[Editor’s Note: Please don’t forget about the always wonderful "Credits" post just because I happened to have something else up on the front page so quickly after Wondahbap set it up for us.]
Tonight, the Lakers play their 2nd preseason game of the year. Normally, this would be a pretty drab affair. The excitement of getting to see live basketball is lessened because we’ve already seen the 1st preseason game, and one is left with the realization that these are sloppy games that don’t matter, and you are equally as likely to be watching a player who may not make the team as you are a future hall of famer. Even worse, the Lakers are playing the same team as they did two nights ago, doubling the meaninglessness. But tonight’s game will have a special air about it, because it is being played at the (Great Western) Forum.
The Forum is the building the Lakers played in from 1967 to 1999, a time that saw the Lakers win 6 championships, and come so close to so many more. Needless to say, there are a ton of memories in that building, many of them wonderful, some of them gut-wrenching. I’d love to be able to tell you a few of my favorite, but unfortunately, I don’t have that many. I was born in 1983, which means I was just entering the point in my life where I could make memories when the Lakers stopped making good ones. My strongest memories of the Forum involve names like Cedric Ceballos and Nick Van Exel, not Magic Johnson and Jerry West. Coupled with my inability as a child to stay up to finish the end of a game, I literally can’t think of one specific game that I remember watching. I didn’t get to see my first game in person until the team had already moved to Staples.
So, it is clear that if we are going to properly commemorate tonight’s game with reminiscence, I need your help. I don’t think any of you love the Lakers more than me (I like to think of it as a 6 million way tie), but many of you have been loving them for longer than me. So, what’s your favorite memory from the Forum. Obviously it’s a little more poignant if you were in the building when it happened, but we won’t discriminate if your relationship with the Lakers has always been long distance. Share your favorite memories of the Lakers’ former home in the comments.