Magic Johnson was forced to pay wife Cookie Johnson $1 million to touch a basketball again

Magic Johnson had to leave things unfinished when he tested positive for HIV out of the blue, so he tried to come back 4 years later.

Following a team physical prior to the 1991-92 season, Magic Johnson terrified the nation when he announced he still had HIV while flashing that smile that would stop wars.

HIV/AIDS was killing countless people around the world at the time and was considered an epidemic with no cure. It was a death sentence.

And when one of America’s biggest superstars got it, everyone started thinking that they would get it too, and when they did, they would succumb to it.

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With his will and will to live, Johnson not only fought off the deadly virus very well, he kept it so under control that he returned after four years of retirement. But he did not please many people with that decision.

Magic Johnson had to pay his wife a hefty sum to convince her to let him play just one more season.

Johnson was a tremendous source of strength to the world, which needed much, and they looked to him as the leader who will guide them through this long, dark tunnel.

But even he needed someone to give him moral support after a life-changing event at 32 years of age.

And that someone would undoubtedly be his wife and the mother of his children: Cookie Johnson.

Despite Magic confessing his relationships with numerous women as the cause of his HIV infection, Cookie realized when she could have easily let him go. But it was beyond her when the Magic decided to return to the NBA in 1995.

“My wife told me: ‘That’s it, one (season) and get out.’ Or she will leave me. Cookie always told me that she was coming back: ‘There’s no way you’re going to work out three times a day, and you’re not coming back, you can’t tell me.’ I said, you haven’t given me your clearance yet. So I bribed her. I gave him a million dollars,” Johnson said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“It was so much more than that,” Cookie Johnson clarified.