THEY’RE NO LONGER STAPLES

It was fun while it lasted. . . .

John F. Kennedy was nominated for president in the new Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in 1960 at the same convention that Sen. Eugene McCarthy made his stirring speech in favor of Adlai Stevenson.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there in 1961, to an overflow crowd--some 18,000 inside, and, after fire marshals said no one else could enter, an estimated 10,000 listening on a hastily built sound system in the parking lot.

UCLA’s first two championship basketball teams played home games there in the 1963-64 and 1964-65 seasons. John Wooden’s Bruins won titles there in 1968 and 1972.

The Lakers, arriving from Minneapolis in 1960, began building their following there in the Elgin Baylor-Jerry West era.

The Kings played the first NHL games in Southern California there in 1967.

Well, it was fun for a while. The sparkling days ended. UCLA left in 1965, the Lakers and Kings in 1967. For the last 15 seasons, the building has been the broken-down old gray lady of local venues, the musty home of the woebegone Clippers, who haunted it like ghosts as owner Donald T. Sterling reviewed his options for a new arena . . . and reviewed them . . . all the while ignoring Commissioner David Stern’s hints that he build something or move to the Arrowhead Pond, or anywhere.

Sterling being a hard man to budge, it took Stern almost until the new millennium but, at last, it’s happening.

“There’s not a dry eye in the office,” Stern says from New York, laughing.

“I think it’s fair to say the league office is looking forward to the opening of the Staples Center as the home of the Lakers and Clippers. The Sports Arena is a venerable, old building from another time, and I don’t want to speak ill of it.”

Time, as measured in sports, runs so madly, state of the art becomes hopelessly out of fashion in 40 years.

And history in 41?

“You have a new venue going up a few blocks away that’s going to be one of the best in the country,” says Coliseum General Manager Pat Lynch. “The Forum isn’t going away, as far as we can tell, and then there’s the Pond. USC has a strong desire to build its own arena. We have to question how long the Sports Arena is going to be financially viable.

“As far as right now, we’re saying, let’s see how things shake out--but let’s not get our hopes up. We’re being real.”

Be happy you’re not an arena. One day you’re a jewel of the night, the next an eyesore, the next a hole in the ground.

A piece of local sports history is passing away, unlamented, and you have to go back in time to find anyone who remembers how it was.

“It was a wonderful building for us,” says Keith Erickson, a member of the first UCLA champions. “We were the last class that played in Men’s Gym and Santa Monica City College before we went to the Sports Arena and finally built Pauley.

“Men’s Gym only held about 200. Santa Monica City College, maybe a couple thousand. We felt like we were at the palace.”

In those days, Bruin players climbed into vans for the drive from Westwood, down Olympic Boulevard, because there was no Santa Monica Freeway. Wooden once benched Walt Hazzard because he missed the van and got there late. Not that it set back the ‘63-64 team Hazzard captained, which went 30-0.

Paul Westphal, USC ‘72, played in the years when it was possible to go 24-2, lose twice to the No. 1 team in the nation (UCLA) and not be invited to the NCAA tournament, which is what happened to the Trojans in 1970-71.

“I actually will miss it,” Westphal says. “I go back to when it was first built. Back then I was 9 or 10 and they used to have the L.A. Classic.

“SC and UCLA both played their home games there, and they would co-host a big tournament. It was one of the first tournaments to bring in big teams from around the country.

“And I remember going to that when I was 9 or 10, and going to Laker games when Bob Cousy and Bill Russell were with the Celtics. In that regard, I will miss the Sports Arena. But what it’s become, nah, not at all.

“It was a brand new, sort of the cutting-edge sort of building when it was built. I don’t think they’ve taken care of it. Maybe they couldn’t upgrade it along the way. I’m not real sentimental about it now, but I do remember when it was a fun place to go.”

In 1972, the NCAA held its Final Four there, in what amounted to a UCLA invitational, and not a very good one.

Led by sophomores Bill Walton, Keith Wilkes and Greg Lee in their first varsity season, the Bruins completed another 30-0 season, stepping on Louisville by 19 in the semifinals before outlasting Florida State, 81-76, in a victory that ran their title streak to six seasons but was otherwise so desultory, the players almost treated it as a loss.

