Vern Mikkelsen Saw How NBA Changed

On Nov. 22, 1950, at the Minneapolis Auditorium, the Fort Wayne Pistons edged the Minneapolis Lakers, 19-18, a score that shocked the National Basketball Association into the eventual implementation of the 24-second shot clock. The cure worked so well that, before the end of the decade, the Lakers were overwhelmed, 173-139, by the Celtics in Boston. The one man who played for the losing team in both games was Vern Mikkelsen.

Certainly, that’s not the primary reason for his election to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. But it’s a point of pride for Mikkelsen that he was involved in so many of the changes that propelled the young league into the exalted position it holds today, that he not only witnessed the remarkable progress but participated in the great leap forward.

The Lakers were the first team to devise a front line composed of a center, small forward and power forward. Mikkelsen, a 6-foot-7 center in college, became the pioneer power forward. The system worked so well that Minneapolis won four of the first five championships conducted by the National Basketball Association. At long last, that dynasty was fully acknowledged with the announcement Monday that Mikkelsen and coach John Kundla would join George Mikan, Slater Martin and the late Jim Pollard in the honors court at the basketball shrine in Springfield, Mass.

It would be two decades before the franchise earned a fifth title. The only other former NBA star added to the Hall Monday, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, contributed immeasureably to the Los Angeles Lakers’ last dynasty under Coach Pat Riley. Mikkelsen rejected the opportunity to be part of the historic transition to the West Coast, but more about that later.

His time was the era before basketball was played above the rim, before jet travel altered the landscape of professional sports. Mikkelsen and his teammates rode the rails, snoozing in roomettes “so small for guys our size it was like sleeping in a coffin.” They often were evicted from their home court, even during the playoffs, a problem they shared with the New York Knickerbockers. When the Lakers defeated the Knicks in the 1953 championship series, all three games in New York were staged at the 69th Regiment Armory.

Still, it represented the big time for Mikkelsen, who didn’t even see a basketball game until he was in the seventh grade. That was the year his father, a minister in the Danish Lutheran Church of America, was invited to lead the congregation in Askov, Minn., near Duluth. Although the town only had 300 residents, it was a step up from some previous settlements in which he had lived. Askov had its own high school. “I remember going into the gym for the first time, and there was a pickup game going on,” Mikkelsen recalled a few years ago. “I wanted to play, and they invited me and I grabbed the ball and ran with it. They hollered at me. I didn’t know about traveling or anything like that.”

Mikkelsen became adept enough to be recruited by the University of Minnesota although the size of the school and the level of competition convinced him to attend Hamline University in St. Paul. At Hamline, which played a national schedule, he developed sufficiently to earn an invitation to the East-West All-Star Game at Madison Square Garden. The only small-college representative, he led all scorers with 18 points.

In college, he had been strictly a post player, ordered neither to dribble nor face the basket. Since Minneapolis had Mikan at center, Kundla and general manager Max Winter devised a new role for the rookie. “When they turned me around and moved me to the outside,” he said, “it was like I was playing in a foreign land. It took a while, but we had so much strength on that team that it worked out. I imagine my first three or four years I spent most of my time rebounding. If Mikan and Pollard had a bad night, then I might be called upon to score.”

In time, following the retirements of Mikan and Pollard, he became the backbone of the team, the captain. He was so well-respected by management that it may have cost the Lakers the chance to draft Bill Russell. During the 1955-56 season, the Celtics offered the rights to Cliff Hagan, Frank Ramsey and Lou Tsioropoulos (who all were in the service) in exchange for Mikkelsen. Ben Berger, a major owner of the team, approached the forward. “We got a deal we can do for you in Boston,” he said. “Do you want to go?”

“That was the nicest thing an owner could have done, although it may have been a stupid thing from a business standpoint,” Mikkelsen recalled. “Anyway, I liked it here and I said no. Instead, Boston traded Ed Macauley and the rights to Hagan to St. Louis for their first-round draft choice. The Celtics picked second, directly ahead of us, and took Russell.”

Mikkelsen stayed on to become captain of the Lakers and the man who facilitated the arrival of superstar Elgin Baylor. The veteran played his final season alongside the rookie, when the Lakers were victimized for 173 points by Boston (still the scoring record for a game concluded in regulation). Minneapolis did upset two teams to reach the NBA Finals that spring, but the Celtics swept that series in four.

The Lakers still suffered from the absence of a suitable home court, and the resignation of Kundla added to the instability of the franchise the following season. Bob Short, who had gained controlling interest in the team, noted the coming of the Boeing 707 and decided Los Angeles, where the Sports Arena was under construction, was ripe for pro basketball. He wanted Mikkelsen to be player/coach.

“Personally, I didn’t think he’d get to Sioux Falls, much less Los Angeles,” Mikkelsen recalled. But that wasn’t his main reason for declining. Mikkelsen had married, was raising a family and had an insurance business to run. When Short persisted, Mikkelsen told the owner he’d take the job for $50,000, a salary he knew Short couldn’t afford. Short countered with $25,000 and one-quarter of the team.

No dice. “That’s the part my kids can’t believe,” Mikkelsen said. “Five years later, I come down to breakfast and my wife has the newspaper out. The headline says, ‘Short Sells Lakers to Jack Kent Cooke for $5.5 million.’ And she had very quickly figured out what 25 percent of that was worth.” A lot.