No More Magic: Johnson Abruptly Resigns From The LA Lakers
Magic Johnson fought back tears while he broke the news of his resignation from the LA Lakers on Tuesday. He said he hadn’t told his boss yet because he knew he would cry “like a baby.”
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Mark J. Terrill/AP
Magic Johnson isn’t having fun anymore.
“Today, I’m going to step down as president,” the former NBA superstar told a gaggle of reporters on Tuesday night, about an hour and a half before the Los Angeles Lakers played their last game of the season. “I was happier when I wasn’t the president.”
Johnson has served as the team’s president of basketball operations for more than two years — the latest move in a long and successful career as a businessman and philanthropist after he first retired in 1991 when he tested positive for HIV. He came back to be part of the U.S. Olympic “Dream Team” in 1992 and then again to play for the Lakers in the 1995-96 season.
His resignation came out of the blue; on Monday, Johnson had a three-hour meeting about the team’s future after its sixth consecutive losing season, the Associated Press reported.
Reporters and basketball fans weren’t the only ones to find out about his resignation late in the game.
“Somebody’s gonna have to tell my boss,” Johnson told reporters.
His boss is Lakers controlling owner Jeanie Buss, who hired Johnson just over two years ago after she dismissed her brother Jim, who was vice president of basketball operations, and General Manager Mitch Kupchak in an effort to change things up after multiple losing seasons.
Magic Johnson is conducting an impromptu press conference and just stepped down as Lakers president. He said he loves Jeanie Buss like a sister.
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) April 10, 2019
Johnson said he just couldn’t face Buss, who he called “my sister.”
“Have you really not told Jeanie yet?” a reporter asked.
“No, I haven’t. I couldn’t,” he answered. “She doesn’t know I’m standing here because I knew I would be crying like a baby in front of her.”
The Hall of Famer barely kept it together in front of the press: “I’m about to cry now,” he said.
When his boss inevitably heard the news, the Lakers issued a statement thanking Johnson for his time with the team. “There is no greater Los Angeles Laker than Earvin Johnson,” the statement said. “He will always be not only a Lakers icon, but our family.”
Buss also tweeted her thanks:
Earvin, I loved working side by side with you. You’ve brought us a long way. We will continue the journey. We love you ?? https://t.co/ofmQl6BtBz
— Jeanie Buss (@JeanieBuss) April 10, 2019
But not everyone thought Johnson was good for the Lakers.
“It’s a mess,” sports anchor Rob Parker said recently, calling him “tragic Johnson.”
“Nobody … thought that the Lakers wouldn’t make the playoffs when LeBron James came here, even with the injury,” Parker said.
James, who joined the LA team in July of last year, didn’t comment on Johnson’s resignation on Tuesday.
LeBron James didn’t address the media and had his security try to stop reporters who came near him. LeBron on the phone: “Crazy, crazy, crazy.” Yep. pic.twitter.com/PObznj26Rd
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) April 10, 2019
Johnson didn’t give any specific reasons for his decision to quit.
He said he’s happy with where the team has gone during his two years. “We’re halfway there with LeBron coming back,” Johnson said. “I think this team is going to be in the position to really contend for a championship with the growth of the young players.”
The Lakers ended their season with a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night, after being eliminated from the playoff race last month.
They used to be a top team, with 16 NBA titles. But they haven’t made the playoffs in six years.
Johnson said he is not stepping down because of differences he’s had with the team’s coach of three years, Luke Walton.
“I like Luke a lot,” Johnson said. “We have different opinions about different things — that’s OK.”
It’s been widely reported that the Lakers were expected to dismiss Walton at the end of the regular season.
Walton told reporters he didn’t know Johnson was planning to quit. “I found out the same time as you guys,” the coach said at a press conference after the team’s Tuesday night game.
However, Johnson did suggest vaguely that his departure had to do with an upcoming confrontation.
“Tomorrow, I would have to affect somebody’s life — ruin their life,” he said. “That’s not fun for me, that’s not who I am.”
Delivering bad news — that’s one of the job requirements Johnson said he doesn’t like. He talked about the challenge of having to trade players that he likes.
Magic Johnson just gave the longest, strangest, greatest “I’m stepping down” press conference I have ever witnessed. Just beautifully bizarre and completely contradictory. None of it made sense – except he is now so happy & so relieved to be going back to his old life.
— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) April 10, 2019
Johnson would rather be on the other side of things, helping mentor players such as tennis champion Serena Williams and the Philadelphia 76ers’ Ben Simmons.
But NBA rules prevent teams — including players, coaches and management — from doing anything that might entice a player away from another team they’re under contract with. Mentoring another player can be construed as tampering.
Johnson has been investigated by the NBA for tampering four times, including for his response to a mentoring request from Simmons in February. Also this year, Johnson incurred a $500,000 fine for “impermissible contact” with Oklahoma City Thunder player Paul George’s agent, and another $50,000 for praising Milwaukee Bucks player Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Johnson said he’s had enough of the tampering charges. “I can’t help young men who want me to help them,” he said. “I don’t like that; I like to be free.”
He also said he was tired of “the backstabbing and the whispering” associated with his leadership position.
“What am I doing? I’ve got a beautiful life,” said Johnson, laughing. “So I’m gonna go back to that beautiful life.”
Inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur Was A Success
David Greene talks to USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan about the historic women’s golf tournament in Augusta, Ga. It’s the first time women have been allowed to compete at the club.
Scrutiny Continues For Santa Anita Race Track After 23 Thoroughbreds Die In 3 Months
The famed Santa Anita racetrack in southern California is under scrutiny after a spike in thoroughbred deaths. Santa Anita hosted its biggest race day of the year this past weekend.
Porcupine Barbs For Better Wound Healing
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At first, the idea of using porcupine quills to patch up wounds sounds torturous. But, taking inspiration from the spiky rodent, researchers have begun to work on a new type of surgical staple that may be less damaging — and less painful — than current staples.
Worldwide, surgeons perform more than 4 million operations annually, usually using sutures and staples to close wounds. Yet these traditional tools designed to aid healing can create their own problems.
“We’ve been using sutures and staples for decades, and they’ve been incredibly useful,” says Jeff Karp, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “But there are challenges in terms of placing them for minimally invasive procedures.”
Surgical staples are faster to insert than sutures, which require a needle and thread, he explains. But current staples, made of metal, tear tissue on the way in and cause more damage when bent to stay in place.
The quill tip in this finger has microscopic, backward-facing barbs that make the quill hard to remove. Bioengineers think the same sort of barbs could help keep dissolvable medical staples in place until a wound heals.
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Karp and his team have been searching for new ways to hold tissue together.
One brainstorming session led to a discussion of a porcupine and its quill.
The North American porcupine appears cute, but it has more than 30,000 menacing quills covering much of its body, each one hollow and 2 to 3 inches long. The slow-moving herbivore uses the quills as a last-resort defense against predators.
The quills are actually specialized hairs that mostly lie flat against the animal’s body. Only when threatened will the porcupine erect them. And, contrary to a common myth, porcupines don’t shoot the quills out from their bodies.
“The wonderful thing about porcupines is that they seem to feel secure,” saidUldis Roze, emeritus biology professor at Queens College, City University of New York. “They feel like they’re not in danger, and they’re sweet.”
When the porcupine is relaxed, its other hairs and fur hide most of the quills.
When threatened, the adult porcupine displays three types of warnings before lashing out, according to Roze’s book The North American Porcupine. First, the contrasting black and white pattern of the animal’s quills and other hairs — known as aposematic coloration — is a visual warning signal. A unique pungent odor and ominous teeth are further clues that dogs, mountain lions and other potential predators should stay away.
The North American porcupine has a cute face, but it has upward of 30,000 menacing quills covering much of its body. The slow-moving herbivore uses them as a last-resort defense against predators.
Lindsay Wildlife Experience
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Lindsay Wildlife Experience
If that doesn’t work, a porcupine will use its powerful, spiky tail to slap at the aggressor. Each quill is held in place by its own special structure in the porcupine’s skin. Direct physical contact with a predator causes the porcupine’s skin to release the quill.
Quills from North American porcupines pack a hidden punch: microscopic, backward-facing barbs.
Covering just the needlelike tip of the quills, the barbs make removing a quill difficult, because they flare out when pulled in a direction opposite to the way they went in.
That means that if a predator gets quilled, the quill might never come out. When scientists examine the skulls of deceased mountain lions, Roze says, they often find the tips of porcupine quills embedded in the lions’ jaw bones
“The mountain lion just accepts it,” said Roze. “It’s part of the work of killing a porcupine.”
