Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out One-on-One: The Untold Story of the Game That Made Magic About this episode It was a pickup game for the ages. Finally, former Miami Heat center — and current DJ — Rony Seikaly opens up to correspondent Foster Kamer about his shocking decision to do what nobody in the NBA would, in the midst of HIV/AIDS paranoia. And how Seikaly was fated to become the person that Magic Johnson credits with changing his life.
• Subscribe to Foster Kamer's Substack https://www.readfostertalk.com/
• Listen to "Basketball History 101" with Rick Loayza https://pod.link/1527224956
"Lose Your Love" (with Nico de Andrea), "Carrot Cake (Radio Edit)" and "Out of Time (Original Mix)" produced and performed by Rony Seikaly; used with permission by Rony Seikaly.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 I wanted him to feel human and not like an amoeba.
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1:56 Pablo Torre? Foster, you're not here for your sports expertise.
1:58 Speaker 03 No. I'm not.
2:01 Pablo Torre? But you are here because, first off, I need to apologize to you because this took way too long to get on the show. It's been over a year.
2:10 Speaker 03 It has been.
2:11 Pablo Torre? And there's a reason why we've been investigating this story for so long. I promise. But to just timestamp us as to like how this started for you.
2:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:21 Pablo Torre? There is a flyer.
2:23 Speaker 03 There is a flyer.
2:23 Pablo Torre? With a date. And I was hoping you could read it and describe the thing that sent you down this rabbit hole in the first place.
2:32 Speaker 03 The thing that sent me down this rabbit hole is a black square on which is some neon-colored writing.
2:42 Speaker 03 It says Circo Loco on two lines. And under it says New York Halloween, 26th October, 2024. And on the lineup are some DJs, names below it. And me versus Rampah, a guy named Chris Ducey, Golfoes, which is an act of two DJs, Pasta and Dennis Cruz, one named Map.Ache. And the very last name on it, at the bottom, in the center, is Ronnie Cicley. Below which are the words Brooklyn Storehouse, which is a massive warehouse in Brooklyn.
3:17 Pablo Torre? And so the idea that Ronnie Cicley caught your eye.
3:20 Speaker 03 Yes.
3:21 Pablo Torre? What did you think when you saw his name?
3:24 Speaker 03 Why is Ronnie Cicley's name on this flyer?
3:30 Pablo Torre? One of the thoughts that I would have, that I actually did have when I was in Miami, when I was in South Beach for work years ago, and I saw Ronnie Cicley's name myself on some equivalent advertisement was, oh, someone has ironically called their band Ronnie Cicley.
3:45 Speaker 03 Ronnie Cicley, yeah.
3:45 Pablo Torre? I'm like, that's a great idea. It's a great pull.
3:47 Speaker 03 But in this case, as we learned, there is an entire generation of people out there who only learn as a secondary course of information that he played in the NBA.
4:25 Pablo Torre? Yes, he is, in fact, the ninth overall pick of the 1988 NBA Draft. A former All-American at Syracuse, a guy who played in the 90s and imprinted himself on my brain with the Miami Heat, first and foremost, as one of the first, like, really famous foreign players, big men, in the league.
4:43 Speaker 04 Ronnie Cikley bent all 6'11 1/3 inches of his frame into a chair for his first Miami Heat press conference today, and right away claimed he was thankful he wasn't picked earlier yesterday by Phoenix.
4:55 Speaker 05 When they picked Tim Perry, I was, you know, I was one step closer to getting to Miami, and I was just so excited. I looked back to my parents and, you know, I just went like this to them, just prayed.
5:09 Speaker 03 I know Ronnie Cikley because I was an adherent of the original NBA Jam. And on the original NBA Jam, 1993, the Miami Heat lineup included Ronnie Cikley, who was later also included on NBA Jam Tournament Edition.
5:32 Pablo Torre? Right. I last saw Ronnie Cikley in earnest when I was using him to brutally foul Danny Manning in NBA Jam, and here he is atop a DJ booth, dropping a beat in a way that clearly is something to be reckoned with.
5:57 Pablo Torre? This story on its own, by the way, that's an episode.
6:01 Speaker 03 It started that way. This started with just Ronnie Cikley is a DJ, and not just a DJ, a successful one, and, by many objective measures, an absolutely solid one, if not a great one.
6:16 Pablo Torre? We have the ability, we have the permission, the legal clearance, to play DJ Ronnie Cikley. What song would you like to choose to introduce our audience to the kind of stuff that this guy gets into now?
6:32 Speaker 03 I think we're going to go with "Lose Your Love."
7:07 Speaker 03 Are you imagining the giant fog jets coming up?
7:10 Pablo Torre? I should say that I f***ing love this.
7:13 Speaker 03 Honestly? Honestly? Slaps!
7:17 Pablo Torre? If this happened at a wedding reception, I would freak the f*** out.
7:22 Speaker 03 Lose your mind.
