THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Gathers’ legacy rocks on

Hank Gathers died 30 years ago today.

Gathers was the Loyola Marymount rock who led the nation in both scoring (32.7) and rebounding (13.7) during the 1988-89 season — and also the supernova around whom a wild, fast-break, take-no-prisoners style of basketball was created.

But then came the unthinkable.

Gathers suffered a fatal heart attack during the 1990 West Coast Conference tournament, moments after an emphatic dunk that gave the Lions a 25-13 lead over Portland.

He simply collapsed, tried to rise, hit the court a second time and could not be revived.

Gathers had been diagnosed with a heart arrythmia a few months earlier and was being treated with the beta blocker Inderal, but he felt that the medicine made him sluggish.

Hank convinced doctors to lower the dosage several times, and it had just been dropped again when tragedy struck.

There were later inquiries about cutting the meds, about how paramedics treated Hank after he collapsed, and so on.

His family wound up getting some money, but losing a son at 23.

GATHERS WAS a fierce competitor, but by all accounts, he was also a fun, engaging character who was easy to like and impossible to forget.

Last weekend, Loyola Marymount unveiled a statue of Gathers outside Gersten Pavilion before the Lions’ final regular-season game.

That statue helped revive some remarkable history.

Hank and his high school teammate from Philadelphia, Bo Kimble, led the way toward making Loyola Marymount must-see hoops, as coach Paul Westhead turned the Lions loose to press everywhere and shoot as soon as they touched the ball.

The 6-7 Gathers scored 48 points against an LSU team that featured Shaquille O’Neal and fellow 7-footer Stanley Roberts — despite having a dozen of his shots blocked.

When Westhead called timeout to calm everyone down after O’Neal swatted a couple of attempts, Gathers simply growled: “Get me the ball.”

“Hank wasn’t gonna let anybody take him in the paint,” Kimble said. “He always said he owned it, Shaq or no Shaq.

”That’s who he was.”

Just by coincidence, I was lucky enough to meet Gathers during the 1989 NCAA tournament.

I was traveling with a great Illinois team that wound up in the Final Four that year, and Loyola Marymount was also one of the eight teams playing in Indianapolis.

They lost in the second round to one of Nolan Richardson’s terrific Arkansas teams, 120-101.

After the game, Richardson said: “I’m glad we’ve got a week to rest, because those guys spent every second in the fast lane.

“And Hank Gathers, man, he’s indestructible.”

SADLY, RICHARDSON was wrong about Gathers’ permanence on the hoops landscape.

It remains a tragedy to see someone so young, with so much still to give, taken far too soon — but three decades later, the Gathers story proves there can be life beyond heartbreak.

Gonzaga coach Mark Few was just getting started as an assistant when he witnessed Gathers’ death.

Few believes that Gathers’ fate has made colleges work harder to oversee the health of their athletes.

“We’ve still got a long way to go,” Few said, “but I think we’re doing a great job taking care of our athletes as best we can, and navigating our way through, so something like that never happens again on a court.”

There is another legacy at play, too.

Back in Philadelphia, Gathers’ son Aaron Crumb has fought back from his own tragedy.

Crumb was awarded money from a wrongful death suit, but it was kept in a trust until he was 18.

Before he came of age, Crumb got involved with gangs and wound up spending five years in prison for shooting someone.

These days, though, Crumb has vowed to live up to Hank Gathers’ strength and standards, and he’s a full-time mentor for at-risk youth in the Philly projects.

“Everyone I can help,” Crumb said, “is a tribute to my father.

“People everywhere thought of him as a legend, but I was really young and didn’t know about any of that. He was just my father and I didn’t understand how he could die.”

Bo Kimble answered that question on the day the statue was unveiled...

“Hank’s heart was just too big.”

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball each Tuesday.

Steve’s various tales from several decades in sports — “Moments, Memories and Madness” — run on Sundays.