Editor’s note: This story is part of a series counting down the 40 greatest comebacks in sports.
My recollections of Nov. 7, 1991, and the days that followed, always begin the same way: We all thought he was going to die.
Famous people die. Some suddenly, and violently; others quietly, and without fanfare. But Earvin Johnson’s death was going to be public and awful and drawn out, over weeks, maybe months. There would be vigils and visits to the hospital, and no one who actually would get to see him would likely be honest about what they’d seen, this great athlete and winner wasting away, and dying too young, from AIDS.
AIDS was merciless, ruthless, its acquisition the end of you. Throughout the ’80s, it was a scourge, killing tens of thousands of people who got it, mostly through sexual intercourse – but not always. It killed a teenager named Ryan White who got it, and who’d fought for the right to…
