RETAILERS HAVE OWN BUZZER-BEATER STORES RUSH TO GET LAKERS APPAREL ON SHELVES.

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

The Lakers weren't the only ones celebrating their third consecutive championship Wednesday: Retailers rushed championship merchandise onto shelves to take advantage of the euphoria as quickly as possible.

The big game presents an odd dilemma for stores, since they need the goods quickly but don't know the outcome until late the previous night. Fans hungry for championship fare will be snapping it up from every conceivable location all week, but getting it into stores can be a tricky proposition. While most shirts, hats, pennants and posters were printed in advance, they were kept tightly locked up in the event the Nets had held on.

This series proved to be different, however, as the Lakers held steady throughout, coasting to a four-game sweep. The NBA began planning far in advance for Phil Jackson's time atop the champion's pedestal, allowing more merchandise to be produced in advance. La Canada-Flintridge-based Sport Chalet planned its response in advance, sending its purchasers out to acquire a small supply of Reebok's official locker room hats and Nike shirts before the game.

``The minute the final buzzer goes off, we're going to move them out on the floor,'' Claudia Reich, the chain's senior vice president of marketing, said prior to the game. ``That's when the demand hits. To us, we can't be unique in the item, but we can get it there before anyone else.''

By this afternoon, stores will be flooded with the championship merchandise. Reebok has pledged to get 100,000 of the official hats alone to retailers by day's end, and a slew of items from other manufacturers, ranging from key chains to $4,000 custom-made leather jackets, will be on sale. Filling the orders are no easy task, said Ron Rogers, Reebok's public relations manager.

``They have to keep the number low, then get to work as fast possible,'' Rogers said. ``You can either work all night or risk having thousands of hats you have to throw away and have all the work go to waste.''

To ensure a quick turnaround, Reebok's hats are preprinted with the NBA and company logos, then the championship emblem is heat sealed onto otherwise generic caps. As soon as crates are filled, they're rushed into trucks and pushed quickly to hungrily waiting stores.

Though 300 Nets hats are floating around, produced in the event they'd engineered a remarkable turnaround, they'll soon be disposed of. Licensees are remarkably good at ensuring there isn't a huge supply of unusable merchandise to get rid of, said Sal LaRocca, the league's senior vice president of global merchandising.

``We've never had to deal with that,'' he said. ``Likely, it would be destroyed or donated to charity. We've never had a licensee take the risk then not have it come to fruition. It's a relatively safe bet.''

Especially with the Lakers' commanding 3-0 lead going into Wednesday's game, said Larry Weindruch, a spokesman for the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade organization representing retailers.

``When something's this much of a forgone conclusion, they usually let more get printed,'' he said before the game. ``In the past, they let them set up machines in advance, so as soon as it's final they hit the button and get the presses rolling.''

Since championship apparel tends to be an impulse buy, as stores cash in on fans caught up in post-game excitement, retailers must plan their stocking wisely.

``It's perishable,'' Reich said. ``We have to make our best guess on quantities, but luckily we've had two seasons to tell us what to do.''

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