Chick Hearn

Chick Hearn was an American sportscaster best known as the play-by-play voice of the Los Angeles Lakers, a job he held for 41 years. Born in Buda, Illinois and raised in Aurora, he called 3,338 consecutive Lakers games beginning in November 1965, and his rapid, staccato delivery and phrases like slam dunk and air ball became part of basketball vocabulary. He also spent seven years as the team's assistant general manager and was the first broadcaster inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He won the Gowdy Award from that Hall in 1991 and was voted into the American Sportscaster Hall of Fame in 1995. Away from the Lakers he hosted Bowling for Dollars, called boxing, golf, USC and UNLV games, and appeared on screen in Fletch, Heaven Can Wait, The Love Bug and Sport Goofy in Soccermania. He died in 2002.