7:27 Pablo Torre? So, as you were saying, this is an episode unto itself.
7:32 Speaker 03 Yes.
7:33 Pablo Torre? You're allowed to now reveal that after seeing this flyer in October of 2024, you did some more research and you saw something else.
7:43 Speaker 03 I did. We're about to listen to a speech. It is a YouTube clip of a fundraiser for the Magic Johnson Foundation at the Staples Center in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Magic announcing that he had HIV. This clip starts with a question. How did the reception that you got from other players change as you continued your career?
8:08 Pablo Torre? And then what do you think the reception would be today if there was an athlete in your situation? What was that question speaking to?
8:15 Speaker 03 The stigma around an HIV-positive diagnosis. There was so much misinformation and fear around how HIV was spread.
8:27 Speaker 04 The disease has already claimed more victims than Legionnaires' disease and Toxic Shock Syndrome combined. More than 800 cases nationwide. 300-plus of those fatal. And every day, three more cases are identified. And yet, still, surprisingly few people are familiar with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or the acronym by which it's frequently identified: AIDS.
8:52 Speaker 03 I mean, like, the absolute uncertainty and ignorance around this topic, which, of course, speaks to a greater public health issue in America and globally. That created a very difficult environment for Magic Johnson to be in the NBA. It's a sport dominated by straight men.
9:11 Pablo Torre? Which is all to say that when Magic Johnson replies, it's worth paying attention to what he immediately mentions.
9:19 Speaker 01 And I owe Ronnie Seickley a lot because he played one-on-one and opened up all the guys' eyes.
9:26 Speaker 01 That when we played one-on-one, then guys said, oh, OK, nothing can happen to me by playing one-on-one against Magic. So, thank you for that.
9:37 Pablo Torre? And so my first reaction when I saw that clip was, I didn't know that this was a thing. And what did you know about it?
9:47 Speaker 03 Nothing. That clip of Magic talking about it comes, I think, like 53 minutes into that YouTube clip. And again, it's, you know, 15 seconds of video. That's it. I knew nothing. There is very little out there about this. And the fact is, Magic Johnson and Ronnie Seickley crossover in the NBA is very limited. So why Magic Johnson would be talking about Ronnie Seickley? Mystifying.
10:32 Pablo Torre? When we started digging into this, it turns out that lots of people fundamentally are as ignorant as we are.
10:41 Speaker 03 That's correct.
10:42 Pablo Torre? The number of places that you can even find a mention of this one-on-one game at all. I mean, first, yes, that clip you just played for us. But the second place is on page 253 of a book written by my old friend and colleague at Around the Horn, who thankfully knew more about this than either of us. My name is Jackie McMullin. I'm a retired sports journalist.
11:06 Speaker 06 But I think the reason we're speaking today is I wrote a book called When the Game Was Ours that chronicled the parallel lives of Larry Bird and Earvin Magic Johnson during those.
11:17 Pablo Torre? And the thing to know about Jackie is that she is as plugged into this network.
11:21 Speaker 03 As anybody can be.
11:22 Pablo Torre? Especially in the 80s and the 90s.
11:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:24 Pablo Torre? When all of this was happening. And she has known Magic personally for so long that, yes, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird chose her to write this book with them.
11:33 Speaker 03 For our purposes, it's funny because Ronnie Cycley is only mentioned in a single paragraph of this book, just one.
11:40 Pablo Torre? And the part of the book where this happens is the part where there is a more famous Magic Johnson announcement on video. This is November 7, 1991, and this clip, I think a lot of us have heard before.
11:55 Speaker 05 First of all, let me say good after late afternoon.
12:00 Speaker 05 Because of the HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers today.
12:14 Speaker 06 It was probably the worst day of my professional life because we were certain that Magic Johnson was going to die. I mean, that was, that's what they were saying, three years, Matt, you know? And work got out very quickly. They had, they held the press conference where you've just never seen Magic look that way. So it was a very, very shocking announcement.
12:38 Speaker 05 I plan on going on, living for a long time, bugging you guys like I've always have, so you'll see me around. I plan on being with the Lakers and the league. Hopefully David will have me for a while.
12:50 Speaker 06 Of course, I was based in Boston at that time. I remember going to Larry Bird's locker to talk to him about it. And of course, they were so intertwined throughout their careers, it was just inevitable that that would happen. And I remember the look on Larry's face. He just, he told me afterwards, they had a game, I think it was a day later, and they were going to play Atlanta. And he told me many years later, it was the first time in his life he didn't feel like playing basketball. He just, it just didn't seem important anymore.
13:21 Speaker 03 When that announcement happened, God, I must have been seven.
13:24 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
13:24 Speaker 03 And.
13:25 Pablo Torre? I was six, yeah.
