We Lost a Friend as Well as an Icon

We didn’t only lose a voice.

We lost a guy who rode shotgun with us on harried winter afternoons.

We lost a neighbor who sat in our living rooms on tortured spring evenings.

We lost a friend, darn it, an old friend, a dear friend, a crumudgeonly, eccentric, funny, couldn’t-wait-to-see-him-again friend.

A trusted friend.

Besides Vin Scully, do Los Angeles sports fans have any of those left?

Chick Hearn is gone, and it’s hard to even write the words.

He was 85, he barely survived last season, the last time I saw him he was slowly moving through a New Jersey gym, his face pale, his hands clutching to a walker.

Yet it’s still as difficult to fathom as the idea of someone broadcasting 3,338 consecutive games.

Chick Hearn is gone?

The Jell-O has stopped jiggling? The butter is melting? The eggs are broke?

His death Monday feels like a fire that razed that wonderfully creaky antique house on the corner. We didn’t only lose a voice, we lost a little piece of our city that can never be rebuilt.

The Lakers are our city’s most beloved sports team, yet there was only one who was completely beloved by everyone.

We know everything about the Lakers, yet there was only one of them who acted as if he knew anything about us.

Chick--and I will not refer to him as Hearn, nobody ever called him Hearn--was the amazingly flexible and resilient bridge between the common fan and the movie stars who played basketball for them.

On Hollywood’s team, he was our connection.

We growl when the Lakers don’t play hard? So did Chick.

We moaned at Shaquille O’Neal’s early foul-shooting troubles? So did Chick.

We cringed at Kobe Bryant’s crazy shots? So did Chick.

When the Lakers won a close game, it was Chick who wiped his face first, then handed us the towel.

When the Lakers lost a bad game, it was Chick who threw down the program just in

time for us to kick it across the floor.

Perhaps my favorite Chick moment occurred when he was honored during halftime of one of their home games.

The Lakers had struggled in the first half. Chick was brought to midcourt for the ceremony. He was handed a microphone. Maybe you can guess what happened next.

He didn’t say he was thankful to the Lakers for honoring him.

He said he was angry with the Lakers for dogging it.

The crowd roared, as it always roared for Chick, the only Laker who consistently garnered a standing ovation before every game.

Appropriately, he was introduced as he sat in his unusual seat, which wasn’t along press row but halfway up the lower level, smack in the middle of the stands above midcourt.

Appropriately, the cameras would always catch him surrounded by gawking and gesturing fans.

When I first came to town, I wondered why Chick never asked for a better seat. But as the years passed, I realized, for him, that was the best seat. He could see the entire game, and he could do so among friends.

In 42 years, the Lakers became huge, their salaries became incomprehensible, the gym moved downtown, a bunch of guys running ball in Inglewood became a group of international heroes that sometimes felt too large to embrace.

But Chick never changed.

A guy making $20 million a year could still get faked into a popcorn machine.

If a platinum rap artist lost the ball, the mustard was still off the hot dog, even if that hot dog could now afford to buy the entire slaughterhouse.

The language of the league changed, but Chick kept talking the same way.

The work ethic of the league slackened, but Chick refused to buy into that either, setting a standard that will be best illustrated in the Lakers attempt to replace him.

I have been told they may have to hire two people. One for radio, one for television.

And, yeah, like one of them will start next season and not miss a game for the next ... 36 ... years. No matter how much that record is celebrated, it can never be fully appreciated, because it can never be fully comprehended.

Did you know that Chick invented the term “air ball?” Or that he was the first to use, “dribble drive?”

Like any good friend, Chick eventually changed the way we spoke. He changed the way we saw.

For nearly half a century, he sat with us and laughed with us and cheered with us until, instead of simply broadcasting the Laker experience, he defined it.

It will be impossible to think of anything but him this fall when the Lakers win their first game in a quest for a fourth consecutive NBA title.

Ten o’clock at night, and half of L.A. will be running to the refrigerator.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.