I walked in late, and Magic was in the middle of the aisle, hunched down low dribbling an imaginary basketball, talking loudly and excitedly into the mic as he answered a question about his greatest moment in basketball, which was playing in the Olympics on the USA Dream Team.

"There I was, going down the middle, shaking and baking like I always do," said Magic. "To my left was Michael Jordan, tongue hanging out. To my right, Larry Bird, with Charles Barkley trailing. Being with all those great players was fantastic."

Great players, like great kitchen and bath business owners and managers, are all about the team, all about making the people around them better. And that's what Magic encouraged the KBIS attendees to do.

But he didn't just have tales of the NBA (though he had some good ones, like watching games of the Los Angeles Lakers, of which he is a part owner, and finding himself saying, "Pass it Kobe, come on Kobe, pass it, he's open, man!"). These days Magic is all about being a businessman heading up urban developments—in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore, even Durham, North Carolina. Magic was at KBIS to inspire, and also to get the industry to take their business to minority communities.

"They want the best stuff for their kitchens and baths, just like everybody else," said Magic. "And they'll buy it. But you've got to go to them, target them, talk to them. Cause you know what? They aren't going to come to you in the suburbs. You've got to go where they live, open up a dialog and get them involved."

The attendees were listening, because Magic is a dynamic, warm speaker, and because he came to KBIS with about $550 million to invest in more developments. He took more than one pitch for business in questions from the floor.

He told the attendees that they had to dream about what they wanted before they could ever get it. He talked about his job cleaning offices when he was a 16 year-old. "Every night, I went to the 7th floor to the boss's office. I opened up that door like I was the CEO, sat back in his chair, propped my feet up on his desk, and hit the intercom buttons," said Magic. "I would stay in there and dream about being a businessman, just as I was dreaming as a teenager about making the jumper that won an NBA championship."

He's done both, and says he can die a happy man, blessed to have met his dreams. The hall was pin-drop silent. He filled the silence with a farewell call: "While you're being successful, reach back and help someone else be successful. That's the mark of a great business person."