Magic Johnson has been part of nearly every major basketball debate for decades, but when the Lakers legend recently revisited his career, he admitted to one regret that still stings, passing on Nike stock in favor of a short-term payday.
“Converse offered me the most money. And so, when you’re Black and you’re broke, you take the most money, right? So I decided to go with Converse,” Johnson explained on the Earn Your Leisure podcast. “But Phil Knight came in and he said: ‘I can’t offer you the same amount of money as Converse, but I can give you something called stock.’ And I passed on the stock, not knowing anything about stock at 19 years old. You know how much that stock would be worth today, 46 years later? A billion-five.”
Nike would later revolutionize the market with Michael Jordan’s five-year, $2.5 million deal in 1984 that included a five percent royalty on shoe sales.
Johnson, who first rose to prominence after beating Larry Bird’s Indiana State in the 1979 NCAA title game, went on to become the only rookie Finals MVP in NBA history when he led the Lakers past Philadelphia in 1980. He won four more titles in 1982, 1985, 1987, and 1988. But his final Finals trip in 1991 came against Jordan, a matchup that cemented his stance in the GOAT conversation.
“I love LeBron. But… [laughs] When Michael Jordan took off with that tongue out? Man,” Johnson said. “Listen, a lot of you weren’t born then — 1991, against my Lakers. Right hand — we thought we had him. Then he looked at us mid-air, switched it to the left. Tongue out. Glass. Bucket. Nobody alive has been able to do that. That boy is too bad. I’m telling you. But yeah — LeBron is a bad boy, too. But he’s not Michael.”
Johnson’s words hit on both sides of his legacy: a billion-dollar business decision he wishes he could have back, and a Finals series against Jordan that convinced him the Bulls legend was in a class of his own.
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