Iconic NBA photographs tend to fall into a few distinct categories. You have your candid shots (Michael Jordan crying holding his first Larry O'Brien Trophy), and your live game shots (Kawhi Leonard and Joel Embiid in the split-second before Leonard’s buzz-beater sent Embiid’s 76ers home from the playoffs). Then you have the off-the-court style shots: Google “Isiah Thomas fur coat” and you’ll see the clear line to modern fit kings like LeBron and Russell Westbrook.
But this 1986 photo of Jack Nicholson by Brian Lanker—where the star is being held up in the arms of Lakers players Michael Cooper, Byron Scott, Kurt Rambis and Magic Johnson, all of them in sunglasses—seems to belong to another category entirely. The Lakers—especially that era of the team—are always at the vanguard of the NBA, even when they’re mediocre, there’s always the feeling they won’t be for long. Nicholson is, well, he’s Jack. You could just say that very common name, and people will probably have a vision of Nicholson screaming “You can’t handle the truth” run through their heads, even if their dad or brother shares the same name.
Finding a picture of Nicholson in the ‘70s or ‘80s where he doesn’t look great is a difficult task. In the Lakers photo, for instance, he’s in a yellow shirt, white pants and a pair of bucks with bright yellow laces. That sounds pretty basic, but at that moment in time Nicholson was one of the biggest actors in the world, smack in the middle of a multi-decade run of great films (from 1980’s The Shining to 1989’s Batman), all of which enhances the cool element by a factor of 19 billion. Also, he’s hanging out with guys from the era-defining basketball team that he had a hand in making famous, even though he never suited up. Winning Time, the new Adam McKay-produced series about those Lakers, only has a few glimpses of Jack (played by Max E. Williams), but it’s still difficult to imagine Showtime without him.
Nicholson and his friend, record producer Lou Adler, have had courtside season tickets since the early 1970s.
In an interview, Jeff Pearlman—author of Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, the book Winning Time is based on— says that making sure everybody knew Jack was at the games was part of the Lakers experience. “Jerry Buss wanted to create this ‘thing,’” he says. “He bought the team in 1979 when the NBA was about basketball, not entertainment. Buss thought entertainment sold—basketball was sorta the 1A thing to entertainment—so it was the Laker Girls, the Forum Club, loud music, etc. A big part of that was courtside celebrities, and Jack was THE guy.”
The thing about watching an older Lakers game and seeing Nicholson—opposed to looking at pictures of him or watching him act—is that you’re getting as close to the real thing as you could ask for. In any video you bring up, Nicholson is just… hanging out, in his own clothes. In the Showtime era, you can find him wearing everything from black leather jackets to major pattern clashes like green checkered pants and a roomy yellow oxford with smaller checks. There’s one I especially like, from 1990, where Nicholson wears what looks like a blue velvet suit with black and white checkered socks. Next to him, Adler wears a checkered sportcoat, jeans, and a knitted black beanie that looks like something Peter Tosh may have worn.
The Nicholson mystique is always undeniable, and pulling up any random Lakers game allows you to see the artist in his true element: as a die-hard basketball fan. It looks and feels natural, like he’s wearing, acting and doing exactly what he wants. Often this mystique extends to the people he brings to the games, whether it’s a 1990 game with Michael Douglas sitting next to him, any of the times he had Easy Rider co-star Dennis Hopper by his side or when he told Adam Sandler it was time to leave a little early because the Lakers were getting beaten pretty badly.
Today, Nicholson is in his 80s.
He’s seemingly retired from acting, as his last movie was 2010’s How Do You Know. When he makes it to a Lakers game, it’s worthy of aPage Six story. Now he’s entered a strange phase: he’s relevant to a new generation not because of his long career, but because he’s become an Instagram Fit God of the higher order. But what’s lost in our algorithm-influenced lives is that there has to be more than just a look. Around the same time that I was going down my ‘80s Lakers rabbit hole, I started reading The Big Goodbye, Sam Wasson’s fantastic book on the making of Chinatown. According to Wasson’s book, Nicholson had an “opulent cocaine pyramid” in his home, and a bowl filled with ripped up fifty dollar bills that he saw as an ongoing art installation, which he invited guests to throw their own ripped up money into. Wasson connects this to a quote from Nicholson’s friend, the actress Karen Black, about Nicholson “assumes people are present. It’s a sort of grace he grants others.”
That particular quote stuck out to me as I went down a tandem wormhole of Nicholson movies and old Laker games. In his movies, he’s so in the moment but also totally in control. And all of that is on display at the Forum, too. More than just a fit pic, you also get the context—and the reason why we’re still obsessed with the guy to this day. You’re reminded that you can try to style yourself like Nicholson by looking at old pictures of him, but you are not Jack. The clothes are easy; it’s the attitude that’s the key.