The Fabulous (Open) Forum

Welcome to a new Substack Chat concept that I'd like to try

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MILWAUKEE -- It's time to test out something new with Substack Chat.

Instead of picking an arbitrary hour for all of us to get together, I just opened a chat session that will stay live for a week and give anyone and everyone interested in posing a question to

The People's Insider

Jake Fischer or me -- about the NBA or otherwise -- multiple days to do so rather than trying to squeeze our back and forth into a finite hour.

Let's give this a whirl and see how it goes. Maybe it's a great idea and maybe it's not, but I want to try to inspire some new Substack Chat activity.

My only request: Let's put all the questions in the same thread rather than starting new threads for each topic. That will make it easier for all of us to follow along..

As for what to call this experiment ...

I’m going with The Fabulous (Open) Forum.

I was never a Laker fan as a kid, but spending many of my formative years in Southern California meant hearing the legendary Chick Hearn's constant references to The Fabulous Forum as the building that housed the Jerry Buss-owned NBA, NHL and, yes, MISL and WTT franchises..

It became The Great Western Forum somewhere along the way, thanks to one of the first arena naming rights deals I can remember, but it will always be a special place to me -- whatever they call it -- after seeing so much hoops and hockey and indoor soccer and tennis there and, most of all, making frequent Forum trips as a Lakers beat writer in 1995-96 and 1996-97. My last season in Lakerland before moving to Dallas, as I've shared often, was the first season of the Shaquille O'Neal-and-Kobe Bryant partnership.

And I remain so fond of the place that these two models, as pictured by Photo Editor Aaron Stein, sit in my home office today:

PS — The dateline on this story is indeed accurate. I am at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum tonight for Lakers at Bucks because, in all candor, I last saw Luka Dončić play in person on Feb. 10 and I missed watching him, so I made the trip to one of my favorite stops on the NBA map to come see him. Couldn't resist.