13:27 Speaker 03 The feeling was Magic Johnson's going to die. He has HIV, which will lead into AIDS. This is something that you get and you die from. It is fatal. And also, the way you get it, it was a sexually transmitted disease, or you could get it through a blood transfusion. But again, the fear and uncertainty around it led to people believing that you could get it from a toilet seat. Toilet seat covers were a whole thing in the early 90s. Suddenly, they started appearing everywhere, which obviously is fundamentally untrue. But nobody really understood, how did this happen? How did this happen?
14:05 Pablo Torre? People were just saying Magic had AIDS, by the way. It wasn't even like a distinction.
14:09 Speaker 03 Right, there was no distinction. It was the, when I was explaining it to somebody recently, I said, do you remember the moment when Tom Hanks announced that he had COVID? Multiply that by a thousand.
14:19 Pablo Torre? Yes.
14:20 Speaker 03 And that was the cultural impact of that moment.
14:23 Pablo Torre? And the people who were fearful, not just because this virus now existed, but because they were being blamed for it.
14:32 Speaker 03 Correct.
14:34 Pablo Torre? Gay men all across America.
14:37 Speaker 07 A mystery disease known as the gay plague has become an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American medicine.
14:43 Speaker 04 Scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta today released the results of a study which shows that the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic of a rare form of cancer.
14:56 Speaker 03 Because it existed within that community, it just was not acknowledged until Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson was the start of so many things that touched the predominant pop culture that had to do with HIV and AIDS. There are all these things that spiderwebbed out of that moment.
15:15 Pablo Torre? Totally.
15:16 Speaker 03 But prior to that moment, it was so contained to such a specific and relatively to most Americans obscure context.
15:26 Pablo Torre? And the context for who Magic Johnson was, for people who don't remember him in his prime, this is a guy that you would invite into your living room and you would love to have him as your best buddy.
15:38 Speaker 03 A teddy bear of a man.
15:39 Pablo Torre? And so that degree of popularity, by the way, leads to a very awkward and unprecedented dynamic because the All-Star voting had already begun for the 92 All-Star game.
15:48 Speaker 03 Correct.
15:49 Pablo Torre? But Magic Johnson is effectively, in everyone's understanding, dying and therefore not playing basketball anymore.
15:58 Speaker 03 Done with the NBA.
15:59 Pablo Torre? And yet, he ends up leading the voting. Which brings us to this conversation that Jackie told us about that happened between Magic Johnson and the commissioner of the NBA, the late David Stern, that took a turn that I think a lot of the league was not ready for.
16:20 Speaker 06 I always say this, I think the most underrated moment of Commissioner David Stern's career was this moment, Pablo. Because the minute he learned of this diagnosis, he did what David Stern always did. He learned more about it than anybody else. And when Irvin called him and said, "What if I play in the All-Star game?"
16:42 Speaker 06 Stern immediately says, "Yes." Because he's done his homework. He understands that all these ways that people think HIV can be transmitted are not really true. It's not sweat to sweat. It's an infinitesimal chance of that happening. And so he's going to make sure this occurs. Now, immediately, NBA owners are saying, "We're not signing off on this. We're not putting our star players out there at risk. We're not doing it." And Stern said to them privately, this was all privately,
17:15 Speaker 06 "Listen, I'm just going to tell you. You better be ready for a discrimination suit. Because I'm going to encourage them to file a discrimination suit if you say no to this. And so be ready for that. Are you ready for HIV mandatory testing in the NBA? Are you convinced that Irvin Magic Johnson is the only person that's HIV positive in the NBA?" And David Stern says, "Because I'm not."
17:43 Pablo Torre? Which is, by the way, a pretty [bleep] radical thing for the commissioner of the NBA to suggest about this league of very straight men.
17:48 Speaker 03 Shout out David Stern. I don't think a lot of people know that.
17:52 Pablo Torre? And the NBA, the other players,
17:56 Pablo Torre? yeah, they didn't love this idea.
17:58 Speaker 03 They were not crazy about this, no. Needless to say.
18:01 Pablo Torre? And so I just want to play, for instance, as an example of this mentality. A bit of testimony from noted public intellectual, Karl Malone.
18:12 Speaker 04 Guy, it don't have to be Magic. It can be Joe Smoak. But the fact of the matter is, if you got the A virus, it'd be hard for me to play as hard as I'm capable of playing. And if people can't respect my decision, that's tough.
18:26 Pablo Torre? The question that Magic Johnson has to ask himself is, so if I'm gonna play in this All-Star game, but I'm not playing in basketball games, how do I not embarrass myself?
18:37 Speaker 03 You're trying to stay in shape. You're practicing. And the problem is, Magic Johnson, one of the most beloved athletes in the known universe, the guy at the center of the biggest news cycle in America, can't find anybody to play basketball with him.
18:50 Pablo Torre? Right. They literally don't want to touch him.
18:53 Speaker 03 No, they don't. So he is showing up before Lakers games at the Forum, shooting around on his own.
19:01 Pablo Torre? It's sad.
