Hey, Tootsie, Down in Front!

Something was seriously amiss with the Lakers’ new seating chart at the Staples Center. Mr. “You Can’t Handle the Truth’s” court-side seat--one of the city’s prime pieces of real estate--was in the same spot as it had been at the Great Western Forum. But the home and visitors’ benches had been flip-flopped, putting him near the Laker bench. As team vice president Tim Harris explains, “Jack likes to sit near the visitors’ bench.”

Laker officials, not about to forget their most famous fan, Jack Nicholson, approached another court-side die-hard who had lost his seat near the Laker bench. “Jack’s been sitting there for 20 years,” says Norm Pattiz, chairman of Westwood One radio. “I’ve been sitting [by the Lakers] for 10 years and I wanted to keep it the same, too.” A deal was quietly struck. The two men swapped. Should Roman Polanski be filming this?

Good seats are no laughing matter where hoops meet hype. The National Basketball Assn. likes those television shots of Dyan Cannon cheering for the Lakers and Spike Lee waving a towel over his head for the New York Knicks. At the Staples Center, the league made room for more front-row seats by relaxing its policies about court-side spots for lesser entities such as sportscasters and reporters.

“The value of Jack Nicholson sitting where he sits, that is not lost on the NBA,” Harris says.

So the power players--Michael Ovitz, Jim Carrey, Penny Marshall, Denzel Washington and, of course, Cannon--will have their feet planted firmly on the Lakers’ hardwood floor next season, in those front-row seats that fetch $1,150 a game. Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia will hover a few rows up. Even the Clippers have a celebrity contingent led by Billy Crystal and director James L. Brooks.

But not every celebrity wants to be seen. Tom Hanks leased a luxury suite behind the television cameras, making it harder for broadcasters to show the Oscar-winning actor and his family during timeouts. Game-show host Pat Sajak also opted for a suite to watch Kings games.

“I enjoy the privacy,” Sajak says. “There’s very little Spike Lee in me.”