England has hoop dreams too

LONDON -- THE INSPIRATION

Before Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs, Staff Writer Mike Bresnahan led off “Bresnahan’s take” with this exchange:

Question: My name is Ian, I’m from England, and I’m a pretty big fan of the Lakers. This is a big year for me as I’m about to graduate [from a] university, but that of course would pale in comparison to the Lakers winning a championship this year. If it happens, I would love to be at the final game, but I don’t have much money. My request anyway is this: Can I stay on your couch for a day or two? I promise I’ll be quiet and you’ll never know I’m there . . . well, I may need a ride to the airport.

--Ian McCabe, Newcastle, England

Answer: Uh, let me get back to you on that one.

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He has never been to the United States. He knows no other Lakers fans. He gushes about the Lakers to fellow Brits, whose blank expressions indicate he might as well be speaking Urdu.

He once heard his own soccer-crazed father say of the NBA, “There’s only five guys on the pitch?”

Yet in the burgeoning category of Laker love, surely nobody on Earth trumps Ian McCabe, 23, student, Northumbria University, Newcastle, England, near the North Sea. Unlike many routinely deranged fans of the Pacific time zone, his love has often ravaged his sleep.

Just the other night for Game 2 of Lakers-Denver, tip-off came at 3:30 a.m., so McCabe set his alarm, but he could nap for only maybe an hour because anticipation bent his nervous system. “I’m still like a kid,” he said. Four quarters over Internet radio later, bliss, and, “the sun was coming up.”

McCabe called in sick for his part-time job. Don’t tell his boss.

Back in his teen years, wee-hour tip-offs in a big Lakers series would leave him shattered during school hours after he’d set his alarm and watched, often unbeknownst to his parents. After Game 4 of the NBA Finals in 2000 against Indiana, when Shaquille O’Neal fouled out and Kobe Bryant took over, “I remember sitting in math class talking to my friend about it,” he said. “And about 20 minutes later I was just about out.”

It’s a genuine fandom upset, how a born member of one of the world’s most fervent fan bases, Newcastle United soccer -- which McCabe’s father cherishes -- could wind up caring more about an indoor team in a non-British sport eight time zones west, even stating the following: “I love Chick Hearn. He was a genius.”

Credit a common child persuasion: favorite color.

In 1993, on a Friday night, 8-year-old Ian awaited some forgotten TV show when an NBA update showed the Chicago Bulls and the only player of whom anybody in England had heard. (You know which.) That sparked a fascination with a weekly NBA update show, and that ushered in Laker love based first on the love of yellow -- or, by proxy, gold.

Then he heard one player’s name and, “The name made me think, Whoa, Magic? He must be special.”

By 2008, he’d end up watching his batch of Laker DVDs including one about Magic Johnson, or listening to his MP3 of Hearn calls and quotes, or saying, “I was showing a DVD to my friend, I played the ’88 Finals and said, ‘You’ll never see a starting five as good as that again.’ He had no idea what I was talking about.”

He’d continue talking sports with his father, yes -- “the only thing we ever talk about” -- but he’d bring up basketball, leaving his father’s nose upturned, or his eyes glazed, or his mouth suddenly uttering, “The match isn’t even an hour long.”

He’d daydream of seeing Los Angeles, and he’d find that in his consciousness, basketball would surpass soccer somehow, so he’d be up at 5 a.m. “hearing commentators talking about how the Lakers couldn’t get into the lane because of a certain zone defense.” And one sleepless night in early 2008, amid his gloom over the Andrew Bynum injury, he’d wake at 4, learn of a trade for Pau Gasol, and, “I thought, Am I dreaming? Then I saw Kwame Brown went and I said, ‘I really am dreaming.’ ”