Total disbelief: Magic Johnson blasts

Magic Johnson is relentlessly constructive, a high quality that has served him properly as a participant, a businessman and even while dwelling with HIV since 1991.

The Lakers great usually retains his social media feedback upbeat. Yet, a last-second mental lapse Sunday by one of the 5 skilled sports activities franchises Johnson co-owns prompted him to tweet the equal of a misery signal.

“I’m in total disbelief my Commanders had such poor clock management in today’s overtime game against the Giants. All we had to do was kick the field goal and we would have won the game!”

The tweet ended with an emoji of a man facepalming, conveying Johnson’s exasperation over the last play of Washington’s 27-27 tie with the New York Giants.

The Commanders have been at the Giants’ 24-yard line with 12 seconds to play, no timeouts and the clock working. What needed to be accomplished was apparent: Quarterback Jayden Daniels takes a snap, spikes the ball and the field-goal workforce trots out.

Nope. Daniels took a snap, danced around, was tackled and the clock expired.

Coach Dan Quinn ripped off his headset and slammed it to the ground. Daniels stood on the sphere trying shocked. Johnson, who acquired 4% of the workforce when his pal Josh Harris purchased it for $6.05 billion in 2023, vented on social media.

Johnson’s public feedback are often motivational gems such as “When you face a crisis, you know who your true friends are.” Or “Life doesn’t stop because something happens to you.” Or “I’m the one who will take chances, not worry about the backlash.”

When the Commanders misplaced their first two video games this season, Johnson stayed silent. When they upset the Seattle Seahawks two weeks in the past, Johnson took to his keyboard to congratulate the workforce, tweeting a picture of himself in a luxurious box.

The last time he had expressed frustration about the Commanders on social media was three years in the past, shortly after Harris grew to become majority proprietor and Johnson had chipped in $240 million as a restricted associate. On Oct. 5, 2023, he tweeted “Tonight the Commanders played with no intensity or fire. We didn’t compete in the first half and got down 27-3 heading into halftime. It was too big of a hole to climb out of and that is why we ended up losing 40-20.”

This time, he didn’t need almost as many phrases. Quinn and Daniels both took duty for the lapse.

“The right call is honestly, we can go clock it early and don’t put ourselves in that spot,” Quinn told reporters. “That’s my responsibility.”

Added Daniels, whose nonchalance after getting tackled appeared to point out he thought his workforce had a timeout: “We’ve got to stop the clock. We’ve got to know the situation. We’ve got to relay that as an offense. It starts from everybody, from the top down. Ultimately, you know, it’s on me.”

For his half, Johnson may flip his consideration to another of the groups in which he has a financial curiosity: the Dodgers, who misplaced Game 1 of the National League Championship Series to the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday. He remained mum about that sport, having last posted a number of congratulatory tweets when the Dodgers sailed through the NLDS against the Atlanta Braves last week.