Mostly, fans celebrated calmly, waiting hours for the parade and the rally to begin. Nicole Ebrahimi searched for a bathroom. "I'm 6 1/2 months pregnant," she said. "We'll see if it's worth all the trouble."
Outside Staples, fans hoisted cameras and children in the air as double-decker buses, laden with Lakers players and their entourages, finally passed by. Pau Gasol blew kisses to the fans. Some team members trained their own cameras on the crowd to capture their side of the moment.
Jeannette Hernandez, 18, and her friends took three trains from Pico Rivera for a momentary sighting of the Lakers. It was worth it, because team member Shannon Brown winked at her from the bus, she swears.
Before the Coliseum rally began, USC football Coach Pete Carroll walked out in the center of the field.
"There's probably no other way you can think of . . . to have this many people come together to have fun," said the man who is accustomed to big Coliseum crowds. "This is a great indication of the power of sports."
Even the Lakers appeared dazed by the euphoria of the fans. "I started where you all are," L.A. native and former UCLA star Jordan Farmar, looking like a wide-eyed kid, told the crowd.
Fans descended on the Coliseum so early, in such huge numbers, that police turned away people two hours before the rally there even started. Drew Thomas, 41, of West Hills, brought his three sons to the Coliseum and parked at 10:45 a.m. They were turned away. Later, his children in tow, he sighed. "Sometimes you've got to teach them about the spectacle of things," he said.
Bernie Jimenez, 29, left San Bernardino at 6 a.m. with his sister and a group of friends. They too were turned away. So they decided to look for a spot on the parade route.
"Hopefully they don't do no riots, we've got a long way to go home," he said.
However, it appeared to be one of those times when almost everybody was in "accord for one day," marveled Curry. "You see a lot of different ages and races and we're all kind of getting along. It's Rodney King's dream -- 'Can we all get along?' "
It was a multi-generational group. Along the parade route there were brawny men in Lakers jerseys escorting tiny children in matching garb.
Randy McDowell, who works for a grocery store chain and lives in Victorville, watched as his 3-year-old son, Blake, licked a melting ice cream bar outside Staples.
