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NBA.com: Did you grow up a Lakers fan?
Ron Laffitte: "I grew up a Lakers fan. The first time I saw the Lakers play was in 1969 when I was four years old. My dad showed me Jerry West and I was hooked."NBA.com: What was magical about that team?
Laffitte: "It was all about Jerry West for me. At four years old, you don’t know that much about anything but I just remember seeing this guy play and probably feeling my first sense of hero worship."Watching a guy who could do magical things, he seemed like such a god, and at that age you are so influenced by the things you see. So for the next 4-5 years as I was discovering sports he had a bigger influence on me at a young age as a sports fan then anyone."
NBA.com: West had a picture perfect shot, didn't he?
Laffitte: "His shot was just gorgeous, he just seemed so graceful on the court."NBA.com: After Jerry West, what made you stick with the Lakers as your favorite team and made you a diehard fan?
Laffitte: Every generation that passed, I would fall in love with particular players. In the early 1970's you didn’t have the internet or cable TV. Now I have the NBA package, I am in a fantasy basketball league. Now you can watch any team you want anytime you want, you can get scores of any game as they are happening live."Back then, all you would have is what was happening locally. For some reason I would like these players like Tom Abernathy, Pat Riley, guys who were blue collar players, and I loved Gail Goodrich.
"I just think as the generations passed, there would always be some guy who would come along who captured my imagination. At a pretty early age, in 1979, they drafted Magic Johnson. To be at that age and to live through something in sports, a dynasty like that at the age where I was already emotionally invested in this team was incredible. It almost felt like it became part of your own personality being a Laker fan.
"I think the one thing that every sports fan wants in their experience is "hope" and the thing about the Lakers as an organization is that they have always and they continue to give you hope.
"In the 1980's it was more then hope, it wasn’t hope like 'I hope I get a good fan experience, or I hope the team is pretty good.' In the 1980's it was legitimate hope of winning the title every year and seeing something special happen on the court every time you tuned in. It got to the point where you were afraid to miss a game because something spectacular was going to happen every night on the court and you didn’t want to miss it."
NBA.com: Now, some people who aren't Lakers fans would base their perceptions of Lakers fans are those who of come late and leaving early during games...
Laffitte: "I think the passionate, knowledgeable Laker fan gets there on time and they listen to Matt Money Smith on the post game show on their drive home for the detailed breakdown of the game."The thing about LA is that it's a place that has a fairly transient culture because of the entertainment business people come and go. For the natives, for those of who lives here our whole lives, who have invested emotionally in the sports community, the Lakers are in our blood.
"Depending on where you grew up in this country, if you grew up in Pittsburgh you are probably a Steelers fan. If you grew up in New York you are probably a Yankees fan. In LA, we have a very big baseball culture with the Dodgers, but the dominant sports team here has been the Lakers that’s how it feels. The dominant sports team in this city is the Lakers."
NBA.com: In their more than 60 years of existence, the Lakers only missed the playoffs like 5 times ...
Laffitte: "They have been remarkingly consistent. The organization always gives you the feeling of hope. In the early 1990's they weren’t good, when Magic Johnson retired and James Worthy suddenly got old. You still had a sense of hope because Jerry West was in the front office."He was on record of saying that he works for the best owner in sports for Dr. Buss and those passionate Laker fans -- and that he had a plan. When they traded away their best player Sam Perkins for Doug Christie and Benoit Benjamin, I think most fans of the franchise would have gone crazy except Jerry West went to the papers and said he had a plan.
"He said he did not want to get stuck with the way you rebuild a team in the NBA, with the way the rules are set up. He said this is the way you do it and this is my plan, and I am going to ask you to be passionate and we are going to put a fun team on the court.
"They drafted Nick Van Excel in the second round, they took a flyer on a Serbian player named Vlade Divac and got a bench player from the Phoenix Suns named Cedric Ceballos. The one time they missed the playoffs they picked a guy at No. 10 named Eddie Jones who was probably better than six or seven players drafted ahead of him. So you always felt like when the team wasn’t great in the standings, they were doing good things and they had good leadership.
"They cared about the fan experience and they were passionate about their club just as you were and they always gave you hope and hope for the future. You felt like they were building for something.
NBA.com: So I take it buying season tickets for you was a no brainer?
Laffitte: "It was a no brainier, I bought my season tickets the season they missed the playoffs. At the time the guy who ran the season ticket plans was a guy named Steve Chase and he said to me: 'For the first time, I am losing season ticket holders because the team isn’t as good as it was in the past.'"Magic had just retired and he asked me why I buying tickets now, and I said at the time, 'because in the first time in my life I can afford season tickets and it’s been my dream to have Laker season tickets and because I had faith in Jerry West and Dr. Buss to rebuild this team.'
