Former NBA star Earvin “Magic” Johnson has experienced the highs of winning championships to the lows of being diagnosed as HIV positive. Through it all, he has learned to trust God.
“Faith was everything,” he said. “I always lean on my faith. God has truly blessed me to come through a lot of challenges in my life, especially when I think about HIV.”
Johnson’s personal and public lives are the subject of a new four-part Apple TV+ documentary series, “They Call Me Magic.”
God was “always there for me and helping me make the right decisions when I need to make tough decisions,” he said. “God just blessed me with the best wife that a man could have in Cookie and our children and grandchildren. So I lean on my faith all the time. I will never stop doing that — loving the Lord, loving God. And I just thank him every day for everything that he’s blessed me with.”
He also credits his mother, Christine Johnson.
READ: Magic Johnson reflects on 30 years
“My mother is everything,” Johnson, 62, said. “I’m a mama’s boy. I love my mother to death — we’re tight., we’re close. She’s a woman of huge faith. She’s very involved in her church. And she raised us the same way — all the kids — to be involved in the church. And we’re all involved in our different ways. She has always prayed for me and has always been there for me.”
Johnson said he still enjoys going back to Lansing to eat his mom’s “famous sweet potato pie and apple pie” and to “sit back and just talk to her.”
“She has influenced my life to give back,” he said. “That’s the reason I give back so much is because of my mother. And I love her for that.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice
