J.A. Adande - The Best Los Angeles Sports Arguments: The 100 Most Controversial, Debatable Questions for Die-Hard Fans

2007 by J.A. Adande

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Photo page 291 courtesy of Robert Gould

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Adande, J. A.

The best Los Angeles sports arguments : the 100 most controversial, debatable questions for die-hard fans / J.A. Adande. p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-1106-5 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 1-4022-1106-6 (pbk.)

1. SportsCaliforniaLos AngelesMiscellanea. I. Title.

GV584.5.L7A43 2007

796.'0979494dc22

2007029258

Printed and bound in the United States of America

CH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Who are the All-Time Best Lakers?

Who are the All-Time Best L.A. Dodgers?

Who are the All-Time Best Angels?

What got you hooked?

For me it was Magic Johnson as a rookie, running the fast break, dishing out no-look passes, celebrating every triumph big and small with hugs, high-fives, and that billboard-sized smile.

From that point, Los Angeles sports teams werent just something to notice occasionally, such as when the Rams made it to the Super Bowl. Every game worked its way into the ebbs and flows of my life. People who knew me well could predict my mood on any given day based on whether or not the Lakers won the night before.

I spent many nights waiting for Chick Hearn to put a Lakers game in the refrigerator before turning off my bedside clock radio. I spent many summer afternoons listening to Vin Scully's masterful descriptions of Dah-ger baseball on a transistor radio on the beach.

Along with the rest of the city, I got swept up in Fernandomania. Then the Raiders arrived, and soon L.A. had a Super Bowl champion. The Olympics brought the world's greatest athletes to town for a two-week party. But it felt as if there was an athletic festival every year.

East Coasters complain that there's no change of seasons in Southern California. Sure there is. You can tell what time of year it is by which local team is in the playoffs. One April when I lived in Washington, D.C., I told a friend it was time to get excited because the NBA playoffs were starting. Oh, yeah, I guess they are, he responded. It had been so long since the local team even reached the postseason that he never thought of April as being any different.

That's not the case in L.A. There's such an abundance of teams and such a demand for high quality that someone is always winning something. This is not a town defined by its losers, angst, or suffering. Out here, droughts are actually droughts, not stretches without championships. If you hear anyone talking about suffering through a long wait, theyre probably talking about the line for a Dodger Dog.

We have been blessed with an abundance of athletic options. Dodgers and Angels. Lakers and Clippers. Ducks and Kings. UCLA and USC

But for these pages, the keyword isnt and. It's or. Time to make the tough choices.

The Lakers or Dodgers as L.A.'s favorite team?

Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or Shaquille ONeal as the Lakers greatest center?

O. J. Simpson, Marcus Allen, or Reggie Bush as USC's greatest Heisman Trophy winner?

See, sometimes it's possible to have too much of a good thingat least when it comes time to picking the superlatives among L.A.'s superstars.

Oh, there are piles of futility to sort through as well. Try choosing among classic Angels collapses or Clippers draft-day flubs.

Sports are fueled by speculation. We get definitive answers by way of scores and statistics, but those arent what get us talking. If you tell your friend that Russell Martin went 2 for 4 last night, youll get a nod and a quick comment. But if you say Martin will end up as a greater Dodger catcher than Mike Piazzawell, youd better dig in for an argument.

You wont agree with every choice in this book. Youre not supposed to. If every sports fan shared the same opinion, it would be too quiet. Stadiums are supposed to be filled with noise, and the time between games is supposed to be filled with conjecture.

Feel free to think of your own answers. Feel free to cheer or boo the ones provided here. But there's one thing we can agree about from the start: When it comes to Los Angeles sports, there's no shortage of material to debate.

It's a shame the question even has to be asked, but years of sniping fans and media types across the country criticizing the local population's sports passion and mocking the lack of an NFL team have given Los Angeles a bad rap.

There's the tired clich of fans arriving late and leaving early, obviously put forth by people who have never tried to drive on Interstate 5 in rush hour. There's the accusation that the famous and wannabe famous come to be seen, not heard.

But anyone who reduces the Los Angeles sports scene to those old saws never stood in the old Forum when it was Showtime, or heard the buzz of anticipation when Eric Gagne charged out of the bullpen at Dodger Stadium.

Sports are entertainment. And in the showbiz capital of the world, the people who spend their working hours producing entertainment deserve to be entertained in their own free time. Athletes who were lucky enough to be herethe ones who really got itknew that they werent just players, they were performers.

And what performances weve seen, and created. The greatest are either from here or come here. At one time, football's single-season rushing record, basketball's all-time scoring and assists records, and hockey's all-time goals record were all set by players wearing Los Angeles uniforms.

It's a city where it was possible to watch Bo Jackson play for the Raiders in the afternoon and see Magic Johnson in person in the evening. How many towns offered something like that?

In 198889, Magic won the NBA MVP award while Wayne Gretzky captured the NHL's Hart Trophy. Both played at the Forum, marking the first time a single building was home to the MVPs of hockey and basketball simultaneously.

Theyre part of a list of legends that includes eight Heisman Trophy winners, seven NBA MVPs, three Wooden Award winners, two NFL MVPs, and an NHL Hart Trophy winner.

Put a good, entertaining product out there and this city will support it. And it seems the fans appetite for sports is more voracious than ever. In 2006, the Angels and Dodgers each drew more than 3.4 million fans. The Lakers and the Clippers (who had the best season in franchise history) each drew more than 18,000 per game to Staples Center. The USC Trojans set a Pacific-10 Conference attendance record.