Boston sports fans viewed Magic Johnson as their archenemy 25 years ago, when he was trying to prevent the Celtics from piling up more championships with their Big Three.

Johnson perhaps made a couple of friends when he appeared at Larry Bird’s jersey-retirement ceremony sporting a Celtics T-shirt under his Lakers warmup suit nearly two decades ago. And now, shifting gears as he does constantly, he has filled the airwaves of sports talk shows discussing the blockbuster trade between the Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers, a team he assumed partial ownership of in March.