He’s the Mouth That Scored for Lakers

When they refer to a player as a “sixth man” in basketball, they usually mean a guy who comes off the bench when the team is in retreat, takes the ball, picks the team up again, turns the game around and rights the situation. John Havlicek of the old Boston Celtics comes to mind.

But the best sixth man I ever saw never made a basket, drew a foul, blocked a shot, inbounded a pass or grabbed a rebound for his team.

You know, the Lakers over the years have had some pretty valuable individuals--Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson. A “Who’s Who of Basketball.”

But the best backcourt man they ever had was Chick Hearn.

You had to be there to know. I know. Because I was.

The Lakers picked up Chick Hearn for a song. He was no threat to any salary cap, but nobody with a basketball was any more valuable to the franchise than Chick with a microphone.

The Lakers had newly arrived from Minnesota, where they had been going broke, when Chick first joined them. Bob Short, the owner, was thinking of putting the team in a leaky boat in the Pacific at the time and cutting his losses when he approached Chick.

Chick knew basketball as few did. He had played in the AAU, the NBA of its time, and he had broadcast the frenetic high school tournaments in his native Illinois.

Short persuaded Chick to do the play-by-play of a playoff game the Lakers and St. Louis Hawks were contesting. The result, I can sum up in one anecdote:

The week before, the Lakers and Hawks drew 2,800 fans to the Sports Arena for a playoff game. Chick did the next game at St. Louis on radio. When the teams came back to Los Angeles, there were 15,000 in the seats. They have more or less been there for every game since.

Before Chick, basketball broadcasts were just more interesting than test patterns. Basketball was a stepchild of sports at the time anyway. The old-time columnists referred to it as “whistle ball” or “bounce ball,” a game for guys who didn’t like to get their hair mussed in a real game like football.

Chick Hearn made it seem like World War III. He almost reinvented the game, gave it a whole new language. “Give and go,” “turnaround jumper,” “dribble-drive to the basket,” “going for the hole” came into the lexicon of the game, maybe even “slam dunk.”

Guys didn’t just bring the ball upcourt, they were “yo-yoing the ball to the top of the key.” Players didn’t just get fooled, they got “faked into the popcorn machine.” “Airball” might have been a Hearnism. “Sky hook” definitely was.

Jerry West became “Mr. Clutch.” The team of Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar became “Showtime.” The game wasn’t just iced when the lead got big, it was put “in the refrigerator.”

Chick was no rah-rah boy, no cheerleader.

“Why doesn’t he sleep on his own time?” he would complain on the air about a local player who seemed to have lost interest in the game.

Chick and the Lakers were a match made in heaven. Romeo-meets-Juliet stuff. Laurel and Hardy. Before Chick Hearn, the Lakers played at junior college gyms, on stage at the Shrine Auditorium, wherever they could light. Then, Jack Kent Cooke bought the team and built the Forum. Chick filled it. Cooke signed him to an exclusive contract.

He’s still filling it. The game has gone through many changes, but the one constant was Francis Dayle Hearn.

You know, you hear about Cal Ripken Jr. And Lou Gehrig, the “Iron Horse.” A.C. Green, who has played in 930 consecutive NBA games.

Wilt Chamberlain played in 1,205 games, 55,418 minutes. Abdul-Jabbar played 1,797 games, 66,297 minutes.

Great longevity? Magnificent dependability! Showing up for work and ready all those years.

But how about Chickie Baby? On Jan. 19 at the Great Western Forum, he will be working his 3,000th consecutive game for the Lakers. You don’t even want to know how many minutes that comes to. And that’s only since 1965. He had done five years of sporadic games before then.

Match that around the league.

There was almost no such game in L.A. till Chick came aboard. Tommy Hawkins, an original L.A. Laker, remembers riding around in a sound truck through the neighborhoods, ballyhooing the game: “Hi! I’m Tommy Hawkins of the Lakers. Why don’t you come out and see us play the New York Knicks Saturday night? Plenty of good seats available.”

The sound of Chick Hearn did more for the team. The Lakers prospered. And carried the pro game along with them.

Of all the minutes of all the nights he has broadcast, Chick says he remembers best the night in 1970 when West threw in a basket from his own backcourt at the buzzer against the Knicks in an NBA final. It only tied the game. Today, it would have been a three-point basket and won.

It was a fateful moment in Laker history. But I would opt for a different one. I would put in there the night Short turned to assistant Lou Mohs and said, “How about if we try to get this fellow Chick Hearn to broadcast our games? I like his flair.”

That was 10 years before the guys on the team now were even born. They should get a nickname for Chick too. “Mr. Clutch” still has a nice ring to it.