1.375 Million Reasons Why He Was Wrong

When the Lakers moved to Los Angeles from Minneapolis in 1960, star forward Vern Mikkelsen declined to accompany the team, according to Joe Gergen of Newsday.

Owner Bob Short wanted Mikkelsen as a player-coach and offered him a salary of $25,000 and one-quarter of the team. He declined.

“Five years later, I came down to breakfast and my wife has the newspaper out,” Mikkelsen recalled. “The headline says, ‘Short Sells Lakers to Jack Kent Cooke for $5.5 million.’ And she had very quickly figured out what 25% of that was worth.”

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Trivia time: When did USC last win a Pacific 10 basketball championship?

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Right on! Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who recently was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame along with Mikkelsen, slam-dunked a few current NBA players for their boorish behavior:

“I can say right off the top of my head Derrick Coleman and Chris Webber have showed a lot of immaturity. Dennis Rodman seems to be a little bit unstable.”

A little bit?

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Gangway: Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle: “The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln accidentally wandered onto the America’s Cup course last week in a thick fog.

“The monstrous craft was quickly steered away, which is too bad, because after all these years, the race had finally become interesting.

“The Navy issued a terse explanation: Ship happens.”

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NBA’s Siberia: Jackie MacMullan of the Boston Globe regarding the Washington Bullets considering trading overweight Kevin Duckworth to the Celtics:

“Duckworth was also being shopped to the Clippers for a draft pick, but sources in Washington said that when the big center heard he might be headed for Clipperland, he pulled up lame with a sore Achilles’.”

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Striking out: Some sports cliches used by political figures to describe the baseball labor dispute:

“The fate of the 1995 baseball season is in the hands of Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, and their response is to sit on the bench.”--Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)

“Clearly they are not capable of settling this strike without an umpire.”--President Clinton.

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No replacement players: The Humboldt Crabs, feeling the financial pinch of a sluggish economy, are disbanding after 50 seasons.

“It’s a sad day in my life and in the lives of many of our fans,” General Manager Ned Barsuglia said in announcing the demise of the semipro baseball team in Arcata, Calif. The Crabs, formed in 1945, won 1,580 games and lost 502.

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Looking back: On this day 1962 Jim Beatty became the first to break the four-minute mile indoors with a time of 3:58.9 in The Times meet at the Sports Arena.

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Trivia answer: USC shared the title with Washington in 1984-85.

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Quotebook: Gary Plummer, San Francisco 49er linebacker, on his team’s awesome offense in the Super Bowl: “Most offenses take what the defense gives them. Ours takes what it wants.”