Celebration for World Champs Is ‘Party Time’

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-23-mn-7245-story.html

By STEVE HARVEY and Los Angeles Times 

June 23, 1988 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

It was “party time,” in the words of Magic Johnson, and Los Angeles greeted the Lakers in its own characteristic fashion Wednesday as the world champions staged a motorized slow-break through the streets of downtown.

Onlooker Rodney Barnes showed up with the letters “L.A.” shaved on the side of his head, enthusiast John Brown wore a crown of red paper rimmed by tinfoil and 60-year-old Franklin Burke roller-skated out of the crowd to lead the parade.

The estimated 30,000 fans who lined Broadway on the day after the Lakers’ victory over the Detroit Pistons waved such signs as “Mourning Time for Mo Town,” “Palestinians for the Lakers” and “Jesus Saved the Lakers.”

There was such a festive spirit in the air that Helen, a Broadway palm reader, advertised: "$3 Special, Today Only.”

Three Injured

The jubilation briefly threatened to get out of control on the City Hall lawn, where some in the crowd of about 10,000 there delayed the ceremonies by trying to push through the barricades of water-filled barrels. Three people suffered injuries, including a man who fell out of a tree and broke a leg while taking photos.

But a force of more than 100 Los Angeles police officers on foot and on horseback held the crowd back.

“It’s party time once again!” Magic Johnson exclaimed, drawing the biggest cheers from the zealots, who included one man painted half in purple and half in gold from forehead to bellybutton.

At last year’s celebration, Coach Pat Riley had guaranteed that the Lakers would repeat as National Basketball Assn. champions--"I thought he was a little crazy,” star James Worthy admitted--and now they were celebrating the fact that they were the first pro basketball team to win back-to-back titles in 19 years.

However, when Riley approached the microphone this time, he wrapped a handkerchief around his mouth to indicate he would refrain from issuing a guarantee for a third straight title.

Guard Byron Scott wasn’t so circumspect, leading the crowd in a chant he said was the team’s new battle cry: “Three! Repeat! Three!”

Master of ceremonies Chick Hearn, the team broadcaster, drew laughs when he read one sign that said, “Champagne Is Better Than Lame-Beer,” a reference to Detroit’s bad-boy center Bill Laimbeer.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the team’s 41-year-old star and all-time scoring champion, joked, “I’ve been coming here so many years, it’s getting tiresome"--a reference to the five world titles the team has captured this decade.

Mayor Tom Bradley, who rode in the parade with Jeanie Buss (representing her father, Lakers owner Jerry Buss), took the occasion to praise the Lakers as “the team of the 1980s.”

But City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, expected to be Bradley’s rival in the mayoral race next year, was at first overlooked by Hearn, who then belatedly introduced him as “Zev Zevalosky.”

Also somewhat forgotten in the celebration was the city of Inglewood, where the Lakers actually play. The team, which has held separate public celebrations in the Forum parking lot after its last two championship wins, decided against staging one this year. “I guess they felt the crowd would be too big, and it would be too much of a risk,” said Norman Cravens, Inglewood’s assistant city manager.

Mayor Edward Vincent was invited to participate in the Los Angeles parade but declined.

Cravens was asked whether the city was disappointed.

“Yup,” he said.

The city was represented by the spirited Inglewood High School Band, which followed behind the roller-skating Burke in the line of march.

Not everyone on the parade route was there to cheer the Lakers.

Alberto Velasco and six other volunteers for the Center for Participation in Democracy said they registered about 70 voters.

About every fourth spectator seemed to be a concessionaire. Lou Solomon, who set up his merchandise stand at 1st and Main at 5:30 a.m., said he had sold $1,000 worth of Laker duds by mid-morning. Less successful vendors tried to peddle items ranging from biographies of Michael Jackson to car insurance.

Meanwhile, attorney Jeff Layton and two representatives of the National Basketball Assn. were busy seizing the merchandise of vendors who they said were not authorized to sell NBA goods.

One such targeted vendor, Franklin Edwards, waived his city license and said: “They (the city) didn’t say anything about this when they sold me the license.”

But political and/or legal entanglements mattered not at all to the screaming fans, most of them teen-agers.

Tenth-grader Maggie Eliscondo said her mother had warned her to be careful of the crowd but had let her skip school to attend the victory party.

“I’ll go to school tomorrow,” she promised.

Roland Storms, visiting from Boston, said he was a Celtics fan but attended because “I like the game of basketball.” He wore no Celtics regalia.

Committed Laker fans included three young men in horn-rimmed glasses and T-shirts proclaiming themselves “Rambis Youth” in honor of the Lakers’ bespectacled Kurt Rambis. They discounted rumors that the seldom-used Rambis might end up with one of the league’s two new expansion teams, Charlotte or Miami, next year.

“If he does, we’d still go to (see him in) as many games as we could make,” said Steve Mercieca, 24, cautiously.

Barnes, the man with “L.A.” emblazoned on his scalp, explained that his barber had given him his special haircut Tuesday night.

“I called him up after the game, and he said OK ‘cause he’s a Laker fan, too,” Barnes said.

Times staff writers Frederick M. Muir, John A. Oswald, Richard Simon and Ted Vollmer contributed to this article.