Superfans Nicholson, Lee and Crystal are on their way to the NBA Hall of Fame

Back when the Lakers put on shows as good as anything Hollywood had to offer, the coolest guy in the building might have been courtside.

Even across the country everyone noticed the actor Jack Nicholson.

“When I was growing up, the guy I looked at was Jack Nicholson,” said film director Spike Lee. “As I sat in the blue seats at the Garden I said, ‘Hopefully one day I can sit courtside like my husband Jack Nicholson’.”

Lee eventually made it to the front row to watch his beloved Knicks, and this weekend he and Nicholson will make it into the Basketball Hall of Fame together.

They, along with fellow actor and entertainer Billy Crystal and businessman Alan Horwitz, will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s James F. Goldstein SuperFan Gallery just hours before this year’s class in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Named after Goldstein – one of the NBA’s most recognizable non-player faces, attending approximately 100 games annually – the gallery recognizes fans for their knowledge and passion for basketball, as well as their reputation in the basketball community and their appreciation for the history of the sport.

In addition to Goldstein, the gallery, founded in 2018, also includes actress Penny Marshall and Raptors fan Nav Bhatia.

Only fans with better seats

They’re more famous than most, but basically they’re just like the customers sitting way up in the cheap seats.

“I just represent all the loyal fans of the game we love,” said Crystal, a longtime Clippers ticket holder whose love for the team dates back to when they played in San Diego.

Plus, for the die-hard fans, it never matters where they sit. It’s all about being in the building when their team needs them most.

For Lee, that was May 8, 1970. At age 13, he missed his father’s concert appearance after receiving an offer to attend Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

He wasn’t sitting nearby but still had a great view to watch Willis Reed take the court with the leg injury that had forced him to miss Game 6 against the Lakers and his availability for the playoff game in doubt .

“I’ve been to the World Series, World Cup, Super Bowls and Olympics,” Lee said. “That’s the loudest noise I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Billy Crystal had a “hard time” as a Clippers fan in LA.

The Knicks won that title and added another in 1973, although they have only come close a few times since Lee became a ticket holder after drafting Patrick Ewing with the No. 1 pick in 1985.

Horwitz’s Philadelphia 76ers are also still in an extended losing streak, although they still don’t quite compare to the Clippers and are still waiting for their first chance to deliver for Crystal.

“He suffered too,” Lee said. “What makes it worse is that he’s in LA and he was with the Clippers all those years when the Lakers had Magic and Shaq and Kobe.”

“Oh man, that was really hard.”

Nicholson was on the right side of the Los Angeles rivalry after becoming a ticket holder for the Lakers in the 1970s. The three-time Oscar winner adjusted his filming schedules and in-person meetings so he could sit next to the visiting bench in sunglasses at big Lakers games.

From there, he watched the Lakers blow a 24-point lead against Boston in Game 4 of the 2008 NBA Finals – a loss that Nicholson had expected when the Celtics were on the rise.

“It was late in the game and I kept hearing, ‘Hey Doc, we’re dead men,'” said then-Celtic coach Doc Rivers. “He kept saying it.

“I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about and then I didn’t find out until late when we came back and won the game.”

The two became friends as Rivers later coached the Clippers and the Lakers’ most famous fan even visited the other side when they faced the Houston Rockets in the 2015 playoffs.

“Jack came to this game,” Rivers said. “I showed up at a Clipper game and then we blew one [huge] leadership, and he’s gone, and I don’t think he’ll ever come back for another Clipper game.

Nicholson, now 87, no longer attends the Lakers and is the only one of the four new superfans who is not expected to attend their Hall of Fame ceremony.

“Who would have thought?”

Still a regular at Madison Square Garden, Lee now wears a Jalen Brunson jersey that was once a John Starks jersey. The Hall of Fame honor was meaningful to him, he said, because he became close to many NBA players over the course of his film career, from Air Jordan commercials with Michael Jordan to films like ” He has game.

“I know these guys and especially the visiting teams,” he said, laughing at how many times Jordan had mundanely told him to sit down. “A lot of these guys come on the field and say hello to me.”

“They give me five, hug me – and those are the opposing teams.”

Sometimes these interactions backfire and Lee takes the blame for a Knicks loss. He was slammed for upsetting Reggie Miller in the playoffs when Indiana pulled out a win in Game 5.

When Kobe Bryant scored an opponent-record 61 points on February 2, 2009, he wasn’t going to let Lee keep his mouth shut if the Knicks won when they met later that evening about a project they were working on.

Lee has a stat sheet from the game signed by Bryant, who wrote: “Spike, that.” [expletive] it was your fault!!!!”

Now he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside Jordan, Bryant and many other greats.

“I resort to some Brooklyn language,” Lee said, “who would have thought?”