19:02 Speaker 03 It is. It is like a poetically sad image. And this brings us to the day in question, January 5th, 1992. The Heat's in town. And they're playing the Lakers.
19:17 Speaker 03 And just as he's been, Magic Johnson is shooting around on the court with nobody else on it before the Lakers take to the court and start shooting around and practicing for the game and warming up. So even Jackie, who knows about this, was not there. Not a lot of people were. We managed to find somebody who was.
19:38 Pablo Torre? Hi, this is Rick Loisa, and I am a lifelong Lakers fan. We just gotta visually describe where Rick is because it looks like he's in a temple that is dedicated to the Lakers.
19:50 Speaker 03 The top half of the wall is yellow.
19:53 Pablo Torre? Gold, excuse you.
19:54 Speaker 03 Gold, gold, gold, sorry.
19:55 Pablo Torre? Laker gold.
19:56 Speaker 03 There is a molding in the middle of the room, and then the bottom half is purple, violet, if you will.
20:03 Pablo Torre? There's an NBA champions banner in which it lists all the times the Lakers won titles.
20:08 Speaker 03 It is a veritable Laker shrine. His dad was a Peruvian immigrant and eventual Angelino, and eventual Lakers season ticket holder. And Rick grew up a massive Magic Johnson fan, his favorite player ever. And in January 1992, Rick was 17 years old at the time. And his dad would pick him up from school. They would show up early, as soon as the doors open, rush down to the court and watch the guy shoot around. It's just another Lakers game he was hitting.
20:38 Pablo Torre? Which is to say that when Rick discovered Jackie McMullin's book and got to page 253, he had a particular reaction.
20:47 Speaker 03 He freaked out.
20:49 Speaker 06 I jumped out of my seat, ran out to find my wife and said, you'll never believe what I just read in this book. And I told her I was there. We're at the Forum, the old Forum, and the Lakers are going to play the Heat. And so Ronnie's down one end rehabbing his injury and Magic had just made a habit of this, working out before every game. We go in, like my dad and I, we went straight to the, to the, through the little gate and then right down the stairs to the court. And as, and I don't look at the court initially, I'm just looking down and make sure my steps are okay. I'm not, I'm not going to trip. But as I look up and I see Magic Johnson on the court, I mean, I knew it instantly. You can't mistake, you know, his size and just the way he moves. So yeah, I was like, oh, you know, holy crap, dad.
21:32 Speaker 06 So this is happening in real time. It's, you know, probably, I don't know, an hour before the game. As you know, each player has their own pregame routine and most of them disappear to the locker room right before, you know, when the fans are all filing in. I mean, my eyes were as wide as saucers as I'm like, this is, and I couldn't believe how close I got because as a 17-year-old Magic Johnson fan, I had never stood that close to him, you know? So it was about 10 feet and that, that's the closest I've ever been able to stand to him.
22:01 Speaker 03 And at some point during this, Rick notices Ronnie Seikley on the other end of the court, who is rehabbing an injury. He is not going to play in that night's game like Magic Johnson.
22:12 Speaker 06 Seikley is just taking, just taking some shots, you know, some, a few little hook shots, then he kind of moved out kind of near the elbow area, a few free throws, just doing his own thing. And after a few minutes, he just, he grabbed the ball and he just starts walking. Where Magic is and I don't remember exactly what he said because I couldn't quite hear him. You know, clearly, but he just said like, hey, you want to go and something like that and. Magic said, yeah. So to have someone say, hey, you want to play? This was a big deal for Irvin. It was such a relief and he was so happy about it. I think Magic gave Cyclie the ball to start.
22:53 Speaker 06 I do remember that at first there was just, I think, I think Cyclie started with a jumper, so no contact yet. And then Magic had the ball. And rather than shoot from outside, I think he just wanted to test Cyclie and he comes down and tries to go back to the basket. Tries to get into the post, so he's forcing Cyclie into low post defense. And I think Magic took just kind of a simple, kind of a baby hook shot, kind of a thing. And again, not really recognizing what's happening, but now they're starting to be, there's contact, there's defensive contact going both ways. But it started slowly. And then it kind of got more intense and more intense and now.
23:33 Speaker 06 It got to be a pretty good game of one on one. But what happens now is, you know, it's getting close to the game time and the Miami Heat players are wandering out to get ready. To actually play this actual game that Irvin has no place in, or Ronnie for that matter, neither one of them are playing in the game. And again, the tensions are heightened. What's Ronnie doing? We don't want him doing that. We need him back. Why is he playing with Magic? Why is he taking this risk? I do remember that some Heat, not, not the whole team, but there were some Heat players. And some Lakers players that were starting to come out of the tunnel and kind of hung back in the tunnel, but you could see them. And they, and they were definitely watching Magic and Cyclie. I have no idea and I don't want to try to kind of guess.
24:15 Speaker 06 But they were definitely talking to each other and they were pointing, they were talking. And, but they stayed back.