Of course, that mountain lion’s days of porcupine feasting may end forever if the quills keep it from eating or end up in the cat’s vulnerable internal organs.
This image from a scanning electron microscope homes in on the tiny barbs on the tip of a porcupine quill.
Courtesy of Woo Kyung Cho
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Courtesy of Woo Kyung Cho
Still, a quill passing through the body is far from painless — it’s excruciating — as Roze knows from personal experience. He was once quilled in his bicep while up in a tree, trying to catch a porcupine.
Despite his wife’s suggestion afterward that he immediately seek medical care, he waited two harrowing days. By that time, the quill had traveled in one direction and cleanly exited his lower arm. He kept the quill as a souvenir.
The quill’s barbs eased its penetration into his flesh. They also helped drive the quill in deeper, until it exited (though it would have been stopped by a harder material, such as bone).
It was the barbs that most interested Karp. He and his teamran experiments comparing a barbed quill to a barbless quill, measuring the forces required to insert and remove barbed spears.
In contrast to a barbless quill or a surgical staple — which tear the tissue and create gaps that are susceptible to infection — the barbed quill’s design means it does minimal damage on the way in, the researchers found.
Left: A microscopic image compares the size of a North American porcupine’s quill tip with the tip of a narrow, 18-gauge needle. Right: In a live porcupine, the partially hidden quills usually lay flat along the herbivore’s body, amidst other hairs, until and unless called into action.
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Josh Cassidy/KQED
A new type of medical staple that had two barbed tips would require much less effort to place, Karp figures, and the gripping power of the barbs would hold it in position without needing to bend the staple.
Karp says he anticipates making the new staples out of biodegradable material so they will fully dissolve over time without having to be removed.
The challenge now is to re-create the full barb’s shape.
“Nature has designs that humans can’t achieve yet, at least at large scale,” Karp says. “Large-scale manufacturing is a human problem.”
But if the right technologies become available, he estimates that human testing of porcupine quill-inspired tools could begin in two to five years.
“This could be an enabler for smaller incisions to be made in a large number of surgeries,” Karp says. That would be good news for both surgeons and patients.
This post and video were produced by our friends at Deep Look, a wildlife video series from KQED and PBS Digital Studios that explores “the unseen at the very edge of our visible world.” KQED’s Josh Cassidy is the lead producer and cinematographer for Deep Look. Laura Shields works as an intern for the series.
Virginia Beats Texas Tech To Win Men’s Basketball Championship
March Madness is over. After a devastating loss last year, Virginia beat Texas Tech in overtime Monday night to win its first NCAA title. The final score was 85-77.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
March Madness came to a close last night, and it’s hard to imagine a more dramatic redemption story.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JIM NANTZ: Rebound into the hands of Hunter. And Virginia with the all-time turnaround title.
MARTIN: That is the sound of Virginia beating Texas Tech, 85 to 77, in overtime. For the first time, the Cavaliers are the Division I men’s college basketball champions.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Yeah, and look back to just a year ago – UVA was the laughingstock of the tournament.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANTZ: Twenty-point lead and the greatest upset in the history of this tournament is going to happen – devastating.
GREENE: Yeah, really devastating. Last year, Virginia was at the top of its bracket, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County was at the bottom, and somehow, the UMBC Retrievers buried UVA. Virginia became the first No. 1 seed ever to lose to a No. 16 seed in the men’s tournament. This year, though, a total 180 for UVA.
MARTIN: But most of last night’s game was close. In the second half, Virginia pulled ahead by 10 points; that lead trickled away. They were behind by three late in the game, when UVA’s De’Andre Hunter took aim.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANTZ: Far side – Hunter…
BILL RAFTERY: Wow.
NANTZ: …Hits a 3 to tie it.
RAFTERY: Woo. Onions.
MARTIN: That shot sent the game into overtime, where the Cavaliers pulled ahead for good.
GREENE: And they won. UVA’s Ty Jerome reacted to the championship.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TY JEROME: Unbelievable, man. I mean, this is the first time I just look around, take all this in. This is what you dream of.
GREENE: Later on, Jerome was talking to reporters, and he reflected on the team’s turnaround.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JEROME: Last year, it drew us even closer together. So it wasn’t like a rush to get to this championship game and then win it so we could prove all you guys wrong; it was more just, you know, we grew even more united.
