"I'm from there. You know, when you grow up with these people and see them every day and then you look at the numbers it was easy; it was a no-brainer. And when Sony took a look, it was a no-brainer to them, too"
About this Quote
Magic Johnson’s genius here isn’t polish; it’s the way he turns intimacy into arithmetic without losing the human stakes. “I’m from there” isn’t a sentimental opener so much as a credential. He’s claiming local fluency as a kind of data set: he’s seen the daily patterns, the unmet needs, the habits of people who don’t show up in glossy market research. That’s the subtextual flex: outsiders treat “urban markets” as a risk; he treats them as home.
Then he slips in the pivot that made Johnson such a formidable post-NBA figure: translating lived experience into an investment thesis. “You look at the numbers” signals discipline, not charity. He’s insisting the opportunity was measurable, scalable, defensible. The phrase “no-brainer” does double work. It sells confidence to business partners while quietly rebuking the industry’s previous failure to act. If it’s this obvious, why did it take so long? The unspoken answer is bias dressed up as caution.
The Sony line is the clincher: validation from a corporate giant, framed as inevitable once the right lens is applied. Johnson positions himself as that lens - the mediator between a boardroom that needs reassurance and communities that never needed convincing because they’ve always been there, buying, living, waiting to be taken seriously. It’s a pragmatic, almost cheerful indictment of how many “new” markets are only new to people who refused to see them.
Then he slips in the pivot that made Johnson such a formidable post-NBA figure: translating lived experience into an investment thesis. “You look at the numbers” signals discipline, not charity. He’s insisting the opportunity was measurable, scalable, defensible. The phrase “no-brainer” does double work. It sells confidence to business partners while quietly rebuking the industry’s previous failure to act. If it’s this obvious, why did it take so long? The unspoken answer is bias dressed up as caution.
The Sony line is the clincher: validation from a corporate giant, framed as inevitable once the right lens is applied. Johnson positions himself as that lens - the mediator between a boardroom that needs reassurance and communities that never needed convincing because they’ve always been there, buying, living, waiting to be taken seriously. It’s a pragmatic, almost cheerful indictment of how many “new” markets are only new to people who refused to see them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
|---|
More Quotes by Magic
Add to List