24:22 Speaker 03 They were not gonna get on the court. They were gonna wait until this was done. I mean, they wouldn't even go to the other end. They were just gonna just stay there, kind of at the, where the tunnel opens up, and just wait. Uh, but yeah, there was definitely kind of some hushed conversation. Maybe it was about Magic and Ronnie. Maybe it wasn't, but it was, it looked like, to me, it looked like they were talking about what was happening on the court. What do you think when you hear that?
24:51 Pablo Torre? Without also imputing the worst sort of thinking to the players observing it, I can imagine these guys freaking out, out of ignorance, out of self-interest. Maybe most generously, the idea that these mother are spreading this virus and it's gonna get back to us.
25:10 Speaker 03 Bewilderment is the word that comes to mind. They must be bewildered at what is playing out in front of them.
25:19 Pablo Torre? The idea that a random one-on-one game that was happening between two injured players who weren't even gonna play that night, ends up being one of the most radical acts in sports history.
25:31 Speaker 03 For a number of reasons.
25:33 Pablo Torre? And one of the reasons is because of the reaction that young seventeen-year-old Rick was observing.
25:38 Speaker 03 Correct.
25:38 Pablo Torre? Of like, these guys being like, what the are they doing?
25:42 Speaker 03 And Ronnie's gonna go back in the locker room, and he's eventually gonna be playing again. What is happening is what these guys are thinking.
25:48 Pablo Torre? And it raises a zillion questions now for me, because how Ronnie Cícely became the guy who did that, the guy who was uniquely brave enough to invite Magic into a game of one-on-one, how do we explain this?
26:09 Speaker 03 That is the question that I have wanted to know throughout all of this, more than anything else. And it's something that Ronnie has not talked about publicly, if at all.
26:20 Pablo Torre? And this is where, yes, we also, it turns out, assigned you to approach Ronnie Cícely one-on-one.
26:27 Speaker 03 Yes, which initially happened over email. Didn't work out, so I went to that show that we mentioned earlier, in a giant warehouse in Brooklyn, by the Navy Yard, full of very loud music and a lot of people dancing to it. And I managed to get on stage, behind the DJ booth.
26:49 Speaker 03 As he was getting up and he is also six.
26:53 Pablo Torre? Eleven.
26:53 Speaker 03 Eleven and towering over me and I am for the record, five, seven and a half. And like talking in that circumstance, telling him that I have this thing to ask him about is not easy. So I pull out my phone with the email to his manager on it and say, I have something for you to read. And he says, right now. And I say, yes, I need you to read this right now. Here.
27:18 Pablo Torre? Before this beat drops.
27:20 Speaker 03 Before the beat drops, I need you to read this. And Ronnie was kind enough to pull out his reading glasses and look at my phone and he put it down and said, yes, I will talk to you about this story.
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28:17 Pablo Torre? So the summit you had with DJ Ronnie Cikely took place where?
28:22 Speaker 03 In Miami, home to Club Space, one of the most legendary clubs in the world, a place where Ronnie Cikely has DJed many times.
28:31 Pablo Torre? We should reveal that this took place when?
28:34 Speaker 03 December 2024.
28:36 Pablo Torre? You were so innocent then.
28:38 Speaker 03 I was, I was a sweet summer child.
28:41 Pablo Torre? And young Ronnie Cikely, the child, like what's, what's his, what's his background?
28:47 Speaker 03 He always loved dance music. It's, it's been a thread throughout his entire life.
28:52 Speaker 01 Music was always part of my, my DNA. We listened to so much music when we were home. My dad loved music. So I think I get that from him.
29:02 Speaker 03 He listened to a lot of soul and disco growing up, a lot of Barry White around the house. So music was always a constant presence in his life. He always knew he was going to be an athlete. He was built like an athlete, but he loved music. He was buying records. He had turntables.
29:18 Speaker 03 And he was messing with records and going to clubs when he was definitely way too young to be there and hanging out in this world as he was achieving ascendance as a college basketball player and then a pro basketball player.
29:34 Pablo Torre? And his favorite player growing up was who?
29:37 Speaker 03 His favorite player was Magic Johnson.
29:39 Speaker 01 First of all, you gotta understand that Magic was like an idol. Growing up in Greece, there was no television broadcasting, NBA or anything like that. All we got was the finals, Magic against Bird. That's all I know of the NBA when I was living in Greece. So to me, Magic Johnson was like an idol.
30:05 Pablo Torre? So Ronnie Cícly in 1991, he was with the Miami Heat, as we established. His reaction to the HIV announcement was what when he heard it for the first time?
30:17 Speaker 03 Devastated.
30:20 Speaker 01 We were on the road somewhere and we watched it on television.
30:28 Speaker 03 You and the other guys on the team?
30:30 Speaker 01 Yes, and it was just one of those like shockers, you know? It was kind of like when Elvis Presley died, when John Kennedy got assassinated. It's one of those moments when 9/11 happened, you kind of remember where you were at that time. And I happened to be watching TV at the time and it came on as breaking news. And obviously, we couldn't believe it.
