Magic Johnson dropped a proper bombshell on the sporting world in 1991 when he announced his retirement from professional basketball. But it was the reason why he retired that left many stunned, and quite frankly, concerned. Gary Vitti, who had been a trainer at Johnson’s team, the Los Angeles Lakers, for over three decades, recently revisited that moment.
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Johnson had been tested positive for HIV. It turned everything upside down, and unsurprisingly, Vitti, in a conversation with Byron Scott, called it one of the toughest moments of his life.
Magic’s exit also hit the Lakers like a truck going at full speed. He was arguably their most important player and was still in his prime. Immediately, they slipped from contention, to post-season survival. But above all, keeping sporting matters aside, it was the people in Purple and Gold, including Vitti, who loved Johnson, and couldn’t believe what he had to go through.
“That was one of the worst moments of my life,” Vitti said. “And it’s more recently that I can talk about it without getting choked up.”
“We thought it was a death sentence,” he added, because until the mid 1990s, there was no real effective treatment to stop HIV from progressing to AIDS, a disease where the entirety of the hist’s immune system collapses. So, it wasn’t just Vitti who believed the 5x champ would struggle to make it out of the situation.
But the fighter that Johnson is, he refused to give up. He caught his report early, and changed his lifestyle completely to stay healthy, and in 1995, when the “triple therapy” (antiretroviral cocktail) became available, that changed everything. It suppressed his HIV.
Vitti continued, “In later years, when we realized he was gonna be fine, and he was gonna outlive us all, which he probably is… even when we realize all the good things that came from this one bad thing, when he asked about it, I would literally reflect on being in that space, what that felt like. And those feelings would all come back.”
It was meant as a joke of relief, a way of saying Johnson would outlive them all, but the trauma never fully left Vitti, who eventually had to seek professional help. “I’m much better with it right now, I talk to therapist about it.”
