Around He Goes--Is This Where He Stops?

Magic Wins NCAA. Magic Wins NBA. Magic Retires. Magic Plays in Olympics. Magic Considers Comeback. Magic Buys Piece of Lakers. Magic Reconsiders Comeback. Magic Coaches Lakers. Magic Quits as Laker Coach. Magic Considers Comeback. Magic Sells Piece of Lakers. Magic Makes Comeback. Magic Wants to Play in Olympics. Magic Won’t Play in Olympics. Magic Raps Bump of Ref. Magic Bumps Ref. Magic Plays in NBA Playoffs. Magic Re-Retires.

Dizzy. I’m so dizzy, my head is spinning. Like a whirlpool, it never ends.

Faked out of my jock again, I don’t know which way to look. Now you see him, now you don’t. I feel like Latrell Sprewell, on the night Magic made his reappearance at the Forum, Jan. 30. Remember that? I can still picture Golden State’s mixed-up Latrell, getting manipulated like a kid at a birthday party, trying to pin a tail on a donkey. He tried to guard Magic. Magic faked him into the Sizzler salad bar, across the street. That old Laker Magic had him in his spell, that old Laker Magic that we knew so well.

Happy days were here again.

Then not. Then here. Then not.

Happy. Unhappy. Too sick to play. Not too sick. NBA rivals don’t want him around. NBA rivals do want him around. Laker players personally ask him back. Laker players displeased over playing time. He has to play forward. He shouldn’t play forward. He has to come off bench. He shouldn’t come off bench. Doesn’t need to be point guard. Does need to be.

“Five, six, 10 teams want me.”

“This is where I want to be. I’m a Laker.”

Dizzy. Making me dizzy.

Tired.

May 3: “As of today, I want to play next year. I can’t go out like this.”

Retired.

May 14: “Now I am ready to give it up. It’s time to move on.”

Earvin “Magic” Johnson, to most the Mister Rogers of basketball, to some a Mister Hyde, is leaving the neighborhood once more. Putting the old No. 32 back in mothballs. Taking off the tennies and rummaging for the hard shoes. Taking a courtside seat, but not on the bench. Five diamond rings. Then 4 1/2 years gone. Then a half-year back. Now gone again. Poof. He isn’t Mister Rogers. He is David Copperfield.

Best I can figure is this:

First, after a lifetime of being a superstar, being called a superstar, being treated like a superstar, being paid like a superstar, Magic Johnson, modesty aside, was accustomed to nothing else. So, if he said he needed the basketball, belonged in the lineup, deserved whatever googolplex of millions of dollars Michael Jordan or Shaquille O’Neal deserved, he was only being true to himself.

His former self.

The player he used to be.

Like that last week in Houston, when I asked him about waiting for the in-bounds pass after an opponent’s basket, forgetting that Nick Van Exel was there to bring the ball upcourt, I remember the nod of Magic’s head when he said: “I know. I know. That’s just my natural instincts kicking in. Maybe you can’t break an old horse.”

Maybe you can’t.

Could anyone else have accepted the conditions of Johnson’s return? Would Wilt Chamberlain or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have converted to forward, after a 4 1/2-year absence, because someone younger was in his spot? Would Jordan have willingly come off the bench, or Larry Bird quietly accepted the fact that someone else was handling the ball with a big game on the line?

Not hardly.

Second, I know Magic knows that the Lakers would never kick him out. Never ask him to leave. Jerry West, who lays it on the line with practically everybody else, very graciously said after the season, “Earvin has earned the right to do whatever he likes.”

So, you couldn’t be more wrong if you believe the Lakers asked him to leave.

Not directly, at least.

But when it comes to basketball, Magic is as smart as they come, so he can take a hint. He can read between the lines, same way he could see over 6-foot-3 guards. He knows his X’s and O’s, and he knows his A-B-C’s, and today they are:

(A) No way the Lakers can pay him like Mike or Shaq.

(B) No way the Lakers can give him Nick’s job.

(C) No way the Lakers can tell him to get lost.

As a forward, he is a good one, not a great one. Robert Horry of the Houston Rockets said he dreaded Magic making moves on him, but welcomed that hook shot of his: “I can’t stop that other stuff Magic does, but I’ll take my chances with that hook every time.”

As a point guard, he is as good as any who ever lived, but he will be 37 years old, thicker, slower, on medication for a serious illness, still rusty from a 4 1/2-year layoff and still deluded into thinking--like a Muhammad Ali or a George Foreman, say--that his flesh will do whatever his brain requests. It won’t. He can still deliver knockout punches. He just can’t do it at will.

Will he ever play again, professionally?

He says no. But we’ve heard this before.

I don’t think he’s bluffing. But I also am not sold. Earvin Johnson or his representatives shouldn’t need me to remind them that I think the world of the guy, so I am not questioning his sincerity or honesty. What I am doing is saying that what he did Tuesday took the Lakers off the hook.

Because a couple of months from now, if, say, Pat Riley calls, look what happens:

The Lakers could say Magic voluntarily stepped out. That they committed funds to free agents. Magic could say Riley talked him into one more run. Or the Knicks did. Or the Pistons did. He could even go to Chicago to play with Superman, Batman and Dennis the Menace, on the craziest team you’ve ever seen. The Bulls’ fifth starter could be a janitor making $4.25 an hour. Put that in your salary cap and smoke it.

He should go wherever he pleases. As West put it, Earvin’s earned it.

Leaving the Lakers was the right move to make. He doesn’t fit in with that bunch anymore. And if you don’t fit, you must quit.

Magic will come back. He won’t. He will. You can count on it.