Marty Gordon
NRVSports@ourvalley.org
Former Virginia Tech and Radford University journalism professor Roland Lazenby has written over 70 books with a dozen being full-length and biographies.
His latest is titled: Magic, The Life of Earvin “Magic” Johnson and hit the shelves this past October. On Dec. 24, it was picked as the cover of the New York Times Book Review. The book is a biography of the revolutionary NBA point guard, Magic Johnson, that looks deeply into his life and his family background.
“After writing biographies of Michael Jordan (now translated into 22 languages worldwide), Kobe Bryant (now in 12 languages), Jerry West and Phil Jackson, Magic was the player most logical for me to do. I have written a number of books about the Lakers, including two LA Times bestsellers,” Lazenby said earlier this week.
In addition to the long list of biographies, Lazenby who taught college for 21 years, then taught at RU part time in 2013, has also written five books with the late basketball legend Billy Packer, but it’s the link to Lakers that seem to be his specialty.
“In the 1980s, I wrote a history of the Final Four with Billy Packer that sold well. The publisher asked me what I wanted to do next, and I suggested the Boston Celtics Greenbook, which came out every year for five years. The publisher then asked me to also do the Pistons, which also came out every year for five years,” the author said.
He then suggested they add the Lakers to the mix, and the Lakers happily agreed, which has led to him doing a number of different books about the team.
Working with these NBA teams created the opportunity to travel and cover games. Then in 1993, the Chicago Tribune Book Division hired him to write about the Chicago Bulls, leading to a series of books, according to Lazenby, that changed his life.
Of course, no one can forget their first. Lazenby’s was about Ralph Sampson, “Sampson, A Life Above The Rim,” which came out in 1983. It was excerpted by The Sporting News, in three parts and also by the Associated Press, which got his book writing career off to a roaring start.
At the time, he was a Roanoke Times reporter. Previously, he had been a 24 year-old coach at Blacksburg High School.
“I was a high school varsity head coach from 1975-1978, and a year before that I coached football at Peabody Jr. High in Petersburg on a powerhouse team. Both were formative experiences. In Petersburg, I was the coach for an eighth grade linebacker named Ricky Hunley who became a first round draft pick of the Broncos in 1984 and enjoyed a special NFL career,” Lazenby said.
“Likewise, my experience at Blacksburg High working with so many special young people in that era set the stage for me to research and tell the story of Magic Johnson in his hometown of Lansing, Michigan, the untold part of his story. I did more than 50 interviews each with his head coach, the varsity assistant coach, and school psychologist Charles Tucker, who became Johnson’s representative for the first seven seasons of his pro career.”
He says it was only natural that he write a book about Johnson.
The biography, according to Lazenby, offers all kinds of unknown details, such as the time he walked out of practice to quit the team but was told to return by his father, an event that had never been reported, along with details of his conflict with and also substantial respect for coach Jud Heathcote.
Magic Johnson is often regarded as the “greatest” point guard of all time. He spent his entire career with the Los Angeles Lakers. After winning a national championship with Michigan State in 1979, the Lakers drafted him as the first overall pick in the NBA draft. He would lead them to five NBA championships and honored as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History and inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
The former player has also garnered plenty of attention off the court, including most recently as a minority business owner in the Lakers and now the Washington Commanders.
“I have written numerous books about the Lakers including biographies of Jerry West, Kobe Bryant, Phil Jackson as well as several popular histories of the team, have interviewed everybody involved with the franchise dating back to when it began as the Detroit Gems, everybody from George Mikan and Jim Pollard and John Kundla to West, Elgin Baylor, their coaches, the great Pete Newell, right through all of Showtime, Pat Riley, Paul Westhead, Bill Sharman, Kareem, Magic and all the players. Two of my Lakers books have been LA Times bestsellers,” continued Lazenby.
“In some ways it is a familiar story (Magic Johnson book). In other ways much of what really happened has been obscured. I like to think the Magic biography brings a vast array of new information from my research and interviews that casts much of the history in quite a different light, beginning with things like who really was Lakers owner Jerry Buss and why did he do the things that he did. The Buss relationship with Magic was absolutely unprecedented and caused all sorts of problems.”
Johnson is nowhere near as popular as Jordan or Bryant or Jerry West or even Phil Jackson these days. His story, though, is quite amazing, Lazenby points out. “He has his failings, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a great American. He is, just a publicly flawed one. All of that he has managed to overcome.”
Lazenby said the response the to this 800-page Magic Johnson book has been good but slow.
“Still, it has not sold as well as my Jordan or even my Kobe biography. As Johnson’s representatives have said over the years, and warned me when I started this project, when Johnson announced he was HIV positive in 1991,’”it killed the hero’,” Lazenby said.
Already, the book like many others from Lazenby have been translated and appear on bookshelves around the globe.
“The critical response from the New York Times was fabulous, but sales have been average. As my editor told me, sales of non-fiction books are slow across the industry. Fortunately, my Jordan book, Michael Jordan, The Life, is a locomotive of sorts. It came out in 2014 and has been selling like a champion around the globe for a decade,” he said.
Locally, you can find the book at “Book No Furrther” owned by Doloris Vest. All of his books are available online (Amazon) or in any Barnes and Noble in America, plus many, many other bookstores.
Where does he go next? Are there more books in the wings? Lazenby said maybe, but he is working on three different projects, all with film ties.
“They are all moving down the bunny trail,” he said. “The fun part for me is doing the interviews.
