Lakers Neglect Roots

On Tuesday night, another Laker season will begin with a celebration. Once again, a championship banner will be unfurled. Once again, the newest stars in the Laker constellation will be honored.

And once again, the team’s first stars, from an era that seems light years away, will be ignored.

Look around Staples Center. The walls are papered with 30 years of success, from the banners, which will number eight after Tuesday night, to the retired jerseys of those who put most of them there--Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Gail Goodrich and James Worthy.

But what of the Minneapolis Lakers? Where are their five championship banners? Where are the jerseys of George Mikan, Slater Martin, Jim Pollard, Vern Mikkelsen, Clyde Lovellette and Coach John Kundla, all of them hall of famers?

It’s common practice in sports to honor all the accomplishments of a franchise, above and beyond the city it plays in. The Dodgers don’t ignore Jackie Robinson because he wore a Brooklyn uniform.

Laker owner Jerry Buss says he’s not opposed to recognizing the Minneapolis years. It’s just a matter of when and how.

A good place to start might be Mikan, while he’s still alive.

The Original Big Fella

Mikan was big before Chamberlain.

He was a master of the hook shot before Abdul-Jabbar.

He was Superman before Shaquille O’Neal, Clark Kent before Kurt Rambis.

He brought winning times to the Lakers before Johnson was born and put the NBA on the map half a century before Michael Jordan took it into the stratosphere.

George Mikan was the first of the league’s dominating big men, the first of a string of Laker centers who carried the team to championships on their broad shoulders.

Led by Mikan, the Lakers won five NBA titles in six seasons. He also won two titles in an earlier pro league. Named one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history and a member of the sport’s Hall of Fame, Mikan never won an MVP award because the honor wasn’t instituted until his final season. But he did win three scoring titles and also led the league in rebounding one season.

Yet to most basketball fans, Mikan is no more than a faintly remembered name from a distant past, a figure seen only on grainy black-and-white film, from a time when the league itself was mostly white, there were set shots from the floor and underhanded shots from the free-throw line.

The NBA was a poor distant cousin to major league baseball and pro football in those days, forced to compete with rodeos, ice shows and, of course, hockey for arena space.

Mikan helped change all that.

Now 77 and living in Scottsdale, Mikan would like to see the impact he and his teammates had remembered in Los Angeles, but he’s hardly on a campaign to make that happen. He has bigger concerns. Having battled diabetes for the past 15 years, Mikan had to have his right leg amputated below the knee two years ago. He has dialysis treatment three times a week.

But he remains upbeat, active and a big Laker fan.

Mikan didn’t bring up the subject of hanging the Minneapolis banners in Staples Center when a reporter visited him, but he quickly warmed to the idea.

“It would be wonderful,” Mikan said. “We were also Lakers. How do you separate Minneapolis [from the Los Angeles championships]? We are proud of the Lakers, proud to be a part of the organization’s history. The only thing that separates us is miles.

“The young people today have benefited from what we did. Are they trying to live us down in Los Angeles? We were there first.”

There was no bitterness in Mikan’s voice, merely pride.

Only Buss can make it happen.

“It’s been brought up and talked about before,” the Laker owner said. “It’s something we’ll have to explore at some point.”

That point is now, says Bob Steiner, Buss’ publicist.

“Hearing Mikan’s feelings and statements, we will be exploring it with a real interest in doing it,” Steiner said. “We think it would be a good thing to do, but I don’t know how much support we will find. I don’t think there is a groundswell of support out there, but it’s hard to believe anybody would be opposed to it.

“Whether we hang those banners or not, the Laker franchise has won 13 championships. Just because we don’t hang them doesn’t mean we don’t have them.

“The main problem is space on the walls. We are heading for a collision course. It’s going to be a problem no matter what we do. We might have to reduce the size of the banners and the cluster of jerseys. But it’s a problem we have happily earned.”

Hanging Mikan’s No. 99 would be a little trickier.

