One summer night, Nicholson tended bar.
The Lakers had just defeated the Detroit Pistons in an exhausting Game 7 to win the 1988 NBA championship. The postgame party had spilled from the locker room to On The Rox, a private club on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
Lakers forward Mychal Thompson walked to the bar, surprised to see Nicholson, a few months removed from his ninth Academy Awards nomination. In a recent interview with The Athletic, Thompson paused while relaying this memory. “Let me see if I can imitate him,” he said.
“What do you have, Mychal?” Thompson said in Nicholson’s famous drawl, one that’s delivered some of the most iconic lines in cinema.
“What do you have, Mychal?” Thompson said in Nicholson’s famous drawl, one that’s delivered some of the most iconic lines in cinema.
“That was so cool I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Today, celebrity super fans are the norm, but perhaps no one has been more associated with a team, or a sport, than Nicholson has with the Lakers and the NBA. On Sunday, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame will add Nicholson, as well as actor Billy Crystal, director Spike Lee and businessman and Philadelphia 76ers fan Alan Horwitz, to its James F. Goldstein SuperFan Gallery, the latest honor for a man who long ago integrated Hollywood and hardwood.
For most of his adult life, Nicholson, 87, has been an NBA fixture, part of the fabric at The Forum and Staples Center, which is now Crypto.com Arena. A columnist for The Los Angeles Times once called Nicholson “the best sixth man the NBA has ever seen, the oddest weapon in a very odd league.” During the Lakers’ championship clashes with the Boston Celtics, Nicholson was a main character, as significant as Magic and Kareem, especially the night he stood in Boston Garden and showed Celtics fans his backside. Allegedly.
“He was not a normal person — he was Jack Nicholson,” former Lakers forward Jamaal Wilkes said. “We were all aware of that. We didn’t treat him like any other fan. We treated him with due respect and we appreciated the fact that he was so into us.”
For celebs, attending Lakers games became a form of Hollywood street cred, a place to be seen, but for Nicholson, it was never about publicity. He had grown up in New Jersey playing basketball, and his love for the game remained strong, even as life took him to the West Coast. Rolling Stone magazine once identified Nicholson’s passions as art, movies, skiing, books and basketball. Writer Tim Cahill asked Nicholson for a common denominator.
“There’s poetry in all those things,” the actor said in the 1981 story. “When I look at a painting, I get involved. There is a moment of truth somewhere. And basketball … when you miss a play, it’s a matter of microseconds. Little moments of truth. Skiing is like that. It’s all little moments of truth and extending the limits of control.” (...)
At On The Rox, an establishment owned by Nicholson’s close friend Lou Adler, Nicholson handed Thompson a beer. He poured forward Michael Cooper a tequila. Actress Daryl Hannah, Adler’s sister-in-law, joined Nicholson behind the bar. Magic and others danced. Parties that night erupted all over Los Angeles, but this was intimate. Just the Lakers, the coaching staff, trainer Gary Vitti and the players’ wives.
“And Jack,” former Lakers guard Byron Scott said. “That was our team. We were very tight. Very close-knit. Pat Riley wouldn’t let us have a lot of people in our inner circle. But Jack was in our inner circle.” (...)
For most of his years as a Lakers fan, Nicholson has had four season tickets in the front row near the visitors’ bench. A famed record producer, Adler, the On The Rox owner, has almost always sat by his side. In the 1980s, actor Harry Dean Stanton and film and television producer Bert Schneider were frequent Nicholson guests. Dennis Hopper and Michael Douglas were there as well.
Over the years, these seats have become known as the “Nicholson seats,” among the best the house can offer. Former NBA star Ralph Sampson suggested recently that Nicholson should receive royalties because nearly every team in the league profits handsomely from the courtside seats he made so famous. In town for the 2014 Wooden Awards, a couple college players actually posed for photos in the Nicholson seats, like tourists in front of a historical landmark.
But not everyone appreciated the location. Former Lakers public relations director Josh Rosenfeld said former Portland coach Jack Ramsay once asked organizations not to sell the seats close to the visitors’ bench. The reason: Ramsay was convinced Nicholson was relaying Ramsay’s instructions to the Lakers. Others made similar accusations, albeit jokingly. In the 2006 playoffs, Suns star Steve Nash told reporters that Nicholson was practically in the Phoenix huddle, “trying to steal our plays.”
Nicholson enjoyed the banter, especially with officials. Former referee Ed Rush actually addressed this with young officials before games at The Forum. “Look,” he recalled telling them. “He’s going to know you. He’s going to call you a rookie. You can handle this any way you want, but, remember, he’s going to want to talk for the whole game, so you have to figure a way to corral this. If you want to say hello or whatever, that’s fine. But at some point, it’s over.”
Former official Joe Crawford said he was in his third or fourth season when Nicholson first greeted him by name. It rattled him. “I’m saying to myself, ‘Jesus Christ, Jack Nicholson knows my name!'” Crawford said. “I’m all excited. Game starts and I don’t even know what freaking town I’m in. I’m missing plays all over the place.”
Former NBA head coach P.J. Carlesimo said it was like a coach had not yet arrived until Nicholson at least had an idea what your name was. It was almost like a rite of passage. Same for players. The first time he met Nicholson, Hall of Fame forward Adrian Dantley told the actor how much he enjoyed “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a popular Nicholson film, and for the rest of his career, Nicholson always made sure to say hello whenever Dantley played in Los Angeles.
“He wasn’t one of those nasty guys,” said former big man Tree Rollins, who once politely asked Nicholson to put out his cigarette, back when the NBA allowed smoking in arenas. “You had Spike Lee in New York. You had the lawyer (Robin Ficker) in Washington, you had Leon (the Barber) in Detroit. Jack did not harass you. I think he really enjoyed watching you perform, just as you enjoyed watching him perform.”
by Doug Haller, The Athletic | Read more:
Image: Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images
