Sports Club Plans Hoop-La

And you thought you’d died and gone to Laker heaven when they came to the ground breaking.

Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar choppered south in helicopters last year to hobnob in a tent and sink their shoes in cement. And you stood next to them, stunned. You never thought they’d come to Orange County.

Well, think again. They’re not only coming back on March 31, they’re bringing Lakers Coach Pat Riley with them to attend the newly opened Sports Club/Irvine’s “Superstar Sports Spectacular.”

“It’s going to be a boogie, “ promises the bold and beautiful Nanette Pattee Francini, partner with billionaire Marvin Davis and Michael Talla in the $30-million club, a sister complex to Sports Club/LA.

We believe it. Helping to orchestrate the “slinky/black-tie optional” affair for 2,000 guests is PR wizard Gloria Zigner, the gal who gave you your first gala laser show when she opened Le Meridien in Newport Beach, your first taste of gourmet rattlesnake when she opened Embassy Suites in Santa Ana, and your first glimpse of a woman diving onto a mattress in a hotel atrium when she opened the Newport Beach Marriott.

On Tuesday night, Zigner and Francini got together at the Irvine club--”actually, an urban resort,” Francini says with a laugh--to munch on thin-crust duck-sausage pizza and gab about the $150,000 gala opening.

“It’s going to be hot and sexy,” says Francini, a former Miss Aspen and a member of the international ski set (who met Donald Trump in Colorado last December when the flurry of rumors about his alleged liaison with Marla Maples was getting started. “He was utterly charming,” she says.)

“We’re turning the main gym into a disco where the band Billy and the Beaters will play. And we’ll have a Brazilian band and rappers and break dancing in other parts of the club,” she says.

Not to mention enough carbohydrates to pump iron for days. “There’ll be our gourmet pizza,” says Francini, sinking her perfect teeth into a wedge of the scrumptious stuff. “And pasta. And Brazilian food. And sushi. And dim sum.” (And yes, there’ll be alcohol. The 130,000-square-foot club not only has its own restaurant, but it also has its own bar, hair salon and clothing boutique.)

The “Sports Spectacular” concept is nothing new for Francini, who says she’ll probably don her slinky “Dorothy Lamour sarong” for the affair. “We’ve done it in L.A. for three years,” she says. “We use it to honor sports greats--give them our Superstar Sports Award.” Past recipients have been Raiders’ star Marcus Allen, and Lakers heroes Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar. Riley will receive this year’s award at the $75-per-person event, with half the proceeds benefiting DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) and Athletes and Entertainers for Kids.

Who gets to go? “Members and their guests only,” says Francini, adding that Sports Club/Irvine already has 3,600 members. “We know we can handle 2,000 guests. And we’ll invite some of our L.A. club members,” she says. (Among those on its roster: Tom Selleck, Dyan Cannon, Molly Ringwald and last summer, John F. Kennedy Jr.) “But only by word of mouth. The party is going to be hot. But we don’t want to get it too hot!”

Shocked about the Trumps: Lois Cannon Aldrin can’t believe it. “Donald and Ivana looked so happy, marvelous, stunning!” Aldrin and her husband, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, attended the International Ski Ball chaired by Ivana Trump at the Plaza Hotel in New York last November.

The Aldrins spent about 15 minutes with the Trumps, even had their picture taken with them. “They looked happy,” Lois says.

So when word reached her that the couple were apart, her heart sank. “I was shocked,” she says. “Usually it’s the frumpy wife who gets dumped. Ivana has kept herself so beautiful. When we met them, I thought to myself: ‘Well, they are gorgeous, rich, and a team .’ I figure if a couple looks like they’re a team, it’s working. If they had any underlying problems, they weren’t apparent.

“When they came into the cocktail party, Donald had his arm around her waist,” Lois says. “And there she was, in charge of the party, and Donald had come to support her. They looked lovely.”

Lois has taken sides, she says. “I have to say I’m on Ivana’s side. With my religious background, I think it’s important to have one marriage with children. It was not my choice to break up my former marriage. I feel family is so important.”

The Aldrins, regulars on the international society circuit, have just returned from St. Moritz, where they did a cameo appearance for Roger Moore’s new movie, “Fire, Ice and Dynamite.”

As she travels around the world with her famous husband, does Lois worry about other women? “Not so much now that we’re married,” says the platinum blonde, who married her famous husband on Valentine’s Day two years ago. When we first started dating, I noticed how some women would get very aggressive with Buzz, want to stand close to him when they talked to him, make eye contact. But now that we’re married, I don’t notice it so much. But of course I noticed that women tend to want to talk to him, not me. They try to impress him for their egos.

“I heard a quote once that says it all: ‘When a woman marries, she fulfills her fantasy, to have one man to love her. When a man marries, he loses his fantasy, which is to have many women.’ When you’re famous,” she says, “a man has more opportunity to come in contact and achieve that fantasy, more than the Joe Blow on the street who wants them but can’t get the attention.

“I say to Donald: ‘You’ve got a great thing going there. Why don’t you put your new excitement and energy into your marriage? You’re just going to get tired of somebody else.’ ”