LAKER MANIA

The stars come out aid roar at the L.A. Lakers' games. All the major players of Tinseltown, reports ANGELA JANKLOW, from Kirk Douglas to Jack Nicholson to Barbra Streisand, are jostling for a courtside seat to root for the home team and flex their town power

red Ferrari Testarossa, a Maiibu Colony beach house, a front table at Mortons—blockbuster trappings have always been an immediate gauge of success in Hollywood. Now there's another little something that everyone wants and very few can get: a courtside seat at the Forum for the forty-one annual home games of basketball's reigning

world champions, the Los Angeles Lakers. For Hollywood royalty Laker games are like Ascot for the British upper crust, or opening night at the opera for New York society. Imagine the halftime schmooze—it's Swifity Lazar's Oscar bash in a 17,500seat stadium: an opportunity to get in on the action; a chance to be associated with victory. Heads swivel to see who's there—and, more important, who's where—as the fraternity of entertainment-industry big boys jockey for position on the favored floor. Laker fever is raging and big fan Kirk Douglas knows why: "Everybody loves a winner and nowhere more than in Hollywood, where the vicarious thrill of identification with a winner might somehow rub off."

Win they certainly do, compiling an extraordinary record of six consecutive Pacific Division and four N.B.A. championships in the last eight seasons. And this year, as the Lakers go for their first backto-back world titles, they'll be cheered on by a fanatic audience of Tinseltown's own major-leaguers: Creative Artists Agency head honcho Michael Ovitz; Drexel Burnham Lambert junk-bond king Mike Milken; Oscar winners Jack Nicholson, Tatum O'Neal, and director James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News); a triple whammy of record-label chiefs, Joe Smith of Capitol-EMI, Irving Azoff of MCA, and Mo Ostin of Warner's; and those heaviest of heavyweights Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali (who uses the opportunity to hand out pro-Islamic pamphlets).

Joe Smith is the Lakers' number-one fan—at $175 each per game ($190 for play-offs and finals), his prize quartet of courtside seats costs him nearly $40,000 a year. This is boggling to loyalists of the archrival Boston Celtics, whose $28 top tickets total out at just over $1,000 annually. Smith says, "I've had guys from Boston come up to me and say, 'So you're the crazy one.' ''

L.A. doesn't think it's so crazy. As one regular says, "When you watch it from the stands, you're watching the movie. But when you sit where Smith sits, you're in the movie." The television cameras catch Smith constantly, giving him and the other front-liners heady airtime exposure.

Scalpers can command $1,000 for one of the 128 courtside seats. Getting one any other way is tough. The turnover is practically nonexistent and holders are obsessively territorial. Stories abound of divorcing couples fighting for custody of their beloved seats. Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss illustrates the point: "John McEnroe gets a six-figure exhibition-match fee. The Forum had already hired him twice, but we needed him a third time and it just wasn't in our budget. He said he'd do it for two seats on the floor. That gives you some idea of what they're worth."

Dr. Buss is the producer, and director, of the team's success. When the multimillionaire real-estate entrepreneur bought the lackluster Lakers in 1979, they barely even sported a home-team advantage. "I set out to create the most exciting team in the world. And, by doing that, cement a relationship between the city of Los Angeles and the Lakers as Berry Gordy had done with Detroit and Motown." Buss cemented his own Hollywood credentials by buying Pickfair, the legendary home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and by since selling it to Pia Zadora and Meshulam Riklis. He cast his team with potential superstars. Kirk Douglas says, "It's a weekly series where each character has a terrific personality and you can't wait to get back." From the venerable captain, Kareem AbdulJabbar, the N.B.A.'s all-time leading scorer, to the mesmerizing Magic Johnson, the N.B.A.'s highestpaid player, they're a studio chief's dream of a team: a seven-foot posse of good guys with a marked flair for the dramatic. They're a box-office smash every time they play. They even have a glamour-boy coach in picture-perfect Pat Riley, a Screen Actors Guild member whom Teri Garr elected to be our next pinup president on David Letterman.

OVITZ'S GUESTS

BILL MURRAY DUSTIN HOFFMAN ROB REINER BARRY LEVINSON

Director

BOB DALY

Warner Bros, chairman and C.E.O.

DON JOHNSON WITH BRUCE WILLIS

ROB LOWE* AND FAWN HALL

KEVIN COSTNER

CHEECH MARIN*

EISAMAN, JOHNS & LAWS*

(four seats)

JERRY WEINTRAUB*

Weintraub Entertainment chairman and C.E.O.