30:58 Speaker 03 But he also knew a little bit more about what was going on with Magic than pretty much every other player in the NBA, you have to imagine.
31:07 Pablo Torre? Why did Ronnie have a perspective on HIV and AIDS in 1991 that was shared by seemingly very, very, very few people, not just in sports, but in America in general?
31:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, a couple of reasons for this. But where it concerns DJ Ronnie Cícly.
31:26 Speaker 03 There is a significant overlap between the history of dance music in America and globally, and queer communities, and communities of color, and queer communities of color, which is where the HIV epidemic really took hold in America. It is the dominant subculture that it came of age in, so to speak. And house music as we know it today originated in a Chicago club called The Warehouse. It was the sound of the culture most affected by HIV in the eighties.
32:03 Pablo Torre? Which is to say that as much as sports was riven by this scandal, what this genre of music was dealing with in real time.
32:14 Speaker 03 Was not unfamiliar to Ronnie.
32:16 Pablo Torre? But just the mechanics of the science of the virus, like, why did he already have such confidence that this was a risk that wasn't really a risk in the way that people saw this one-on-one game being?
32:30 Speaker 03 Right. He had a personal connection to it.
32:34 Speaker 01 My cousin, who was living in Washington DC, was the earliest, was one of the earliest patients with AIDS. He was a hemophiliac, and he got it from a blood transfusion. And we would always, you know, I was, whenever I got to Washington DC, I would go to the hospital and sit by his bedside. And we were never told not to touch, or not to feel, or not to do anything. You know, it was just kind of a normal thing that he just got a blood transfusion that was not good. So we knew it was kind of more of a blood thing.
33:10 Speaker 01 So I had like an early kind of recognition of what was going on with this. I also had a lot of gay friends that got the virus, and they got it sexually. And yet, we still went to the hospital, and we saw them, and we were around them, and nothing happened.
33:40 Speaker 03 And he got, this happened around that time, eighty-nine, ninety, yeah?
33:44 Speaker 01 And then my other gay friend, probably in ninety-one or ninety-two.
33:54 Speaker 01 So I saw it a couple of different times.
33:59 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I'd never heard any of that before.
34:01 Speaker 03 Neither had I until I was in that warehouse in Brooklyn with Ronnie, and he says this to me. I had no idea that Ronnie, and couldn't have imagined. I thought maybe he was just somebody who was incredibly well-educated about these kinds of things, or...
34:20 Pablo Torre? Or hadn't really thought about it even.
34:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, or just hadn't thought about it.
34:24 Pablo Torre? The idea that Ronnie Seikley, a professional athlete, NBA player, is just casually saying, "Oh yeah, and my gay friend."
34:31 Speaker 03 Right.
34:32 Pablo Torre? Like, that alone is sort of... It's subversive in ways that we should not be numb to, given what the timeline here is.
34:41 Speaker 03 And, you know, not to expound too headily about the virtues of dance music, but you have to imagine,
34:48 Speaker 03 he came into contact with a lot of, and made a lot of gay friends, through his love of dance music.
34:54 Pablo Torre? This was all just him privately making friends, living his life, caring for people.
35:02 Speaker 03 Correct.
35:02 Pablo Torre? His own loved ones, family members and otherwise. And what happened? How are those people doing now that he mentioned?
35:12 Speaker 03 They passed away.
35:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He passed away. He just disintegrated completely and passed away. My other friend was here, living in Miami, and...
35:28 Speaker 01 You know, he started getting the skin lesions, and we stayed with him as long as we could. He was at Mount Sinai Hospital here. We stayed with him as long as we could, and he just, he was getting injections in his eyes in order not to go blind. Like, the early barbaric ways of treating this was really, really hard.
35:56 Speaker 03 Disgraciating, yeah.
35:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. He had to go to the hospital. Before he actually checked into the hospital, in order not to lose his eyesight, he was getting injected in his eyes. And so I've seen the ugly side of it, and I'm glad that they found a much easier way to go through with it and live with it.
36:17 Pablo Torre? Part of me wants to not be awestruck when someone who's like the prom king in the movie is kind.
36:28 Speaker 03 And yet, there is a reason you are.
36:31 Pablo Torre? Yeah, which raises the question of like, in an NBA locker room, what was it like to be the guy who DJs at this point in American history?
36:37 Speaker 03 Needless to say, the rest of the players on the Miami Heat were not house music fans.
36:43 Speaker 03 House music did not really get a foothold in the NBA, still hasn't really, if we're being honest. So he was a little different. Besides not being from America, he had some different tastes as well.
36:55 Pablo Torre? And yet, it is an interesting wrinkle when Magic Johnson, who is the most popular athlete in America until this happened, ends up being the guy who needed, without ever asking for it, needed a Ronnie Cicley to care for him in ways that clearly only a couple of people knew about.