"And 3 years later in the summer of '96 when they signed Shaquille O'Neal, Steve called me, and told me I quite prophetic and he wished I could pick his stocks for him and I said I wish I knew the stock market as well as I know Laker basketball."
NBA.com: Where do you sit for games?
Laffitte: "I sit third row behind the Laker bench. You know, at the Forum the this row behind the bench you would basically be in the huddle, because it was such a small initiate room. It was incredible to experience being in the huddle with the coaches, payers, listening to the comments, the anger, the positive comments."I had an incredibly passionate relationship with Coach Del Harris who probably hated me more then I hated him and at the time I was a very local fan and I wasn’t a fan of his coaching and I let him know it. At those seats you could really have a dialogue, at the STAPLES Center you can’t hear the intimacy as the Forum but when Phil Jackson is angry you can always hear him screaming like at Smush Parker for missing a defensive assignment or screaming at one of the rookies which is who he usually takes it out on.
"You can always here what he is saying and it is very interesting hearing the banter from that vantage point. The coaching thing is the most interesting thing as a fan especially having the privilege of listening to the guy who I consider to be the greatest basketball coach of all time talking to these guys. As a fan you think you know about the game flow and strategy but then you hear a guy like this and you hear him talk about the things that are important like the things happening on the floor and you realize 'wow' this is a whole different level."
NBA.com: You work in the music industry and hearing a record is similar about hearing things that others don't....
Laffitte: "I think it’s an intangible skill which is honed over many, many years of experience and I think you are right and I can see things on stage or in a record that maybe other people don’t hear or see in the exactly the same way as Phil or any other great coach sees on the basketball court.
NBA.com: Would you say the hardcore fans like Jack Nicohlson, Denzel Washington, Flea, do they know the game as any other fan would?
Laffitte: "You know I haven’t sat down with most of those guys. I have seen these celebrities though the years and you get a sense of which ones know the game based on their reaction on the court and you get a sense of their commitment to the team by looking at how much they show up."One person you didn’t mention was Dyan Cannon. In my mind the two most hardcore Laker fans are Jack Nicholson and Dyan Cannon . They are very passionate, they appear on the floor so you can see them more then someone like Andy Garcia who is always a big fan who sits near me so I always see him at a lot of games. He seems to be very passionate, knowledgeable and get up at the right time. Denzel appears to be a very knowledge fan, and appears to be there quit a bit."
NBA.com: What about Flea?
Laffitte: "A guy like Flea clearly knows the game if you read his blog on NBA.com. He knows a lot about the subtleties of the game and has an appreciation for the games history. I think his blog is amazing, he is a guy who doesn’t do what I do but we are both in the same business. He is in a rock band and most of the bands I have worked with are rock bands."I am a big fan of his group. They wrote a song called Magic Johnson, and he wore a Lakers warm up on the Grammy’s a couple of weeks ago. He is clearly a very big fan but I have more respect for his fandom after reading his blog because you can clearly see that he understands the game of basketball, he knows what’s right and wrong about the Lakers. One thing about passionate fans, really knowledgable Laker fans know when things are wrong.
"I think it’s really good that the community has a strong relationship with the team. Kobe had a chance to leave a couple years ago and most people don't want to leave the Lakers. There is this intimate connection between the community and the team and i think the players feel it. There are a lot of guys that want to play here."
"They say its always about the money, of course its a business and they have a very limited window of time to make their money but you look at a guy like Rick Fox who left about 25-30 million on the table when he choose the Lakers over Cleveland because he wanted to play here and it just didn't happen very often.
"When you look at the organization there is incredible loyalty in this organization. When you go to a game now, you don’t just see just Kobe Bryant on the floor and Phil Jackson on the bench you see Magic Johnson, Mitch Kupchak, James Worthy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Kurt Rambis are guys that have been here for decades.
"When Jerry West left, that was one of the most tragic things that happened to me as a sports fan. Jerry is the Lakers; nobody leaves the Lakers. How does Jerry West leave?
"Maybe it was time for him to go make more money somewhere else. You grow up with an organization to go to a game in your 40s and to look at a team that you followed when you were for and five years old and to see those same faces it's incredible and that’s why it's such an intimate relationship because you feel comfortable with these people. You feel like you know these people on some level they have had some impact on your life. Even those who have gone on to do things in other places, when your hear Byron Scott talk about the Lakers he just gushes and you get the sense that he would give his leg to coach the team."
