After last summer’s blockbuster signing of LeBron James, Johnson proclaimed the Lakers to be “back” — with the promise of a return to full “back back” status this summer once they acquired at least one superstar sidekick to James. Johnson has instead fled just when the most crucial work was about to commence, with no clear path to bringing that second star to a flailing franchise that last reached the playoffs in 2013 and last won a championship in 2010.

When he convened an impromptu news conference Tuesday night, rather than reveal his updated plan to restore the Lakers to title contention and placate a frustrated fan base, Johnson did just the opposite. Describing himself as “happier when I wasn’t the president,” he explained that the conditions and pressures attached to building a championship team around James meant that the real Magic “couldn’t come out.”

In a series of rambling interviews with a number of news outlets while the Lakers were in the process of losing their regular-season finale to the Portland Trail Blazers, Johnson spoke of how he had longed to send a congratulatory tweet to Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook or to tutor Ben Simmons, the rising Philadelphia 76ers star, without inciting a storm of tampering allegations.

“I knew if I stayed in the role,” he said, “I’m giving up a lot of me.”

Such disclosures, of course, only served to validate much of the skepticism that greeted Buss’s decision to install Johnson as the new face of the Lakers’ basketball operations in February 2017.

Rival front-office executives questioned Johnson’s lack of experience in the modern game and his willingness to embrace the all-encompassing nature of the job from the moment he was named to replace the much-maligned Jim Buss (Jeanie’s brother) and Mitch Kupchak, the longtime Lakers executive. Those questions only rose in volume when Buss named as Magic’s sidekick another front-office neophyte, Rob Pelinka, Kobe Bryant’s polarizing former agent.

There were red flags from the start. In taking on his first active role with an N.B.A. team since his second retirement as a player in 1996, Johnson admitted that he had much to learn about navigating the ins and outs of the N.B.A.’s complex salary cap and the rhythms of a job that had evolved so much in his time away.