This is Overlap. It’s a new series we’re making that focuses on unusual, unexpected and little-known interactions between the careers of iconic sports personalities. Think about it visually: The legacy of a great athlete like Magic Johnson describes a circle. The Magic Circle shares a lot of space with the circles of prominent teammates like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy, not to mention big rivals like Larry Bird and Isiah Thomas. Those stories match. You can’t name one without mentioning the others. They are interesting, but they are not Overlap.
Overlap it’s for the edge of a person’s circle, where it might just skim the circle of someone you wouldn’t associate, which brings us to episode 1 of the series. Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway comes from a completely different era than Magic Johnson. He’s a product of the 90s, with a colorful legacy from those of his greatest teammate, Shaquille O’Neal, his biggest playoff rivals, Reggie Miller and Michael Jordan, and others who shared the field with he. Not so much Magic Johnson.
Indeed, Penny entered the NBA billed as “the next magic”. Johnson had spent the 1980s defining an exceptional legacy: a big, powerful player who played point guard, the position traditionally reserved for the smallest player on the floor. As a 6’9 “runner and passer-by, Johnson has won a number of individual championships and accolades, and he did it with panache.
By the early 1990s, when Hardaway entered the league, Johnson had retired to manage his extraordinary HIV diagnosis. So Penny – him the size of a striker, but as agile and creative as a point guard – seemed as ready as anyone to carry the torch for this position anomaly. Being enlisted by the Orlando Magic, who already had Shaq to play Kareem on Penny’s Magic (and, yes, an appropriate team name), gave Hardaway an even better chance to dazzle the ’90s in the way Johnson had the its distinct era.
But then the eras overlapped! In 1996, Magic Johnson returned to play a handful of games with the Lakers, two of them against Orlando. Episode 1 is about the build-up that made those games fascinating, the atmosphere in and around that inheritance intersection, and at least one hugely important product of the encounter.
