Earvin "Magic" Johnson was one of the marquee basketball players of his era. He began his National Basketball Association career in 1980. During the following decade, he and Larry Bird helped to elevate the popularity of professional basketball to previously unscaled heights. Johnson's wall-to-wall smile and ingratiating manner made him a favorite of hoop and non-hoop fans alike. Nonetheless, he will be remembered for much more than his exploits on the hardwood. On November 7, 1991, he shocked America—and the sporting world in particular—by announcing his retirement from basketball because he was HIV-positive. This admission, in such a public forum, forever altered the face of the AIDS plague. AIDS no longer could be ghettoized and trivialized as a disease whose sufferers were promiscuous gays and intravenous drug abusers, or lived far away on another continent.

Earvin Johnson, Jr., the...