Lantz’s Stories Show Sunny Side of Chick

Asked this week to recall some of his memories of Chick Hearn, Stu Lantz said, “Gee, I wish I could call Chick. He’s the one with the great memory. He’s the one with all the great stories.”

But Lantz, who spent 15 seasons as Hearn’s broadcast partner and travel companion, was able to remember a few.

“You know how people will set an alarm in a hotel room, then check out and never turn it off,” he said. “I forget where we were, but Chick had stayed up late one night working on his statistics, cutting things out and mounting them on his boards. I think he must have left his scissors on the nightstand.

“The alarm went off at 4 a.m., and Chick couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. So he just grabbed the scissors and cut the cord.”

Lantz recalled going to dinner with Hearn once during a training camp in Hawaii.

“He volunteered to drive,” Lantz said. “After we finished eating we discovered Chick had not only left the keys locked in the car but had also left the lights on. Even if we could have gotten to the keys, we were still stuck.”

Many of Lantz’s memories have to do with Hearn’s penchant for kidding.

“He was always trying to get people to believe a story that wasn’t true,” Lantz said. “He was always fishing. We called him the Big Fisherman because he was always seeing who he could get to bite.

“On the team bus, I always sat directly across the aisle from him, so I could I hear when he was trying to reel someone in. He’d start out saying something like, ‘I can’t believe so and so got traded.’

“Then he’d wait for someone to hear him and run with it. Pretty soon the whole bus was buzzing. He’d wait five or 10 minutes, then, laughing, he’d let everyone know he was kidding.”

Lantz recalled a time in Denver when Hearn put a game in the refrigerator too early.

“Chick said, ‘I’ll walk home if the Lakers lose this game.’ ”

The Lakers lost.

“The funny thing was Susan [Stratton, Channel 9’s executive producer] put a graphic on the screen that showed how many miles it was between Denver and Los Angeles,” Lantz said.

Lantz has been asked over the years how he and Hearn really got along. Lantz said if they had a disagreement on the air, it was soon forgotten.

“I’d tell Chick, ‘You’re entitled to your opinion, even if you’re opinion is wrong.’ We’d have a good laugh, and that would be that.”

Hearn and Lantz, often referred to as Chick ‘n Stu, became almost like father and son. Lantz drove from his home in San Diego to the hospital on Saturday.

Lantz said he owes his career with the Lakers to Hearn.

He and Hearn worked a summer league game together for Prime Ticket in the mid 1980s and also did a couple of Nevada Las Vegas basketball games.

“He told me if there were ever an opening for someone to work with him, he’d call,” Lantz said.

After Keith Erickson left for the Phoenix Suns in 1987, Hearn called.

“He was true to his word,” Lantz said. “There are a lot of things you can say about Chick and one is that he had a good heart. He had the best heart in the world.

“I never thought this day would come. I always thought he’d be announcing long after I’m gone.”