GREENE: In his words, quote, “we came together when everyone counted us out.”
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
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Baltimore Orioles Slugger Holds Record For Hitless At-Bats
Chris Davis went 0-for-3 in his first three plate appearances in a 12-4 win over the Oakland A’s Monday night. That extends his hitless streak to 47 consecutive at-bats — a Major League record.
‘This Is A Great Story’, Says Virginia Cavaliers’ Coach On Team’s NCAA Comeback
Virginia’s Kyle Guy celebrates after helping his team defeat Texas Tech in the NCAA championship tournament. The title game finished in overtime – a first since the University of Kansas beat the University of Memphis in 2008.
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Announcers called it the “all-time turnaround title.”
On Monday night in Minneapolis, the Virginia Cavaliers took home the NCAA tournament championship title in a dramatic 85-77 overtime defeat of the Texas Tech Red Raiders.
“This is a great story,” said Virginia’s coach, Tony Bennett in a post-game interview. “The credit goes to these young men.”
A very witty Virginia fan is waving this sign around at U.S. Bank Stadium. @UMBCAthletics must be proud. pic.twitter.com/G9M4IbmRvB
— Kyle Boone (@Kyle__Boone) April 9, 2019
It was a big comeback after last year’s tournament, when the University of Virginia team lost to University of Maryland, Baltimore County in an early round – the first time a No. 16 had ever beat a No. 1 seed team.
As the overtime clock hit 0:00, Virginia player De’Andre Hunter – who scored a career-high 27 points – threw the basketball into the air in celebration. Confetti rained down, then the winning team cut down the basketball net, fulfilling an NCAA championship tradition.
The road to this moment was rocky for both teams. Virginia had close calls against Purdue and Auburn, and Texas Tech made it to the playoffs after losing their first conference tournament game.
But both teams showed up in full force on Monday night. So did their fans. Notable alumni from both schools came out to support their teams, including NFL quarterback and Texas Tech University alumni Patrick Mahomes, and University of Virginia-grad Katie Couric, AP reported.
At one point, a fan threw a tortilla – a Texas Tech school tradition – that landed on the elevated court, causing play to stop temporarily.
NCAA title game stopped briefly because a tortilla got launched into the court from the Texas Tech student section. Not the first to fly and now security is starting to confiscate a bunch. pic.twitter.com/q18K93dTp4
— Oskar Garcia (@oskargarcia) April 9, 2019
It was an evening of a few other “firsts.” Both teams made their NCAA championship debuts, and the University of Virginia won it’s first-ever national title at the tournament. The last time the NCAA had a first-time champion was thirteen years ago when the University of Florida bested UCLA in 2006.
And a block from Virginia sent the championship game into overtime for the first time since the University of Kansas beat the University of Memphis in 2008, according to NCAA.com.
The teams also matched a previous record – 21 combined 3-pointers in a championship game, The Associated Press reported.
At the end of the night, the NCAA announced the Final Four’s all-tournament team; three spots went to Virginia players – De’Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome and Kyle Guy, who was voted ‘Most Outstanding Player’ after scoring 24 points in the title game. Jarrett Culver and Matt Mooney of Texas Tech also made the list.
White House Cancels MLB-Cuba Deal Made Under Obama Administration
The Trump administration has canceled an agreement that would have allowed Cuban baseball players in the U.S. without having to defect first. Officials say the agreement was illegal.
How HHS Secretary Alex Azar Reconciles Medicaid Cuts With Stopping The Spread Of HIV
HHS Secretary Alex Azar at a White House roundtable discussion of health care prices in January. Azar tells NPR his office is now in “active negotiations and discussion” with drugmakers on how to make HIV prevention medicines more available and “cost-effective.”
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In his State of the Union address this year, President Trump announced an initiative “to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years.”
The man who pitched the president on this idea is Alex Azar, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We have the data that tells us where we have to focus, we have the tools, we have the leadership — this is an historic opportunity,” Azar told NPR’s Ari Shapiro Monday. “I told the president about this, and he immediately grabbed onto this and saw the potential to alleviate suffering for hundreds of thousands of individuals in this country and is deeply passionate about making that happen.”
