How Much Better Would Magic Johnson Make Luka Doncic? Shea Serrano Breaks It Down

Shea Serrano stands apart as one of those rare great sports and pop culture writers who straddles the worlds of basketball, film and hip-hop with equal dexterity. What makes him stand out beyond just his obvious expertise, in our estimation, is his ability to dissect all three subjects with a unique big-picture perspective that still feels like it's completely his own.

Bookstores, magazine stands (shout out to the iconic Laurel Canyon News in Studio City), and the web are of course overrun now with out-of-the-box proselytizing on all three topics, and the ways they intersect. But this kind of writing isn't about dishing out the hottest or most outre of takes. It's about carving out a thorough command of style.

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And that style resonates in abundance throughout Serrano's latest New York Times-bestselling tome, Expensive Basketball, which first hit shelves on Oct. 27. It's his second hoops book, following the essential Basketball (And Other Things), and his fifth overall. Serrano's exquisite hoops prose is accentuated by occasional graphic novel-channeling illustrations courtesy of Ian Klarer.

So what is "expensive basketball," per se, and what inspired this epic exploration of that concept?

I recently caught up Serrano to discuss Expensive Basketball — and other things. He unpacked the creation of the new book with me in an exclusive conversation. The book itself, it should be noted, is quite inexpensive, and should be considered an essential addition to any hoop head's collection.

"I knew I wanted to write a basketball book, and then it just became, 'Well, what is it going to be? How are you going to do this? Are you going to write a Tim Duncan-type book? Are you going to write a book about the 2000-2002 Lakers? What are you going to write about?' You need a hook of some sort. You spend a fair amount of time exploring and sort of wandering around different ideas," Serrano told me.

Once he started circling the kernel of a concept, he began workshopping it with friends and colleagues in casual conversation.

"So I would just hit up a buddy, or go to lunch with somebody, and we'd just be sitting there chatting," Serrano said. "And I kept asking everybody the same question, which was, 'Tell me about your favorite basketball memory, or one of your favorite basketball memories. It could be a game that you went to, or maybe you watched it on TV, or you were with your friends, or by yourself, or with your parents, whatever, the context doesn't matter, but what's a basketball thing that you love?' And every single person answered the question the exact same sort of way. It was the same pattern every single time."

There's no shame in pouring over Basketball Reference and taking stock of counting stats and advanced metrics. But ultimately, the numbers exist to contextualize what we're seeing. That's something Serrano's latest work appreciates implicitly.

"The book has a lot of numbers in there. I mention in the introduction, it's not a refutation of stats. The numbers are important, but they're important when they're in service of something else, not when they're main thing," Serrano observed. "A number is never a reason anybody fell in love with anything. It's this other part. So that's what I wanted the book to be."

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Nowhere is this concept of numbers existing to support what we're watching more apparent in Expensive Basketball than during his chapter on five-time Los Angeles Lakers champion point guard Magic Johnson. When he first touched down as the No. 1 pick out of Michigan State in 1979-80, the eventual three-time league MVP quickly began reshaping the league in his own glorious image. A 6-foot-9 point guard, Johnson was the head of the snake for the Showtime Lakers' unstoppable fastbreak during the 1980s.

As Serrano notes in the book, Johnson was so clearly special that his game proved instantly translatable to laypeople. So it was only fitting that Harvey Pollack felt compelled to invent a new way to tabulate the Hall of Famer's mind-blowing greatness: the triple-double.

The current Lakers' best player, five-time All-NBA First Teamer Luka Doncic, may not be the fastbreaking type, but he, too, is a lethal triple-double threat who loves to involve teammates and seems to be at his best alongside a second All-Star playmaker. This year, that playmaker has — surprisingly — been Austin Reaves. Last season, it was Kyrie Irving on the Dallas Mavericks and later LeBron James in LA.

How Would Magic Johnson and Luka Doncic Fit Together?

"Well, I think Magic Johnson is the greatest point guard who has ever lived," Serrano asserted, full stop. "So any team that you put him on, everybody's going to be better. Everybody's going to become more dangerous immediately. The easiest example of that was watching Steve Nash do it with the run-and-gun, 'Seven Seconds or Less' Phoenix Suns. It was, 'Holy s---, Shawn Marion is like top 10, what's happening right now? Oh my god, Amar'e Stoudemire.' Because they were with Nash. So Nash was able to do that."

Nash, who was also one of the game's best shooters in his day (he logged a .50/.40/.90 slash line twice, in 2005-06 and 2009-10), prioritized making his teammates better. The man was absolutely a subscriber to the "a rising tide lifts all ships" philosophy.

"You look at Magic Johnson, I mean, he's better than Steve Nash. He's going to make everybody better," Serrano opined. "Everybody's numbers would all go up if you're playing with Magic Johnson. He not only is going to run the offense, obviously, but he would get Luka easily eight extra, free points. Right now, you watch the Lakers play, and it's like Luka's f---ing working to get a shot. And if you put Magic on a team, all of a sudden, he has to expend 15 percent less energy to get a shot. Everything would go up — which is crazy to think about, because it's already up."

At 11-4 on the season, Los Angeles already looks like a fringe contender this year. Imagine what this club could do if one swapped in Johnson for Reaves or James.

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