Earvin “Magic” Johnson is nothing short of a basketball legend. Born in Lansing, Michigan, the six-foot-nine-inch-tall athlete is widely considered the greatest point guard of all time. During his 13 seasons in the NBA, he helped lead the Los Angeles Lakers to five NBA championships, earned three NBA MVP awards, and played in 12 All-Star games, among other achievements. But it’s what Johnson continued to do after his retirement that has cemented his status as an icon both on and off the court.
He began Magic Johnson Enterprises, with subsidiaries including Magic Johnson Productions, a promotional company; Magic Johnson Entertainment, a film studio; and Magic Johnson Theaters, a national movie theater chain. He’s invested in Starbucks stores, gyms, fast food restaurants, and sports and fashion brands, and has been an outspoken advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness and education through his Magic Johnson Foundation ever since his own diagnosis in 1991. Amid it all, he’s also been known for his extravagant homes, many of which are located in the Los Angeles area, where he’s also owned teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Sparks, and the Los Angeles Football Club. Here, we’ve rounded up some of the places that he’s called home.
1981
Johnson had a custom mansion built in Bel Air shortly after being drafted by the Lakers in 1979, just one year after winning the first of five championship titles for the team. Though it is not widely known how much the pro athlete spent on the 10,000-square-foot pad, details of its impressive interiors suggest that it was likely a pretty penny. The six-bedroom, six-and-a-half-bathroom mansion was constructed in the guard-gated Moraga Estates, with an eye toward entertaining. Both the family room and the game room—the latter of which had its own wet bar—opened out to the backyard, and there was a media room with an entire wall of glass looking down onto a massive indoor basketball court. An adjacent locker room was decorated with the autographs of NBA players, including Johnson himself, who added the note: “Good luck, work hard. P.S. Have fun.” A pool and spa, built-in barbecue, and fire pit rounded out the mansion’s many amenities. The superstar lived there until 1990; it is unknown how much he sold the pad for, but it was most recently listed for $14.5 million in 2022.
1980s
At the height of his success and the Lakers’ Showtime era, Johnson owned a vacation home overlooking a sandy cove in Napili Bay in Maui. The dwelling was reportedly located in Papaua Place, a gated residential community of just ten homes, coveted for its proximity to stunning beaches and its unparalleled ocean views. Not much is known about Johnson’s specific property, but the area was reportedly known to those familiar as Magic Johnson’s Street due to its association with the basketball legend. Eventually, the NBA star and his wife found the vacation getaway “too far to get to,” so they opted to sell the place and purchase a beach house closer to their main residence on the mainland.
1990
One year before Johnson and longtime love Earlitha “Cookie” Kelly tied the knot, he reportedly purchased a mansion overlooking Beverly Hillsin the gated community of Beverly Park. At the time, it measured 12,000 square feet, with a full-size tennis court, a pool, an outdoor lagoon, a grotto, and a built-in grill and fire pit surrounding a patio with a bar. Over the years, Johnson expanded the mansion from four bedrooms to nine to accommodate for his growing family and increased the square footage to 14,000 square feet. The highlight of the Mediterranean-style residence is undoubtedly Johnson’s man cave, which he showed off on Oprah Winfrey’s show in 2013. In the room are all of the athlete’s trophies and his five NBA championship rings, which he told Winfrey he’d never worn. (The most valuable, he noted, was the 1985 ring, which marked the Lakers’ win over the Boston Celtics.) Johnson listed the home for $6 million in 1992 and later relisted it for just shy of $8 million in 1998, but it seems like the couple still owns the home.
2007
By the early aughts, Johnson and his wife had three children and were looking for ways to squeeze in family vacations without traveling too far. “We used to own a second home in Napili, Hawaii, but we just said, ‘Man, it’s too far to get to,’” he told Architectural Digest in 2009, “especially with young kids. Cookie and I always used to come south for little getaways. So we were down for our anniversary in September a couple of years ago, staying at a hotel at the time, and we had his-and-her massages. That was the moment right there. She turned and looked at me and said, ‘Why don’t we just get a home here?’”
The pair put down $7.6 million for a three-story, Tuscan-style beach house in Orange County that met their basic criteria of “steps from the sand, Mediterranean architecture, [and] good indoor-outdoor flow.” The home spans 7,700 square feet and features five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a home theater, a wine cellar, and a pool (and private beach) out back. Nearly every window of the villa overlooks the ocean, with a direct view of Catalina Island. The couple worked with designer Michael Kreiss to decorate the villa in a style that Cookie called “a little more on the contemporary side. The whole point of the house was to be fun and comfortable and inviting,” as she told AD. They still own this residence.
2010s
One of Johnson’s most recent ventures has reportedly been an interest in the Las Vegas Raiders. According to multiple reports, the sports legend was in talks to buy a minority ownership stake in the fall of 2022. Years before this, however, the Lakers legend was believed to have owned a five-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion in Las Vegas that was ideal for entertaining. It reportedly featured a two-lane bowling alley, a basketball court, a tennis court, a racquetball court, a batting cage, an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, a rock-climbing wall, and even an in-ground trampoline. No word on how much Johnson might have paid for the pad, however, nor whether or not he still owns the place.