Mikan Lobbies for NBA to Expand to Anaheim

If you’re trying to get the attention of basketball people, you could do a lot worse than have George Mikan plead your case.

Mr. Basketball, as he became known during his Hall of Fame career, is negotiating to bring either an existing National Basketball Assn. team or a National Hockey League franchise to Anaheim, where a 20,000-seat, $85-million indoor sports arena is planned.

Despite the recent expansion by the NBA to 27 teams, Mikan said Thursday that he also is lobbying for a 28th team, to play in Anaheim.

Mikan, 65, played an integral role in bringing the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves to Minneapolis in 1988.

Last year, the former Minneapolis Laker center formed Major League Sports Franchises, Inc., to assist those interested in relocating or starting sports franchises. His efforts include an unsuccessful bid last fall to purchase the Winnipeg Jets and move them to Anaheim.

“A lot of cities have been contacting us, but our No. 1 priority is Anaheim,” Mikan said. Mikan said his inquiries on behalf of an Orange County investors’ group to purchase an existing basketball franchise have found the asking price--which he declined to reveal--to be high.

“But that doesn’t seem to deter our people,” Mikan said of the investors, whom he also declined to identify. “Our investors prefer not to go public yet . . .

“This is all preliminary, but we have real big interests from the hockey area.”

Mikan also declined to identify the franchises with whom he is negotiating.

“You know what happens in a town if they start speaking about leaving,” he said. “They lose fan support.”

Mikan said competing efforts to lure NBA or NHL teams to a nearly identical arena proposed to be built in Santa Ana have complicated matters.

“That’s always a problem when there are a lot of suitors,” he said.