THEY’RE NO LONGER STAPLES

There’s no other place to begin but here, high above the western sideline, with the man who has called every Laker game at the Forum and gave it the nickname that defined it for more than two decades.

It is from here that Chick Hearn has given his “word’s-eye view” for the last 32 seasons. He sat in his booth for the first game the Lakers played there in 1967, and he’ll be there tonight as Lakers’ regular-season games at the Forum come to a close when they play the Portland Trail Blazers.

The Kings checked out with a loss to the St. Louis Blues on April 18, although they will play one more exhibition there next fall before opening the Staples Center downtown.

After tonight, the Lakers have to keep winning to stay on the Forum court, and even a run to the NBA championship would only postpone their final appearance there until June--unless as expected they too schedule an exhibition next fall.

“When you’re around it as much as I have been through the years, the building, she’s part of your family--like a ship, I guess, to a sailor,” Hearn said. “I’m going to miss it. I’m going to miss it terribly.”

The Forum hasn’t been merely a building. It has been the stage for Showtime, an extension of Hollywood and the home of some of the city’s most memorable sports moments. There were championships won here and records broken. But many arenas can match that.

How many other places could prompt a visiting coach to complain of the “Chanel No. 5 smell,” as then-Golden State Warrior coach George Karl did in the 1980s?

What arena besides the Forum would have a retired cheerleader’s uniform, an old outfit of Laker Girl-turned-pop singer Paula Abdul, in a display case in the Forum Club?

Where else could an opposing coach find his leg grabbed by one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the midst of an argument with an official?

Star power and star players. In 1988-89, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd. in Inglewood could claim to be the center of the sports world. Magic Johnson was the NBA’s most valuable player that season, and Wayne Gretzky won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player, the only time the two best players in those sports played their home games in the same building.

It cost Jack Kent Cooke $12.5 million to build the Forum, and it cost Hearn one suit, the payoff for a bet he made with Cooke that he wouldn’t leave the Sports Arena for a new arena.

Cooke spent a lifetime doing what others said he couldn’t or shouldn’t. Sometimes he did things simply because others said he couldn’t or shouldn’t.

The idea for the Forum was born out of frustration in a room where Cooke faced Coliseum Commission officials shortly after buying the team in 1965.

Cooke was trying to obtain an NHL expansion franchise. The Coliseum Commission had already committed to the owner of the minor league L.A. Blades.

Coliseum Commission officials were also holding Cooke to a Laker contract signed by his predecessor, Bob Short, which still had two years to run.

“I figured I was being euchred out of the entire setup,” Cooke said years later. “They were treating me contemptuously. It was just awful. . . . I’d only been [in Los Angeles] three or four years and I didn’t know about the machinations of these guys, Machiavellian kind of birds.

“So I said, ‘You know, you’re making this whole thing so difficult, I’m liable to build my own arena.’ And this fella looked at me and said, ‘Ha, ha. ha.’

“Now if he’d only laughed, I would have laughed with him, you see? But he actually said, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ I said, ‘In that case, I am going to build my own arena.’ I turned to [Cooke attorney] Clyde Tritt and said, ‘Close your briefcase. I’ve had enough of this balderdash.’ And away we went.”

Cooke told his architect, Charles Luckman, he wanted “something about 2,000 years ago and about 6,000 miles to the east of here.”

The building was lavish for its time, costing more than twice as much as its contemporary, Philadelphia’s Spectrum. Roman architecture inspired the Forum’s name and distinctive columns. Cooke gave Hearn the task of assigning it a distinctive adjective.

“I came up the next day and said, ‘How about the Fabulous Forum?’ ” Hearn said. Then he went into an uncannily accurate Cooke imitation: “My God, Chick, that’s perfect.”

So Fabulous it was, until Great Western purchased the naming rights in 1988 and repainted the orange exterior dark blue.

Fabulous and great only begin to describe some of the Lakers’ and Kings’ most memorable moments at the Forum. The Kings had the honor of opening the Forum on Dec. 30, 1967, with a game against the Philadelphia Flyers.

Bob Miller, the King play-by-play announcer since 1973, recalls the thunderous ovation at the Forum when the Triple Crown Line of Marcel Dionne, Dave Taylor and Charlie Simmer was introduced together at the 1981 All-Star game. He also recalls watching Butch Goring score the game-winning goal against the Boston Bruins in Game 6 of their 1976 playoff series, then get carried off the ice on his teammates’ shoulders.

“You see it in football,” Miller said. “But I’d never seen it in hockey.”

