Basketball icon and motivational speaker Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. worked some of his magic on more than 600 high school students assembled in the East Chicago Central High School auditorium on Wednesday night, hoping to inspire them with stories about his own rise to fame.
“Here I am, a little kid from urban America. Whoever thought I would own 125 Starbucks — and a Major League Baseball team, the L.A. Dodgers?” the 6-foot-9-inch Johnson said.
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The students had come from Gary, Hammond and Lake Ridge schools for “Dream Now: The Transformation,” a continuing series designed to expose students to inspirational role models and help them form ideas about their futures.
The auditorium was vibrating with excitement and the music of Hip-Hop DeToxx, a motivational rapper from the South Side of Chicago who warmed up the audience and encouraged the students with his message to “Empower Your Vision For Life.” Author and former Emerson student Crystal O’Brien also spoke along with Jimmy McMikle, an author and motivational speaker.
Johnson — the first in his family to attend college — told the students that he studied hard and worked hard, but he wasn’t a straight-A student. He earned mainly B’s.
“I had a reading problem and I could only read the sixth-grade level,” he said. “My counselor told me to go to summer school to correct that problem. I went to summer school and I caught up and surpassed that. I am not the only one in (this room) that has a problem. But I didn’t let my ego or peer pressure get in my way.”
The 59-year-old Johnson encouraged the students to make good use of their time in high school and make good decisions, because “the decisions you make now will stay with you for the rest of your life.”
He told them to believe in themselves and “believe you can do anything in life. A lot of the time, we don’t believe we can go to college because nobody else in our family went to college. I’m glad I didn’t believe that.”
Johnson went on to attend Michigan State University where he played point guard from 1977 to 1979.
He encouraged the students to raise their hands and ask questions, and many wanted to know who his favorite rival was. Larry Bird, Johnson said.
“My biggest thrill came when I could play on the Dream Team with Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and we went on to win the gold medal. We blew all those teams out by 42 points a game,” Johnson said.
One question from a Thea Bowman student — when you had feelings of doubt, what motivated you most? — sparked an emotional personal story.
“I never had doubts in my ability, but I had to make sure I stayed the course. Sometimes peer pressure will come and your friends want you to be doing something that you shouldn’t be doing. I’m blessed to be here today,” he said and explained how his decision not to hang out with a friend one day saved his life.
“My friend and I were dating two girls in another town and it took 40 minutes to drive to that town. That day he was going to visit to his girlfriend. I didn’t go because I had to study for a test,” Johnson said. “I get a call (that night) and a drunk driver had gone through a stop sign and hit his car and killed him. Normally I would have been in that car.”
“God blessed me not to be in that car. That friend was the point guard on the basketball team. He was the one who always encouraged me. He always made me feel like I was better than I was. He said I would go to the NBA. That was a life lesson for me early on — I was a sophomore and he was a junior.”
Degerie Scott, a senior at Gary’s New Tech Innovative Institute asked Johnson to describe the “biggest obstacle you had to face as an entrepreneur.”
“The biggest challenge I had to face was first believing I could do it,” Johnson said. “So many people in the black and brown community — our own people — put us down and make us think we can’t do it.”
He researched whether any former athletes had left sports and gone on to become successful in the business world. “I gathered the information and I said, ‘Earvin, you can do this.'”
Dana Evans, a point guard for Gary West Side High School girls basketball team, said she would have liked to ask Johnson, “What was your hardest obstacle (in life) and how did you overcome the obstacle.” But as she listened to his talk, she thinks he answered her question.
“He was saying that where he came from, it was hard to get out. But just because he came from a poor town, that didn’t mean he had poor goals,” Evans said.
The event was sponsored by Gary Community School Corp. and School City of East Chicago in collaboration with leadership teams from Purdue University Calumet, Ivy Tech Community College, Indiana University Northwest and the Institute for Leadership and Performance Improvement.
Johnson’s presentation Wednesday was a make-up appearance, as he was unable to attend a program in November due to a news conference for the Dodgers. Former NFL player Shawn Harper appeared in his place. Johnson’s company SodexoMagic, which provides food and nutrition services to the Gary school corporation, also was a sponsor.
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Nancy Coltun Webster is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.