Our Daily Dread: Narrowing down Staples Center memories to just ... a 10 spot?

My ass will finally be on the glass.

For the first time since Staples Center has been offiically opened, I've been set up for front-row, ice-level, curse-worthy seats at a Kings game.

And, even if it goes as expected, this might not make my Top 10 Staples Center moments.

Ten years ago today, the Kings played the first game at Staples Center -- a 2-2 tie against the Boston Bruins. On Oct. 20, 1999, the first goal was scored by ... Boston's Anson Carter. Yup, an African-American dude with dreadlocks.

And I believe a caucasian player, Bryant Big Country Reeves, scored the first basket in a pro basketball game when Vancouver played the Lakers on Nov. 3, 1999.

Top 10 lists are being assembled lately because the downtown facility labeled after a office supply store - which had its original 20-year, $116 million naming rights deal expanded into a "lifetime" contract this week -- is celebrating Year 10 of existence.
Aside from the obvious Lakers championships, Grammy moments and Michael Jackson tributes, we've had our lasting experiences in the place that replaced the Forum and Sports Arena as the fancy new hangout.

Not so much mental pictures, we have things that are more sound orientated:

10. Early 1999, there's Michael Roth, the AEG know-it-all and facility caretaker, handing out yellow hardhats to a group of media people to tour the construction site well before anyone should be allowed to go in. There's heavy work going on, sparks flying from welders, dark and dusty. Sun coming through where the roof isn't finished. Hallways that lead to nowhere. A construction guy yells at us to get out. Roth yells back that it's OK. I'm looking for an unmarked exit.

9. Opening night, Oct. 17, 1999. The first Bruce Springsteen concert, to open the place. I'm in the lower bowl, and the acoustics aren't so good. My brother says the same thing, and he's sitting up in the 300 section.

8. February, 2004. After the loudest player intros for the NBA All-Star game by OutKast - Hey, Ya! - and a halftime show by Beyonce that nearly blew the speakers out, I'm out by the third quarter with a migrane, off to watch the rest at home on TNT.

7. Father's Day, 2003. My first Avengers game. Chuck E. Cheese has fewer bells and whistles.

6. On the final day of the 2002 World Figure Skating Championships, it's the Sunday exhibition free skate. During an intermission, I'm goofing around with my niece, recreating a routine we'd just seen. I pick her up and toss her in the air.
Thud.
In that part of the building outside the suites, I didn't realize the ceiling was only about 7-feet high.
My bad.

5. Maybe it's season two in the building for the Kings. During warmups, a puck is smacked, high over the net. And over the bowl of spectators. And into the Arena Club restaurant.
I'm going to imagine it landed in someone's dinner, and became a scene from a Marx Brothers' film: "Waiter, there's a puck in my soup."
With the nets in place now, that won't happen again.

4. In the underground VIP parking area, during the first quarter of a Lakers-Cavaliers game last President's Day. Celebs, and players, come and go, but here's a late-arriving Don Rickles and his wife, just out of a limo, waiting to board an electric cart to be driven to their courtside seats. I decide to pretend to be an arena greeter, helping Mr. Rickles to his ride. He gives me a smirk and pat on the back, but wouldn't offer a tip. It got us both to laugh.

3. There are sirens blaring outside in the moments after the Lakers capture the 2000 NBA title following Game 6 on June 19. "We're locked in," someone yells. Looking through the windows, it makes sense. There's a police car on fire right outside. How many does Staples Center sleep for the night?

2. Chick Hearn had to take a leave of absence from his Laker calling duties because of heart valve surgery in 2001. He hadn't been to a game for months until he arrived for a contest on March 29, 2002, and sat in the media section 111 at courtside, not far from his broadcasting perch. When he saw shown on the video scoreboard, the applause grew and grew. He stood and waved. I sat right below him. He put his hand on my shoulder. Less than five months later, at almost the exact same spot, a line of Laker fans waited for hours to pass through Staples Center on the day of his funeral. They filed past the seat where he worked, empty, with his stat sheets spread out and his headset on the table. The quietness was deafening.

1. On Saturday afternoon in January, 2008, 9-year-old girl Isabella Masenga of Pasadena saw her first Kings game in person. She suffers from such severe autism, she can't speak, and only communicated on a new portable keyboard she had just got for Christmas. The stimulus of the crowd noise, flashing lights and goal horns could have been overwhelming, but it did nothing to affect Bellie's condition - except make her happy. Bellie sat in a suite, looked down upon the ice, and studied the game with a profound calmness. Her parents, Tom and Suzanne, were speechless. So was I.