Magic Johnson is relentlessly positive, a quality that has served him well as a player, a businessman and even while living with HIV since 1991.
The former Lakers great generally keeps his social media comments upbeat. Yet, a last-second mental lapse Sunday by one of the five professional sports franchises Johnson co-owns prompted him to tweet the equivalent of a distress signal.
“I’m in total disbelief my Commanders had such poor clock management in today’s overtime game against the Giants. All we had to do was kick the field goal and we would have won the game!”
The tweet ended with an emoji of a man facepalming, conveying Johnson’s exasperation over the last play of Washington’s 27-27 tie with the New York Giants.
The Commanders were at the Giants 24-yard line with 12 seconds to play, no timeouts and the clock running. What needed to be done was obvious: Quarterback Jayden Daniels takes a snap, spikes the ball and the field-goal team trots out.
Nope. Daniels took a snap, danced around, was tackled and the clock expired.
Head coach Dan Quinn ripped off his headset and slammed it to the ground. Daniels stood on the field looking stunned. Johnson, who acquired 4% of the team when his pal Josh Harris bought it for $6.05 billion in 2023, vented on social media.
Johnson’s public comments are usually motivational gems such as “When you face a crisis, you know who your true friends are.” Or “Life doesn’t stop because something happens to you.” Or “I’m the one who will take chances, not worry about the backlash.”
When the Commanders lost their first two games this season, Johnson stayed silent. When they upset the Seattle Seahawks two weeks ago, Johnson took to his keyboard to congratulate the team, tweeting a photo of himself in a luxury box.
The last time he had expressed frustration about the Commanders on social media was three years ago, shortly after Harris became majority owner and Johnson had chipped in $240 million as a limited partner. On Oct. 5, 2023, he tweeted “Tonight the Commanders played with no intensity or fire. We didn’t compete in the first half and got down 27-3 heading into halftime. It was too big of a hole to climb out of and that is why we ended up losing 40-20.”
This time, he didn’t need nearly as many words. Quinn and Daniels both took responsibility for the lapse.
“The right call is honestly, we can go clock it early and don’t put ourselves in that spot,” Quinn said. “That’s my responsibility.”
Added Daniels, whose nonchalance after getting tackled seemed to indicate he thought his team had a timeout: “We’ve got to stop the clock. We’ve got to know the situation. We’ve got to relay that as an offense. It starts from everybody, from the top down. Ultimately, you know, it’s on me.”
For his part, Johnson could turn his attention to another of the teams in which he has a financial interest: the Dodgers, who lost Game 1 of the National League Championship Series to the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday. He remained mum about that game, having last posted several congratulatory tweets when the Dodgers sailed through the NLDS against the Atlanta Braves last week.