“Denny Crum [a former Bruin assistant] was the guy who got us all together--Greg Lee, Keith Wilkes and me,” Walton says. “And then he left to become the coach at Louisville. And so we’re standing, right back there and the other game is going on, North Carolina vs. Florida State. And it goes to overtime. We can’t come out on the court.

“So both teams are there, Denny is there with his team. We start saying, ‘Hi, Denny.’ They all refer to him as Coach Crum. We all say, ‘C’mon, Denny! C’mon over here with the real team!’

“And he got so embarrassed and his team was just shocked that we were on a first-name basis with him. And we killed them that night.

“This is a fun place with a lot of memories. The future is all about buildings. That’s what you have to have to compete financially. And so this will be a big boost for the Clippers, so I’m all for it.

“But the old buildings like the Boston Garden and this, Chicago Stadium--those are temples. Those are religious shrines. That’s where the game of basketball was developed and made popular. Watching Jerry West and Elgin grow up in these buildings was just very special for me.”

The Lakers, arriving in 1960, played most of their games in the Sports Arena, although, as Chick Hearn, who was hired during the playoffs, notes, it was a waste at first, since “they didn’t need a 15,000-seat building for 200 people.”

West was a rookie on his way to becoming an all-time great. Baylor was the pre-knee-injury Elgin whom so few saw but will never forget.

“I said for years he was the best I ever saw,” Hearn says. “He was doing the same things Dr. J would get credit for 25 years later. There was no TV exposure in those days. Elgin could hang in the air for an eternity. He had huge, strong hands and he put an unbelievable amount of English on the ball, making it dive into the basket. He was sensational.”

Stars such as Doris Day and Rhonda Fleming came out, which, for a nine-team league that still included Syracuse, amounted to blinding glamour. The Lakers averaged 5,045 in their first season but by 1966-67 were over 11,000.

They were also on the way out. The Coliseum Commission dared the imperious new Laker owner, Jack Kent Cooke, to build his own arena if he didn’t like the rent, so he did.

The good times were over. Sterling moved the Clippers from San Diego in 1984, providing a tenant, although you couldn’t say they captured the imagination of the city.

In later years, the Clippers operated on what amounted to a year-to-year lease, which, Lynch says, made it impossible for the Coliseum Commission to fix the place up. Even spending $600,000 for two video screens was a gamble, since the team could have been gone a year later.

The Sports Arena kept bidding to become the new stadium site, but Sterling wasn’t buying.

“I could pull out 10 or 15 plans for major renovations,” Lynch says. “We were always trying to do that deal with the Clippers. We talked to the Staples guys and told them, ‘Hey, try it here.’ ”

Staples went downtown instead, and ultimately, took the Clippers, a coup for Sterling, who’ll move into the new Taj Mahal for nothing.

The Sports Arena was actually a charming venue where fans who didn’t insist on identifying with a home team could stroll to the box office window minutes before tipoff and watch an NBA game in an intimate setting with admirable sight lines.

Of course, in the days of luxury suites and lavish accommodations and in-house practice gyms for the players, who are richer than the suite-holders, what’s charm worth?

The unrenovated arena became entwined in lore with its unrenovated tenant and so it passes from the NBA stage, with a league-wide benediction.

The Houston Rockets’ Charles Barkley was asked recently if he had anything positive to say of the place.

“It’s positively a dump,” he said.

Farewell, Sports Arena. Better luck, next tenant.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

SPORTS ARENA FACTS

OPENED: 1959. Minneapolis Lakers played Philadelphia Warriors on Feb. 1, 1960 (Lakers played three games at Sports Arena that season).

FIRST REGULAR-SEASON L.A. LAKER GAME: OCT. 24, 1960

New York Knicks 111, Lakers 101

FIRST REGULAR-SEASON CLIPPER GAME: NOV. 1, 1984

Clippers 107, Knicks 105

BASKETBALL CAPACITY: 16,021

CLIPPER AVERAGE ATTENDANCE, 1999: 9,085