37:20 Speaker 01 I walked out on the court knowing what he had just gone through and the backlash that he was getting from all the players of not wanting to play against him. Nobody wants to be, touch him, nobody wants to be around him. And I just walked up to him and I said, "Do you want to play one on one?" And he looked at me, kind of like not sure if I was joking or not. And he was like, "Sure." And I said, "I'm not gonna take it easy on you. I'm gonna push you, I'm gonna shove you, and we're gonna go at it."
38:00 Speaker 01 And he looked at me, it was like as if it was Christmas and this kid got a... A brand new present that he wanted, that he's always wanted. His eyes just lit up and he looked at me, he was like, "Let's go." I wanted him to feel human and not like an amoeba. You know, like, everybody wants to be away from him. I wanted, I wanted him to feel good about himself. I wanted other players to, to see this. And so I wasn't kind of like playing him. Um, I was playing him, I was playing him. He was posting me up, he was taking me down, pounding the ball, trying to take me, you know? And then, we played, we played.
38:42 Speaker 01 And he was, it was so much fun and he was so grateful and he was so thankful that I take that to my grave, that I've, was able to put a smile on somebody's face that doesn't necessarily need it with all his fame and fortune, everything that he's done in his life. But in that moment, I put a smile on his face and that's the most important thing for me.
39:08 Speaker 03 Right.
39:09 Speaker 01 You know, I just wanted to show him that somebody cares for him, that somebody is there for him. Somebody is gonna play basketball with you, something that you love. And the least thing I can do as a young kid who grew up watching you is be respectful to you, knowing that I'm not gonna get infected by pushing you, shoving you and playing basketball against you.
39:32 Pablo Torre? And so all of this now raises the next question, which is, have Magic and Ronnie talked about this event, this one-on-one game, since it happened?
39:42 Speaker 03 Not publicly, but once. Ronnie told me that he ran into Magic Johnson in an elevator in New York and Magic expressed his gratitude again and basically said to Ronnie, "Anything you ever need from me, you got it."
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41:16 Pablo Torre? Now, the thing that we needed for Magic Johnson that now kind of explains why we took more than a year of waiting before publishing this episode is, uh, Magic Johnson. We kind of needed magic.
41:30 Speaker 03 We did.
41:31 Pablo Torre? To fully finish the depth of story. But this was difficult.
41:39 Pablo Torre? And I apologize.
41:40 Speaker 03 I should mention here that I've listened to many episodes of this Regal podcast, not every single one. And I had not listened to a certain episode when Neely gave me this assignment and said, "By the way, have you heard the other Magic Johnson episode?"
41:57 Pablo Torre? Are you familiar with our landmark investigation into who actually sends Magic Johnson's tweets?
42:06 Pablo Torre? Because that, I think, look, we can't say definitively, and I should say this for journalistic reasons, I cannot tell you that the reason Magic Johnson is not in this episode, spoiler alert, is because we outed Alexia Greivis Henderson, who was his communications person, his trusted employee, as the person who was basically taking dictation from Magic Johnson, when he says stuff like, "The Lakers won," period, by a score of 109 to 97.
42:40 Speaker 03 Right, and because Magic didn't participate in the episode, and she declined to comment, you guys got Rob Lowe, who partied with Magic Johnson in the 80s, to comment on the voracity of Magic Johnson's Twitter, and then found out, we believe, that it was her, anyway.
42:56 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I mean, listen, I have it on very good authority Yes. that he dictates it. He has somebody who, you know, whatever occurs to him, and with the emphasis on whatever occurs to him, it's the best. I mean, that's what Twitter was made for him, made. Exactly. But I'll ask, I'll ask Magic next time I see him, I'm gonna say, "The world wants to know." Yeah, yeah.
43:26 Pablo Torre? You know, when you investigate everything all the time, it turns out, you end up burning bridges that you wish you hadn't singed. And so, just to give you the full accounting of, for the audience, of like, what we tried to do, we tried going through Magic's foundation. We certainly directly reached out to the communications person aforementioned, who
43:49 Speaker 03 Is now the president.
43:50 Pablo Torre? who has, perhaps, uncoincidentally, only grown in power since these last calls were made. And Magic, by the way, is somebody I've interviewed before, previous to that Twitter investigation. There's a very embarrassing video, and this is the effect that Magic Johnson still has on people. He visited the Seaport Studios in New York City, where ESPN used to tape. I was an employee. I [bleep] and this is not something I'm proud of. I jumped on a couch like Tom Cruise to meet him eye to eye and like dap him up, which is a violation of all sorts of principles that I have journalistic and otherwise in retrospect.
44:31 Pablo Torre? But that dude, I can tell you, is a great hugger.
44:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, I bet.
44:37 Pablo Torre? The warmest man.
44:39 Speaker 03 You denied me that hug.
44:40 Pablo Torre? I feel personally responsible for how this got derailed.
