‘Fieldhouse of Dreams’

In India, a prince built a shrine to his departed love that became known as one of the seven wonders of the world.

Here, the local Taj Mahal celebrates basketball. But then every place has its priorities.

Five other arenas opened this season and nine in the ‘90s, in a drive for modernity that Commissioner David Stern thought was the way to the future. But nobody in the NBA ever built anything like the Hoosier theme park called Conseco Fieldhouse.

Compared to Conseco, with its retro-to-the-max charm and exquisite sight lines, everything else is just a building, smacking of the old circular-stadium days of the ‘60s and ‘70s, when cities built multi-purpose venues for baseball and football that are now being replaced, having been deemed generic and without personality.

The Lakers’ (and Clippers’) Staples Center may be state of the art, big enough to house a blimp and luxurious enough for a pasha or studio head, but as an actual venue for basketball, it’s as much a mismatch as this series, only the other way around.

At Conseco, all the reviews are rave. The New York Times called it “the Fieldhouse of dreams.” The Louisville Courier-Journal noted, “What Camden Yards in Baltimore is to baseball park design, Conseco Fieldhouse is to the way basketball arena should be constructed.”

Wrote the New York Times’ George Vecsey: “This fieldhouse makes a New Yorker want to rush home and . . . [push] the plunger on that claustrophobic den called Madison Square Garden.”

Wrote the Rocky Mountain News Dave Krieger: “Let’s be honest: The wave of extravagant new arenas across the country is all about making money. At least in Indiana, they had the good grace to disguise it.”

Disguise it? In Conseco, the motto is, if it doesn’t move, nail something from the ‘50s to it.

The old-time basketball theme is carried out in mind-boggling detail. There are trophy cases in the hallways, as in high school, an old-fashioned barber shop, where they do face painting. (Face it, even in the Good Old Days, who came to a basketball game to get his hair cut?) Sponsors putting up millions of dollars are required in addition to adhere to the crewcut-boys-girls-in-bobby-sox theme in signs and billboards.

There are tributes to Indiana high school ball, college ball and defunct pro teams from the ‘40s and ‘50s. Pictures of players such as Tracy Jackson and Wayne Radford line the hallways. The building has a barrel roof, modeled after the famed Hinkle Fieldhouse.

Of course, unless you’re from around here, you may be wondering . . .

Tracy Jackson? Wayne Radford? Hinkle Fieldhouse?

Jackson played at Notre Dame, Radford at Indiana University. Tony Hinkle was the longtime coach at Butler University, which is located here. The fieldhouse that was later named after him was the site for the high school tournament and used for the climactic scene in the movie, “Hoosiers.”

That’s how it is around here. Their hoopers may not be famous everywhere else, but they still love them.

In comparison, Staples, which is huge, ultra-modern and packed with luxuries, is often marked down by visitors and Angelenos alike as soul-less and corporate. Bruce Springsteen, in the concert that opened the place, exhorted fans in the 160 luxury suites to “come out of your rooms.”

Nor were the Lakers swept away by the atmosphere.

Coach Phil Jackson often suggested turning down the house lights, on the theory the fans were scouting for celebrities instead of cheering. (He was new in town and didn’t know how mellow Laker fans are, until the playoffs.) Even in the postseason, with the Lakers reeling out of Sacramento and coming home for Game 5, the plea among the players was, turn your cell phones off for a day.

In Conseco, they went for a different feel. There are no windows in their 69 luxury suites, no fax machines or even private bathrooms.

Pacer General Manager David Kahn says, “There are no two buildings in our league that are as different as this building [Staples] and the Fieldhouse,” calling Staples “an L.A. kind of place.”

(Not that he means that’s all bad. Kahn attended UCLA, was co-sports editor of the Daily Bruin and an intern on this sports section. Now, partly because of the reviews for the building, his name comes up for seven-figure NBA jobs.)

From their arrival in the NBA in 1977, the Pacers played in nearby Market Square Arena, which resembled the Great Western Forum, but louder. Like the Forum, it had no suites. Unlike the Forum, it couldn’t charge $1,000 for courtside seats.

The Pacers were breathing exhaust fumes in the NBA and largely ignored in Indiana, as well.

“When we got there,” team President Donnie Walsh says, “I didn’t think pro ball was in the mix with high school and college. Which is one reason, by the way, I wanted a retro look years later. It was my goal, we’ve got to get in that mix and get people excited so that we’re part of the mix, because this is a basketball market. It’s a small market, but it’s a basketball market. Yet we’re not part of it.

“And I think it took us until Larry Brown came in [in 1993] and we went to the Eastern Conference finals in his first year--that to me began the process of us getting in that mix.

“That summer after we got to the Eastern Conference finals against New York, that’s when I started going around the community, talking about a new arena.”

Today, there’s a new area with an in-house practice court with windows to the street, so fans can look in . . . a Starbucks (as Kahn remarked in another context, “There are limits to retro”) . . . one section of actual bleachers . . . an old-fashioned, posted-by-hand scoreboard for other games . . . a Varsity Club where waiters and waitresses wear letter sweaters, with windows that look into the hallway outside the Pacers’ dressing room, so patrons can watch players file back and forth . . . ad infinitum.

On opening night, they honored Indiana’s 50 greatest players, starting with Coach Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson and John Wooden, known as the Indiana Rubber Man as an All-American at Purdue.

Everyone showed or sent representatives except Rick Mount, the local legend as a schoolboy and a collegian, who had only a brief pro career and is said to be still upset at the Pacers.

Nevertheless, Mount, his silky shooting touch and his flat top with the little curl in front, are still in the fans’ dreams . . . and on the Conseco scoreboard.

The pre-game video presentation, which is all lasers and special effects everywhere else, is retro here too, starting with a shot of an old wood-frame house during a storm with mom, dad and the kids sitting around the radio, listening to the state tournament, where tiny Milan High School is putting the ball into play for the shot Bobby Plump hit to win the ’54 tournament.

The video segues to Mount, Purdue’s Billy Keller, the Pacers’ Roger Brown and finally the star of the moment, Reggie Miller, hitting the winning three-pointer against the Bulls in Game 4 of the 1998 Eastern finals that was the franchise’s high point--before this season.

Then the words come up.

“In 49 states, it’s just basketball. . . . “

They fade away, replaced by “ . . . but this is Indiana.”

By then, half the 18,345 in the house (there’s never been an empty seat for a Pacer game) must have shivers down their backs. Rock on, Hoosiers, and thanks for having us over.