Behind the Scene

The glamorous woman was in her $800 seat, watching the Lakers, when she became irritated. Something was happening that she did not think possible.

There she was, sitting courtside, yet somebody was standing in her way.

Instead of seeing the players, she was looking at the back of a freshly pressed suit.

The guy was not budging. She was not going to take it.

“Would you tell that man to move?” she finally said to her companion.

“Uh, I can’t,” he said.

“Why not?” insisted the woman.

“He’s the Laker coach.”

And that is how Madonna joined the sometimes grouchy, mostly good-humored club whose members have had the unique fortune of sitting behind Del Harris, the coach who never sits.

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You might not think this is a story. But then, maybe you have never phoned for tickets to a Laker game, been talked into paying big money for a great spot behind the Laker bench . . . and discovered that you couldn’t see half the game because this guy in front of you wouldn’t take a seat.

Harris is 6 feet 3. Sitting behind him during a game is like watching baseball from behind the foul pole, or football from behind a pillar.

Once in Oakland, this happened to me. I wondered if it happened to anyone else.

Turns out, it happens to everyone else.

Forum fans laugh about having to crane their necks and adjust their posture. Hey, the guys in the cheap seats don’t have this problem.

“Tonight I crossed my legs and accidentally kicked him in the back,” said Kathryn Schloessman, president of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, during Sunday’s game against Cleveland. “I was worried they were going to eject me.

“He gets in your way, but it’s really fun,” she added. “Being this close, it makes it seem like you’re at a high school game.”

Fans in other arenas don’t brag. They scream, harassing Harris until they realize he will not listen.

“Sit down, Whitey,” is their favorite, yet futile, cry.

Chick Hearn gripes, both on the air and off, about how hard it is to announce a game when you can’t see around somebody’s back pocket. Hearn announces home games from upstairs but sits next to the Laker bench on the road.

“It’s an annoyance,” he said. “I say, ‘Can’t you get a towel and kneel down? Other coaches kneel down.’ ”

Only once in Harris’ three-plus seasons here, though, has there been a complaint to his face. It was from a couple sitting in two of the eight, $800 courtside seats directly to Harris’ right. The fans in the first row behind the bench are also affected but in the courtside seats, the rich suddenly become the powerless.

“So it’s in the middle of the game, and these people say, ‘Can you please stop walking around in front of us? We can’t see!’ ” Harris recalled with a smile. “I said, as nice as I could, ‘Listen, you have the best seats in the house. You are right in our huddle. This is all part of that.’ ”

Harris offers another bit of advice, according to occasional courtside ticket holder Mike Hoopis.

“Sometimes he’ll say, ‘You wanna see the game? Buy a cheaper seat,’ ” Hoopis said.

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At some point during a game, every coach stands. Harris is different because he only stands.

Next time you are at the Forum, check out the Laker bench. Harris is standing, and every chair is taken.

One of the most important people in the building doesn’t have a seat.

“Don’t need one,” Harris said.

Hasn’t needed one for 10 years, since he was coaching the Milwaukee Bucks and realizing that his team seemed to play better when he was standing.

“I would start the game sitting down, then whenever the team bogged down, I would get up,” Harris recalled. “Inevitably, they would play better when I got up.”

The team went through one tough stretch where it began struggling earlier and earlier. Finally, one of Harris’ assistant coaches pulled him aside.

“Del,” Frank Hamblen said, “it’s getting so you ought to just get up from the start.”

Harris agreed. He has not sat since.

Harris is not a screamer. He says he does not stand to intimidate either players or referees.

He says he mostly wants the players to know he is there.

“I think it helps if they see me involved in the game, out there working with them,” he said.

Because he stands, he can easily walk to the end of the bench and shepherd reserves into the game, personally sending them in instead of simply yelling and pointing.

Because he stands, the players can easily take their cues from their coach.

Precocious Kobe Bryant says the best thing about playing here is that he always know where he stands with Harris, possibly because Harris always stands and shows him.

“Maybe I just think better on my feet,” Harris said.

Although the league has a rule about how far those feet can travel--former referee Earl Strom once put down a piece of tape to keep Pat Riley from wandering--it is never enforced.

This is why Harris jokingly refers to Norm Pattiz, chairman of Westwood One radio and longtime courtside ticket holder, as his “fifth assistant coach.”

Although Pattiz is eight seats down from the Laker bench, he spends about as much time peering around Harris as rubber-necking trainer Gary Vitti.

It was Pattiz who accompanied Madonna on her one and only trip into Harris’ shadow. Another time, when his guests were Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, Harris got the stars on his side before the game by conversing with Banderas in Spanish.

“Del makes it fun,” Pattiz said. “Having him in front of you is the difference between being at the game and in the game.”

And Harris does make concessions. Sometimes during road games, he stands at the far end of the team’s bench so Hearn won’t constantly remind listeners that, “There’s a man standing in my way.”

No, the Lakers have never considered warning buyers that the Forum’s $800 courtside seats or $125 front-row seats behind Harris have obstructed vision.

“It has not been an issue,” said Steve Chase, Laker vice president for ticket sales. “There’s a lot of romance to it, I think.”

That was apparent in the eyes of front-row ticket holder Holly Centman on Sunday, when she smiled and said, “Del can stand in front of me the whole game, as far as I care. He’s the man. I’d rather watch him than the players.”

Which would be the moral of this story, if there were one. You win in this town, and you can coach a game while standing on your head.

Well, almost.

“It’s great to be sitting on the court,” restaurateur Doug Cavanaugh said. “I just wish they had a little smaller coach.”