By Monday, there was only bad news.

And good memories.

Where there had once been hopeful statements from doctors that Chick Hearn might survive his serious plight, even though it would mean giving up his life as the Lakers play-by-play man, "his life" being a key phrase since to know him meant never describing it as his job, sadness prevailed. He had deteriorated to where doctors said he showed no signs of brain recovery after undergoing two surgeries to try to correct a serious head injury. His condition was grave. Everyone else was listed as grim.

	Chick Hearn embodied more than the Lakers' on-air voice.

Francis Dayle Hearn of Encino, Calif., and the entire basketball world was slipping away. There's no way in heaven he was doing it quietly, because that wouldn't be Chick, and there's no way he was going without a serious fight. Wrestling the headsets from him at the end of every season was tough enough, so imagine getting him to leave his great loves, wife Marge and the Lakers. Someone with wings was getting a major earful Monday.

But, alas, Hearn died Monday evening. He was 85.

Just when he was well on his way to proving that forever is possible. Hearn had gone 3,338 consecutive broadcasts without missing a game, regular season or playoffs, a span of about 36 years before heart surgery put him on the injured list. He returned in April for the stretch run of a third consecutive title, looking drawn but defiant, and talked about working again in 2002-03. Every game, of course.

The streak was 3,317 before the start of last season, when the Lakers counted it up: 362,032 L.A. points, 232 players, 2,074 wins and eight championships. One announcer.

He was 85 going on 30 for so long. Or so the reports claim. Hearn himself never admitted his age, regarding it as classified information, to the extent that it became the stuff of legend. Like the time the Lakers visited the White House after a title in the Showtime era and the team official who was collecting driver's licenses so the Secret Service could run standard background checks was told no chance. Chick would deliver it himself. Presumably, he found someone with enough of a security clearance on Pennsylvania Avenue who could see it.

He was an innovator. Hearn is credited for inventing phrases that have become commonplace -- air ball, finger roll, slam dunk. A shooter on a cold streak couldn't throw a pea into the ocean. Travelling might be when someone took a bunny hop. A point guard dribbling hard in place as a play was getting ready to unfold was tatooing the court. That court? In the Chickisms, it was a 94-by-50 hunk of wood.

He was emotional and prone to overreacting, like his team was prone to success. If the Lakers lost a game, he might wonder to the first familiar face he saw after the broadcast whether they would ever win again. Woe be the unfortunate soul who sat next to him on the team plane after a particularly bad defeat. He would see a CBA call-up getting six minutes a game on a 10-day contract and turn to his longtime partner in the booth, Stu Lantz, and exclaim, "Stu, this kid's got a great future." Lantz might be able to crowbar a word in there somewhere before Chick was back to motor-mouthing the action. During a halftime ceremony in 1998 to commemorate the streak reaching 3,000 games -- a ceremony thrown by the team -- he finished his remarks by turning to the home team and chiding, "C'mon, Lakers, you're playing like dogs!"

He was a character. Hearn would be demanding that the broadcasts be smooth productions and cantankerous ... and he glowed with the attention and adulation of fans, posing for pictures and signing autographs whenever he could. A waitress at a restaurant in Honolulu during one training camp who asked for a tableside play-by-play call from the legend got an impromptu 20 seconds machine-gunned in trademark Chickie style about the mashed potatoes being ready to come out and how the steak should be sizzling and, geez, would someone get him a refill. She beamed the $100-tip smile.

	Losing Hearn is a bigger blow to the Lakers than any thousand moments the hated could Celtics throw at them. In the truest perspective of his place in time, it's a sad time for an entire league and an entire city.

He was the Lakers. That's a lot of it.

Hearn was not singular in that regard. Ernie Harwell and the Tigers, Vin Scully and the Dodgers, Johnny Most and the Celtics, Harry Caray and the Cubs. They were the voice of the team and so much more, with Chick as popular a Laker figure as Jerry or Elgin, Wilt or Kareem, Shaq or Kobe. Even in the same city, Clippers counterpart Ralph Lawler was technically superior as an announcer, but no one in the NBA since the passing of Most could match Hearn's standing. Longevity, personality, team success.

He was not PC and he had major slip-ups that would have doomed the career of someone just starting out -- guard Scott Brooks was Brooks Robinson, Don Nelson was Nellie Fox, on and on -- but the loyalty was unwavering. Fans never turned against him and the Lakers, while cringing at some on-air statements, apparently never seriously considered replacing him or asking him to step down. And certainly not the members of management who are still resting from the ordeal of getting Hearn to go home at halftime one night when illness so dramatically turned his vocal chords into gravel that listeners called the Forum in concern.

Losing Hearn is a bigger blow to the Lakers than any thousand moments the hated could Celtics throw at them. In the truest perspective of his place in time, it's a sad time for an entire league and an entire city. He is from the time when the only question was why the American Sportscaster's Hall of Fame didn't save everyone the trouble and just open a Los Angeles wing. Chick on the Lakers. Scully on the Dodgers, lyrical in his calls, graceful in his storytelling, the embodiement of a summer evening. Bob Miller on the Kings, too often overlooked because he called hockey in Southern California but appreciated as a true talent by the hardcore fan base. A young Al Michaels as the 1964-65 Hearn sidekick, to be followed by other former players and familiar names -- Hot Rod Hundley, Lynn Shackelford, Pat Riley, Keith Erickson and, since 1987, Lantz. Bryant Gumbel starting out on the local NBC affiliate doing a weekly high school sports show. Dick Enberg on the Angels, Rams and UCLA. Oh, my!

By Monday, we had heard the last of Chick, and seen the last of his kind in the NBA. We are sad for this day.

And happy for the thousands of others that came before.

Scott Howard-Cooper, who covers the NBA for the Sacramento Bee, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.