stages. And in the 27 years since his last full season, Magic has become the unelected mayor of L.A. sports. He convened the ownership group that bought the Dodgers and took them to the World Series in 2017, and again on Saturday night. Eighteen months ago, at the Lakers’ lowest ebb, he took over the franchise’s basketball operations.
On the first evening of this year’s free-agency period, Magic drove to the Brentwood mansion of one LeBron James. The two men talked deep into the night. A few tantalizing fragments of their conversation have leaked, but we don’t know all they said to each other. All we know is that less than 24 hours later, James was a Laker.
Saturday night, just after sunset, I joined thousands of Laker fans in a shuffling procession past the Magic Johnson statue, past a bronze Shaq hanging from a basket, past a sky-hooking Kareem, and into the arena proper to see James’s first regular-season home game. The Staples Center was lit like a boxing ring, an apt touch given that a fight would later break out on the court. The arena’s purple cushioned seats were set back in the shadows, and shining down from the ceiling and onto the maple-wood floor was a cone of golden light, like those that poke through L.A.’s coastal fog, making a mirror of the Pacific.
James will have nowhere to hide under that blinding spotlight. Not from the press and not from the Lakers’ spoiled fans, who know the difference between a good player and a great one, having eyeballed a silly number of basketball’s all-timers up close for long stretches of their primes.
Coming off the worst four years in franchise history, Laker fans are feeling superstar withdrawals. They spent all summer stalking James on social media. When he tweeted about maybe making an appearance at his local pizza place, the LAPD had to run crowd control. When he showed up to a summer-league game in custom Laker shorts, they sold out in an hour. A week before the home opener, at a concert in L.A., Drake brought James out for a song, surprising the Staples Center crowd, which responded with wall-to-wall screams. The night before the game itself, nosebleed tickets were going for $400.
When James took the floor wearing purple warm-ups, Laker fans leaned forward, camera