The Forum was the site of one of hockey’s most historic moments, when Gretzky scored his record-breaking 802nd goal.

The Lakers hung six championship banners in the building, and such all-time NBA greats as Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor wore the gold Laker jerseys (which, thanks to a grandfather clause, are now the only nonwhite home uniforms allowed by the NBA).

West stood on the floor during the Lakers’ media day this year and his eyes started glancing around the building, reliving highlights of his career. You might remember some of them, maybe even sat in the Forum for some of them. West lived them.

“There are certain places on that court that, to me, I can almost tell you where I made some shots to win games,” he said. “I don’t come down here at this level very often. Most of my time is spent up there [he pointed to the tunnel halfway up the loge section where he stands during Laker games]. When I get down here . . . I don’t know. It’s like the expanse of the building, all the people there . . . I’ll remember those things, always.”

One of the most famous games in Forum history was one the Lakers lost.

The 1969 NBA finals came down to a seventh game between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics at the Forum.

Cooke was so certain the Lakers were going to win that he had balloons placed in the upper reaches of the building, to be released upon the Laker victory.

When Red Auerbach, then Boston’s general manager and always a man looking for an edge, saw those balloons as he entered the arena, he asked who had put them up.

When told, Auerbach replied, “Those things are going to stay up there a hell of a long time.”

Auerbach was right. The Lakers lost by two.

“I sent them all to a children’s hospital,” Cooke said, “where the kids had a great time with them. Certainly a better time than I did.”

In the 1980s, Laker games weren’t only about great times. They were about Showtime and Winnin’ Time, with the Lakers winning five championships in nine years.

In May 1979, Jerry Buss bought the Forum, the Lakers and the Kings from Cooke for $67.5 million in a complicated deal that involved nine pieces of property, including New York’s Chrysler Building, 12 separate escrows in three states and more than 50 lawyers and advisors.

Then it was time to party, which is basically what game nights at the Forum were for the next 10 years. The Lakers became the chosen team of the celebrity set.

“It seemed to me that every time I went to see a baseball game or a football game or a basketball game, most of the crowd was from out of town and they were cheering for the Knicks or the Bulls or somebody else,” Buss said. “I thought, ‘You know, we don’t have any identity to our teams here.’ So what should we look for? This isn’t Motown, this is Hollywood. Let’s capitalize on it and give it some identity with some glamour, which is what this city is best known for.”

Hollywood’s biggest names took over the loge level, led by Jack Nicholson in his courtside seat. (Nicholson sometimes became part of the action, as when he grabbed Washington Bullet coach Dick Motta’s leg as Motta charged the scorer’s table after receiving a technical.)

Buss spent his time in a box high above the baseline on the northern side. He once was told the best way to scout a football game was to watch from the end zone (to see the plays develop), and he found that applied to basketball as well. His spot also let him watch with less interference.

The most famous story about Buss’ box involves the night he left it early. It was April 10, 1982--the Miracle on Manchester.

The Kings trailed the Edmonton Oilers, 5-0, in the third period. The Kings kept chipping away and tied the score with five seconds remaining, then won in overtime.

Buss was in his limousine, on his way to a black-tie affair. Afraid he might jinx the team, he kept on going.

“I’m not unhappy,” said Buss, who later sold his interest in the Kings. “If it takes me walking away from a building to cause a miracle to occur, then count me out.”

The Forum wasn’t always about the shared memories. Sometimes it was about the private times, when the building was empty and open for imagination.

On the night after his deal to buy the Forum and its teams was completed, Buss took a folding chair and went down to the darkened floor of the arena, sat down, puffed on a cigarette and thought about how far he had come from a poor childhood in Evanston, Wyo., and how far he could go in his new playground.

After Johnson, the No. 1 pick in the 1979 draft, came to the Forum for an introductory news conference, he too walked down to the Forum floor, sat in the stands and imagined running up and down the floor, making bullet passes to Abdul-Jabbar and Jamaal Wilkes, the roar of the crowd.

Soon, Buss and Johnson would join so many others whose dreams, and nightmares in some cases, became reality at the corner of Manchester and Prairie.

Now an empty Forum conjures up images of the past. There will be other nights at the Forum, which will stay open for the WNBA, boxing, concerts and other events, but it will never again be so fabulous.

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FORUM FACTS

OPENED: 1967

FIRST LAKER GAME: DEC. 31, 1967

Lakers 147, San Diego Rockets 118

BASKETBALL CAPACITY: 17,505

LAKER AVERAGE ATTENDANCE, 1999: 17,188