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Show by Jim Murray Murray m pnrtts This 'M' Johnson didn't need Hollywood It will come as no surprise to the reader that the best basketball player in the country, coun-try, non-center, is probably named "Johnson." "John-son." Neither will it be a shock that his first name begins with "M." What may stop a lot of people is that it doesn't necessarily stand for Magic. It might stand for Marques. This will come as a particular shock to a lot of people at UCLA. Not that they didn't think Marques Johnson wasn't a superb basketball player. They just thought he disappeared five years ago. When last seen, he said he was heading for a place called "Milwaukee." Around Hollywood and Vine, this is not a place you go to, it's a place you come from. It was as if he had shaved his head and joined some secret sect. His friends worried about him. "What ever became of that gorgeous player who used to be forward at Pauley Pavilion?" puzzled fans would ask each other. "Big guy. With all these great moves. Played on John Wooden's last championship cham-pionship team. Name begins with an 'M.'" They would periodically fan the roster of the L.A. Lakers and New York Knicks. In a pinch they would run down the Celtics' game sheet. Not finding the name Marques Johnson, John-son, they would conclude he had gone into some other line of work. Well, Marques Johnson is alive and well and living in Wisconsin and he likes it. Until he reached Milwaukee, Marques had never played before a blue-collar audience. Courtside at Pauley Pavilion usually looked like the first four tables at Chasen's. TV cameras in the locker room were commonplace common-place even before his sophomore season. Marques dressed alongside the likes of Bill Walton, Jamaal Wilkes, Kiki Vandeweghe, Tommy Curtis, Dave Meyers. He was a media star almost before he stopped growing. No one played the game better than Marques Johnson. He can do anything Dr. J. can do and make it look easier. If Marques Johnson were a baseball player, his cap would never fall off. He'd make the plays without mussing his hair or dirtying his uniform. He doesn't play a game, he choreographs it. It's like watching Gene Kelly in the rain or Baryshnikov as a swan. There are no false moves. It's as if an orchestra or-chestra started up that only he can hear and an invisible maestro is directing. "You get in a rhythm of a game," Marques Johnson explains. "You can tell in the warm-ups warm-ups whether you have it or not. That's what defense is, throwing a guy out of his rhythm." Johnson was a 21-point forward in college and he's a 21-point forward in the pros. He swirls through a game like an impressionistic im-pressionistic painting. So, the tendency of a lot of people is to think this virtuosity should be playing the Bolshoi, not a backwater. It's like seeing Man o'War pulling a wagon. The artist himself doesn't think so. "I did at first," he says. "When I was drafted, I thought I had to play where I was assigned. I learned later there were options, that there were ways of forcing your wishes on the league. "I had seen both sides. I had seen the glamour, the hype of L.A. And I had seen the solid, down-to-earth side of life in a working-man's working-man's town. When I renegotiated, I brought it home forcefully to management that I was short-changing myself in terms of what I could be making in side income in New York or L.A., commercial opportunities that were nGt forthcoming in places like Milwaukee." While the Bucks were not totally sympatheticthey sym-patheticthey did not see Marques as an enchained en-chained artist bound by a sea of Philistines they did tender a contract which Marques thought represented an effort to close the gap. "He should," mused the general manager. "I don't know about Beverly Hills, but it made him one of the richest men in Milwaukee." The other Johnson may be making millions climbing in an out of Buicks or pulling the caps off bottles of pop, but there are 14 Johnsons in the NBA Register and Marques is making more money than all but one of them. And the rewards are not all monetary. "Milwaukee is a nice place to live," says the former Squire of Westwood Boulevard. "It has a blue-collar work ethic which is refreshing and it's a pleasure to perform before people who appreciate your being there." In short, hold your tears. The artist has . found a home there and Art is where the artist ar-tist is anyway. The moral of the story: Did Bernhardt need Paris? And this M. Johnson didn't need Hollywood. (c) 1983, Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate |
