Chick is gone
Legendary Lakers’ broadcaster passes away
By: Richard Linde, Posted 6 August 2002

Chick Hearn, 85, the voice of the Los Angeles Lakers passed away yesterday, ending 42 years of broadcasting Lakers’ games. The rapid-fire delivery and unique lexicon he brought to the game will always be remembered.

I encountered my first “Chickisms,” as a young man taking a new job in the city of Santa Monica. “Elgin yo-yo’s up and down, looking for a shot inside,” Chick would say. “He goes to the basket. Slam dunk.” Instantly, I became a Lakers’ fanatic, along with many others who lived in the Los Angeles area. 

At that time, the Lakers were the newest show in town,  having just arrived from Minneapolis with Baylor and Mr. Clutch, Jerry West. 

Though a devout Washington Husky fan, I’d followed Elgin Baylor's exploits at Seattle University and was a big fan of his when I lived in Seattle. He did things with the basketball I’d never seen done before. In the backcourt at the NCAA playoffs, Elgin and Sweet Charlie Brown put on a dribbling/passing exhibition that will never be duplicated in college ball. Reminding Elgin of those two entertaining nights brings a big smile to his face. *

Listening to Hearn describe Elgin's exploits as a Laker was just as captivating. Hearn was unique as an announcer, one who will never be cloned by anyone. It can't be done.

Hearn invented a whole lexicon of terms that are part of the basketball vocabulary today: “slam dunk,” “air ball,” “dribble drive,” and “yo-yoing up and down” to describe a player dribbling a ball.

A game wasn’t over effectively until the “The game is in the refrigerator.” Later came the phrase, "The door is closed, the light is out, the eggs are cooling, and the butter is getting hard." The “jello is jiggling,” came even later, a phrase suggested by a fan.

A defender badly fooled by a player with the ball was "faked into the popcorn machine." "The mustard's off the hot dog," described a player mishandling the ball while trying a flamboyant move that failed.

Hearn broadcast 3,338 consecutive games in a streak that began in 1965 and ended when he suffered a series of medical setbacks that began late last year.

He was the inventor and master of the simulcast, and his rapid-fire delivery complimented the Lakers' fast-packed game.

During the playoffs this season, when the national TV team  became too drab, Chick was there on radio to bring some effervescence to the broadcast—and many Laker fans muted the sound on their televisions to listen to him.

As the years pass by, Los Angeles fans fondly remember the fabulous Lakers by their first names: Elgin, Jerry, Kareem, Magic, Wilt, Shaq--and last but not least, Chick. He was as much a part of the franchise as any of them, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to prove it. 

Chick Hearn, still the voice of the Lakers at age 85, finished his last season in a blaze of glory as his beloved team won its third-consecutive NBA championship.

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* Years later, on the golf course, playing with a friend of mine, Elgin christened my new Callaway Big Bertha driver, launching a ball 270 yards or so, the only time the driver has hit a ball that far.