ESPN Films 'The Announcement' Will Remind Everyone How Human Athletes Are
If you take nothing from ESPN's The Announcement on Sunday, take this: We may marvel at what these athletes can do and look up to them. But when stripped down to their core, these people we watch with stunned amazement are humans.
Personally, finding out that Magic Johnson was HIV positive was the first real sense I had of that fact. I was only six years old at the time, not even living in Los Angeles or in a house of Lakers' fans, and I will absolutely never forget hearing that news.
What's amazing is that in the 20 years that have passed since then, I have had different conversations with people older than me, and they have had a similar experience. Obviously, it woke people up to the dangers of HIV, but it also made Magic look human, which had never really been seen with an athlete like that.
Magic Johnson was this larger than life figure that all of a sudden looked very normal. As horrible and painful as it was for everyone watching, those who knew/know Magic, and certainly Magic himself, that is exactly what we all needed, from different perspectives.
From the perspective of fighting against HIV, there could not be a better person to spearhead that cause. Magic may be human, but he's also one of the most engaging, convincing people you could ever want. He speaks very bluntly on the disease, but has also publicly lived a normal life for the last 20 years.
That has helped raise awareness not only to what causes the disease, but also lets people know that a normal life can still be experienced.
The other perspective is the idea that these are humans. We also saw it a few years later from Charles Barkley, albeit from a slightly different perspective.
But it taught us that we can't view these people as bulletproof, they're not. It's okay to marvel at what they do, but we can't think that we're watching some indestructible movie character.
No, what makes sports so great is what also makes it so tragic. Everything that's happening is real. Seeing an athlete have his career shortened and life threatened at a young age serves as a painful yet essential reminder of that.
You can take a lot from The Announcement, but don't let that message slip away.
