Lewis Lloyd, the "Magic" banned from the NBA 

On May 10th, 1986, he entered in the belly of the old The Forum, in Inglewood, California, eating a “Philly cheesesteak”, a sandwich made only in the City of Brotherly Love, which according to their culture must have a stain of oil on the paper. We’re talking about a boy born in the city where Rocky, played by Sylvester Stallone, raised his arms to the sky for the first time, on top of Philadelphia Museum of Art’s staircase. 

At the time he used to wear the shirt number 32, but he wasn’t getting many attentions, also because in the other team the shirt number 32 used to attract more media than any other. More, his nickname was “Magic”, so he had no chance, it was his Showtime. Lewis Kevin Lloyd as a boy, in the same high school of Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain, appropriated of “Black Magic” nickname, because after knocking on the ground Fran “White Magic” McCaffrey with a crossover, he dunked, jumping over DeWayne Scales’ 6,8 feet, almost breaking his hand.

That day, though, he was about to play the first game of the most important series of his life, the Conference finals alongside with Akeem “The Dream” Olajuwon, Robert Reid, Ralph Sampson and Rodney McCray, against Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Cooper, James Worthy, A.C. Green and Byron Scott’s Los Angeles Lakers. They lose the first game badly, also because the night before the game he and his teammate Mitchell Wiggins probably had seen too many white stripes.

In the other games, though, something magical happens, he got to broke Lakers’ balances with his defensive plays and his baskets. In the last game, 5 minutes before the end of the last quarter, when during a play Akeem laced up with Mick Kupchek on the low post, starting a brawl sedated after a while which cost him the ejection, he become the leader of the team until the end of the game. One of the most beautiful upsets in basketball, he scored 15 points and took the Rockets to the NBA Finals for the second time, against the strongest Boston Celtics team ever, with the Bird-McHale-Parrish frontcourt.

The dream to win the championship and raise the arms to the sky like Rocky in Phila won’t become reality, especially after the brawl that involved Ralph Sampson against Jerry Sichting in game 5 and this nightmare, for him, will be described by media as the Boston Celtics’ Sweet Sixteen. But it happens even worst, when the NBA found him with “those” white stripes, which banned him with the same procedure of Michael “Sugar Ray” Richardson. After a two-year ban, “Black Magic” is not the same, it’s like his body doesn’t recognize the harmony and the rhythmic of the sports which saved him from a very violent town. Even if he got out from his drug addiction, his basketball left him. Everyone left him, the NBA, the minor leagues when he scored 30 points per game in a certain period. There were nothing more to do, he was unsuitable with the evolution of the game.

Basketball speeded up in front of him, he was almost overtaken. But he never quit to chase his dream, he has been seen playing in a Summer League in Philly at 50. The love for the game never left him, because: 

To Win The Game Is Great,

To Play The Game Is Greater,

But To Love The Game Is The Greatest Of All.