(four seats)

MICHAEL OVITZ* WITH ARNE GLIMCHER

Producer and Pace Gallery president

THE OWNER'S BOX DR. BUSS'S QUESTS

SUGAR RAY LEONARD TOMMY HEARNS MARVIN DAVIS

Private investor

CHEVY CHASE BILL BRADLEY

Senator (and ex-Knick)

MR T

ROBERT KERLAN*

Team doctor

VISITING TEAM BENCH

DYAN CANNON* MARLON JACKSON* KEN KRAGEN

DAVID WOLPER*

Producer

WHOOPI GOLDBERG*

Mo OSTIN*

Warner Records chairman

STEVE ROSS. MARTIN AND CHARLIE SHEEN

Warner Communications chairman and C.E.O.

NEIL DIAMOND GARRY SHANDLING

PETER FALK

JACK NICHOLSON* (four seats) WITH MICHAEL DOUGLAS

NICHOLSON'S QUESTS DEBRA WINGER DARYL HANNAH Lou ADLER Producer SUSAN SARANDON ANJELICA HUSTON BOB RAFELSON HARRY DEAN STANTON ROBERT TOWNE Screenwriter HASKELL WEXLER Cinematographer BERT SCHNEIDER The Monkees producer

GLENN FREY*

WILLIAM HURT

RICHARD PERRY*

Record producer

WITH TINA TURNER

SAM NASSI*

Real-estate magnate

JOHN MCENROE AND TATUM O'NEAL*

REGGIE JACKSON

CARSON PRODUCTIONS*

CBS*

(four seats)

JOE SMITH*

Capitol-EMI president and C.E.O. (four seats)

IRVING AZOFF*

MCA president

JIM BELUSHI

HENRY WINKLER

MUHAMMAD ALI

WILLIAM L. PETERSEN

WALTER MATTHAU*

VERONICA HAMEL

AL DAVIS

L A. Raiders owner

_ L A. Raider

MIKE MILKEN

Drexel Burnham Lambert

JON AVNET

Producer

STEVE TISCH

Producer, writer

Court in the Act

The famous players take their power positions at Laker games. (*Season-ticket holders.)

OTHER FLOOR-SEAT HOLDERS

AVALON ATTRACTIONS SAATCHI & SAATCHI DFS SECURITY PACIFIC NATIONAL BANK BANK OF AMERICA WESTWOOD ONE COMPANIES FRANK SINATRA ENTERPRISES THRIFTY CORPORATION

LOR1MAR* (four seats)

KIRK DOUGLAS

MIKE TYSON

HOWIE LONG Raider

The crossover dreams work both ways. Magic's agent, Lon Rosen, says, "All the actors want to be athletes and all the athletes want to be actors." Jack Nicholson, who invites the team to screenings and wore black when Norm Nixon was traded, bought the Forum a VCR and tapes so that if he had to miss a game it could be Federal Expressed to him to watch "live" the next day. Rob Lowe snuck off the Hamptons set of Masquerade last year and seaplaned to Boston for the finals (where he shot hoops with Michael J. Fox). Baryshnikov was wowed when he went to a game—"They think we jump, now that's jumping." Record producer Richard Perry says that "when the team goes dancing at On the Rox [Lou Adler's private club at the Roxy], Michael Cooper brings his own nonstop slammin' cassette and Magic calls out signals, cuing the guys in to a new step."

There's a slew of show-biz spin-offs, including a Lakers Are Cookin' cookbook (Gilda Radner and Gene Wilder's fish marinade, Walter Matthau's kasha goulash, Henry "The Fonz" Winkler's baked beans). Then there's the Laker Girls. The cheerleaders seem to cast a spell over Jack Nicholson. Charlie Sheen sent fifty white roses with one red rose in the center to one Laker Girl. Another married teen idol Rex Smith. And Laker Girl alum Paula Abdul became Janet Jackson's choreographer.

But Magic is probably the biggest star in town. He even has his own billboard on Sunset Boulevard. When Magic walks into a restaurant, the room stops and there's just deafening applause. "I'm in awe when that happens," he says. Magic was slated to be in Eddie Murphy's new movie, but ran into wardrobe problems. Bruce Willis was thrilled to meet Magic, and all Magic wanted to talk about was Moonlighting. Kareem may have scouted jazz bands for MCA, but Magic has prompted an unprecedented move at CAA: Michael Ovitz signed him in March as its first athlete client. The L.A. Times quoted Irving Azoff as saying, "It's a great marriage. ... [Magic's] an untapped wealth."

The L.A. Lakers are the town's star attraction, and the attraction of the stars in a town where celebrity scores high. "If you want to see them shine," says Dr. Buss proudly, "there's just one place to look."