Podcast: Had the Lakers made the playoffs, would Magic Johnson still have resigned?

Magic Johnson stepped away because he said he wanted to be happy. Would some Lakers success have filled that void?

For the next few weeks, the Silver Screen and Roll Podcast channel is going to switch things up a bit. We’ve dialed it back a little in terms of number of shows per day, but as a trade off, our hosts are teaming up in ways we haven’t before. Our first such episode aired yesterday, and you’ll want to check that out.

Locked on Lakers

To start this episode, I tease a column I wrote yesterday about the Lakers taking note of a key theme from Game of Thrones. It sets the table for the rest of the show. From there, I dove back into listener questions.

As has become a new norm (and I’m not at all complaining — keep those questions coming), the mailbag over the weekend spilled into the following day’s show. Even better: We haven’t sacrificed quality for quantity’s sake.

Today’s show featured quite a few good questions, but one stood out: A listener asked whether Magic Johnson would have still stepped down the way he did had the Lakers made the playoffs. It’s an interesting topic on a few levels.

So let’s start with why he said he was stepping down and believe him at his word for the sake of this exercise. He mentioned his own happiness a few times, how he wanted to get back to being a mentor for minority youth, his special life, Twitter and some other stuff. The central theme (at least in my opinion) was how this job had messed with his happiness.

If that’s the number one reason he stepped down, it’s fair to wonder whether he would’ve been made more happy by the success of a team he put together. Maybe the drain of not getting to give takes on Twitter was too much to bear, but if it was indeed happiness, then success tends to highlight the positives.

I go deeper into that, as well as several other topics raised by listeners. You can listen to the entire episode below, and make sure to subscribe on iTunes, where you can also leave questions in the form of a five-star review to guarantee your topic makes the show.