44:46 Speaker 03 I do want to say, in your credit, there has been some real attempts at shoe leather reporting, specifically with Pablo getting ejected from the lower trench of a Dodgers game while stalking Magic Johnson like prey in the heat of the moment. Can we throw to that picture?
45:04 Pablo Torre? Do we have the photo that I?
45:06 Speaker 03 I have the screen grab of the text.
45:08 Pablo Torre? It was infuriating because I went to a Dodger game and Magic Johnson happens to be, you know, part owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, among many other enterprises that he partakes in. And I made it behind home plate and-
45:22 Speaker 03 You were close.
45:23 Pablo Torre? Genuinely like a mid-rage jumper away from Magic Johnson, who was right there behind the plate. And I stood slash crouched there for so long that the security guard at Dodger Stadium, who clearly doesn't subscribe to this YouTube channel, told me that I had to leave. And I never got to approach Magic one on one either.
45:48 Speaker 03 It was, it was a great attempt.
45:51 Pablo Torre? It was pathetic. And so we had to figure out, in lieu of the man himself, who can help explain what this all meant to Magic Johnson? And we found someone who I genuinely think is probably the next best thing.
46:09 Speaker 05 My name is Lon Rosen. I'm the Executive Vice President of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But in my previous life, I was Magic Johnson's agent.
46:18 Pablo Torre? And you know, there are some agents where it's like, yeah, okay, you know, you get 10% or whatever. Lon Rosen has been his dear personal friend, Magic's like intimate since 1987. And so when it gets to who was there, who was right alongside Magic for this roller coaster ride through the national news of, you know, this moral panic. Turns out that Lon Rosen was also at the Forum right alongside our 17-year-old friend Rick at the time for the one-on-one game on January 5th, 1992.
46:51 Speaker 05 I was there. This was two or three hours before the game. Magic was shooting on the Laker side of the court. And Ronnie was shooting on the other side by himself. I believe he was injured at this point and he was just working out. And at one point, he just came over to say hello to Magic. And the next thing I knew, they were playing a game of one-on-one. And they were really, really playing hard. It was a huge turning point for him. And I think it showed that, yeah, you can go near him, you can touch him. You could even maybe sweat. Because it was really the first physical activity on a basketball court he had since his announcement, you know, two months prior to this.
47:34 Speaker 05 He had worked out, but really on his own, just shooting on his own. In a way, it sparked him for the rest of his life. I mean, he was down. Let's face it, he was sad, he was down, he was scared. But that day was like a rebirth and it just, he went out from there. I mean, he never looked back.
47:52 Pablo Torre? And so the game, the game that Magic Johnson was practicing for by playing one-on-one against Ronnie Seickley. We're now in Orlando. 25 of the game's greatest stars, and the top attraction today in Orlando is Magic.
48:06 Speaker 06 Urban Magic Johnson of the Lakers, the NBA's premier playmaker for more than a decade.
48:13 Pablo Torre? It's February 9th, 1992. It's the NBA All-Star Game. And the game is, by the way, absurd. So, the West, Magic Johnson's Western Conference team, defeats the East 153 to 113. There has never been a blowout like that in the history of the NBA All-Star Game. And Magic Johnson, wouldn't you know it, was the MVP, leading everybody, Foster, everybody with 25 points. Not bad for a guy who, you know, wasn't supposed to be playing basketball anymore.
48:42 Speaker 03 Right, except there's something I want you to see, which is the very last shot of the game, in the final moments.
48:53 Speaker 02 Michael said, "You're not getting it." Yes, he is.
48:58 Speaker 06 Six, five, three-pointer. Yes! Oh, my!
49:05 Pablo Torre? Yeah, there's like 22 seconds left, and Isaiah Thomas is trying to guard him. He's at the three-point line, and Magic just turns around and basically off of one foot, just sinks this parabolic three. It's a ridiculous punctuation mark.
49:20 Speaker 03 It is, it is, but that's not the actual punctuation mark.
49:26 Speaker 03 What is, is what happens immediately after that, which is all these guys running up to him, giving him high-fives, giving him hugs, doing something that was probably unthinkable to Magic Johnson just a couple months before, as he's dealing with the fallout of his announcement, playing basketball by himself, before Ronnie Slaykley ever comes up to him on the floor of the Forum and says, "Let's ball."
49:54 Speaker 06 Ladies and gentlemen, you just can't orchestrate it better than that. But when you're great, you deliver on two. Three straight trays for Johnson.
50:09 Pablo Torre? Foster, at the end of episodes like this, I of course need to say thank you for your reporting. Thank you for your patience.
50:16 Speaker 03 Anytime.
50:17 Pablo Torre? But I also am now glancing through Ronnie Seickley's musical catalog on my computer, where a playlist is being assembled. And I do feel like the only way to appropriately end this episode is to do the thing that you just alluded to, which is to say, we should probably just press play.
50:45 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.
50:51 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
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