Spring Loaded

The Staples Center crowd at Monday night’s Laker-Jazz game stood and cheered, showering affection upon their subject.

And that subject wasn’t even wearing purple and gold.

Deron Williams? Carlos Boozer? Andrei Kirilenko?

None of the above. The darling of Monday’s crowd wasn’t even wearing a uniform, although, when he did, it had the Laker logo across the front.

It was Utah Jazz play-by-play broadcaster Hot Rod Hundley who was being saluted Monday night as called his last game, the team’s exit from the playoffs marking his own exit from behind the microphone. At 74, after broadcasting over 3,000 games across 35 seasons for the Jazz, Hundley is retiring.

No longer will Utah fans hear about players grabbing “the cowhide globe” for a “leapin' leaner” or a “yo-yo dribble.”

Hundley goes so far back, he was the voice of the team when it was the New Orleans Jazz, when the team name actually fit. Calling a Salt Lake City-based team the Jazz makes about as much sense as calling an L.A.-based team the Lakers.

Come to think of it, the Salt Lake City Lakers and Los Angeles Jazz would make a lot more sense.

But, I digress.

Monday night’s Staples Center crowd wasn’t just being kind to a visiting team’s announcer. Those with long enough memories were applauding a man who is very much a part of Laker lore, who was a member of the crew that first introduced pro basketball to L.A.

Before New Orleans, before Salt Lake City, before a stint as a Phoenix Suns broadcaster, even before he served as Laker announcer Chick Hearn’s sidekick, Hundley played the game. And played it reasonably well.

Not at the level of a Jerry West. Or an Elgin Baylor.

But coming out of West Virginia, Hundley was good enough to be the first pick in the NBA draft in 1957, long before the word lottery had ever been associated with a basketball.

He was selected by the then-Cincinnati Royals, who traded Hundley’s draft rights to the then-Minneapolis Lakers. It became a perfect fit a few years later when West, another West Virginia product, joined the team as did West Virginia’s coach, Fred Schaus.

All that and the bright lights of Hollywood as well. Hundley became as familiar a figure on the club scene as he was on the court.

A slick ballhandler and crowd-pleasing entertainer, Hundley often flashed the acerbic wit and attractive charm that would later serve him so well behind the microphone.

On the night at New York’s Madison Square Garden when Baylor scored a then-league record 71 points, Hundley added two more.

As the pair jumped into a taxi after the game, Hundley told the driver, “Be careful. You’ve got 73 points in this cab.”

After Frank Selvy missed a 15-foot jump shot in the closing seconds of regulation play in the seventh game of the 1962 NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics, the Lakers went on to lose in overtime.

“It could happen to anybody,” Hundley told Selvy afterward. “Don’t worry, baby. You only cost us about $30,000.”

About three million in today’s dollars.

For decades after that, Hundley would periodically call Selvy when he knew his former teammate wasn’t home, in order to leave a simple biting message on Selvy’s answering machine: “Nice shot.”

Hundley was the first former player to be inducted into the writer/broadcaster wing of basketball’s Hall of Fame.

He never had the ballhandling skills of a John Stockton or the size and strength of a Karl Malone. But for Jazz fans, Rod Hundley will be missed every bit as much.