Trump’s push to end HIV in the U.S. has inspired a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism from public health officials and patient advocates. Enthusiasm, because the plan seems to be rooted in data and is led by officials who have strong credentials in regards to HIV/AIDS. Skepticism, because of the administration’s history of rolling back protections for LGBTQ people, many of whom the program will need to reach to be successful.
For instance, transgender people are three times more likely to contract HIV than the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Trump has banned transgender people from serving in the military and undone rules that allow transgender students access to bathrooms that fit their gender presentation.
Azar himself has strong Republican credentials — as a young man, he clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. And yet he’s now touring the country promoting this plan to end HIV, which includes supporting needle exchange programs to reduce HIV infection among intravenous drug users.
“Syringe services programs aren’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when you think about a Republican health secretary,” Azar acknowledged at an HIV conference last month. “But we’re in a battle between sickness and health — between life and death.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
This morning you toured facilities in East Boston, a neighborhood in one of 48 counties targeted in Trump’s plan. What did you learn there?
I was able to be at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center and they have a remarkable program called Project Shine. What I was able to do is meet with the entire team that provides this type of holistic approach. It is very much what we’re going to try to do in the most impacted areas.
You find the individuals who may have HIV — get them diagnosed. Get those who are diagnosed on the HIV antiretroviral treatment — so that they have an undetectable viral load and can’t spread the disease to others, as well as live a long healthy life themselves. Get those who are most at risk of contracting HIV on a medicine called PrEP so that they dramatically reduce their chance of getting HIV. And then, finally, respond when you have clusters of outbreaks. So, just getting to see the the holistic approach there was extremely helpful for me.
Given that Medicaid is the single largest payer for medical care for people with HIV, do Republican efforts to block Medicaid expansion in high-infection states like Mississippi and Alabama undermine your efforts to get more people treatment?
The program that we have is based on the assumption that Medicaid remains as it is. …. And even were we to change Medicaid, along the lines of what the president has proposed in the budget …
Meaning the major reductions to Medicaid that are in the president’s budget?
Well, there are there are some reductions. But what it would do is actually give states tremendous flexibility. One of the challenges in the Affordable Care Act was that it prejudiced the Medicaid system very much in favor of able-bodied adults, away from the more traditional Medicaid populations of the aged, the disabled, pregnant women and children.
What we would do is restore a lot of flexibility of the states so that they could put those resources really where they’re needed. We would expect that those suffering from HIV/AIDS infection would be in the core demographic of people that you would want to make sure were covered. What we will do here, by stopping the epidemic of HIV, is have a dramatic reduction in cost for the Medicaid and Medicare programs in the future.
So one big part of your plan is expanding access to PrEP, the HIV prevention drug. Without insurance it can cost around $1,600 a month in the U.S. A generic version available overseas costs roughly $6 a month. AIDS activists say your department could ‘march in’ and break the patent that Gilead holds in order to make a generic version available to Americans. Is your agency going to pursue that?
I don’t know what you’re saying by breaking the patent. There’s no such thing as a legal right to break patents in the United States …
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has a patent for PrEP, which Gilead disputes …
Well, that’s very different than breaking a patent. That would be asserting patent rights held by the CDC. So the CDC has a patent on the product and Gilead has a patent on the product. We are actually in active negotiations and discussion with Gilead right now on how we can make PrEP more available and more cost effective for individuals as part of this ending the HIV epidemic program.
I recently went to Jackson, Miss., which has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the country. I talked to Shawn Esco, a black gay man, who told me that stigma, homophobia, and racism prevent people from seeking care, and he has very little hope. What would you say to him?
That is exactly what the president and I want to solve. I want to give him that hope. So many of the infections are happening in areas of our country where there’s intense stigma against individuals — males who have sex with men; the African-American community, Latino community, American Indian, Alaska Native communities. What’s really made this is a historic opportunity right now is we have data that show us that 50 percent of new infections are happening in 48 counties as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and so we can focus those efforts.
We want to learn from people on the ground, as I did this morning here in East Boston. How do we reduce stigma? How do we provide a holistic approach for Shawn and others? We can get them diagnosed and get them on treatment in ways that they find acceptable — or, as one of the individuals said to me this morning, meet people where they are.
Golden State Warriors Say Goodbye To Oakland Arena
After 47 years in Oakland, the Golden State Warriors are moving to a shiny new arena across the bay in San Francisco. The Warriors are just the latest beloved sports team to leave the city.