“As a matter of principle,” Steiner said, “if we were to retire Mikan’s number, we would want to retire the other stars of those Minneapolis teams who are in the Hall of Fame. We wouldn’t retire Mikan’s and not the others as a matter of protocol.

“There’s a problem retiring Martin’s number since he had 22, and we’ve already retired that number as Elgin Baylor’s. If we retire Jim Pollard’s number, 17, does Rick Fox have to give that number up?”

From Beach Ball to DePaul

Growing up in Joliet, Ill., Mikan never dreamed of having his number retired. His dream was to just have a number.

Basketball was always big in the Mikan family. He and his brothers built their own backboard, fashioned a hoop from the rusting ring around a beer barrel and used a beach ball that cost 18 cents.

In those days, there was no rainbow at the end of an amateur basketball career, no multimillion-dollar offer from the pros. The NBA didn’t even exist when Mikan was growing up.

He attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary and thought about becoming a priest. DePaul Athletic Director Paul Mattei thought he’d make a great basketball player and offered Mikan a scholarship.

Mikan accepted.

“I didn’t have the calling to be a priest,” Mikan said. “You know, either you do or you don’t.”

He definitely had the calling to be a basketball player. At DePaul, Mikan averaged 19.1 points and, although rebounding statistics were not kept, it’s safe to say he was solid on the boards.

From Gears to Minneapolis Cheers

Mikan led his first pro team, the Chicago Gears of the National Basketball League, to a championship in the 1946-47 season.

Team owner Maurice White was so excited about having both Mikan and a title, he decided to form his own league for the next season. The Professional Basketball League of America lasted one month.

In the subsequent dispersal draft, Mikan was selected by the Lakers. The previous season, they had been the Detroit Gems.

Gems they weren’t, having finished last. But that gave them the first pick in the dispersal draft and that gave them Mikan.

Or did it?

Upon his arrival at the Laker offices in Minneapolis, Mikan was offered $15,000.

Not enough, he said.

Sid Hartman, a Minneapolis Tribune sportswriter who never let impartiality get in the way of civic pride, was instrumental in bringing the Lakers to Minneapolis.

When Mikan couldn’t come to terms with the team, Hartman was his designated driver to the airport.

Hartman had already used his persuasive power on Pollard, persuading Pollard to give up his dreams of playing in the 1948 Olympics in order to become a Lakers. Now Hartman went work on Mikan.

“We kept driving and driving,” Mikan said, “but Sid couldn’t find the airport.”

While driving in circles, Hartman drove his point home. Mikan agreed to accept the Laker offer and soon proved to be a bargain.

The Lakers were NBL champions in 1947-48 and champions of the Basketball Assn. of America in 1948-49. When the NBL and BAA merged the next season to form the NBA, the Lakers’ last championship was recognized, kicking off the NBA’s first dynasty.

The Lakers had several future hall of famers, but Mikan was clearly the star. When the team came to New York’s Madison Square Garden, the words on marquee read “Geo Mikan vs. Knicks.”

Engrossed in getting dressed for the game, Mikan suddenly looked around and saw all his teammates still in their street clothes.

“It’s your name on the marquee,” Martin told him. “It says you are playing the Knicks. So go out and play them.”

After a good laugh, his teammates joined their 6-foot-10 leader. Combining great agility for a big man with a smooth shooting touch, a hook shot that was deadly from either side, elbows that could slice an opponent’s face like a boxer’s jab and a highly competitive spirit, Mikan sometimes seemed like a one-man gang.

Understandably so.

In the lowest scoring game in NBA history, played in Minneapolis on Nov. 22, 1950, the Lakers lost to the Fort Wayne Pistons, 19-18. Mikan scored 15 of the Lakers’ 18 points.

Mikan’s dominating presence in the middle caused the lane to be widened.

Over his career, Mikan averaged 22.6 points, even though he played all but 37 games before the advent of the 24-second clock.

Rebounding totals were only kept in his last five seasons, but, over that span, Mikan averaged 13.4. Blocked shots weren’t kept in the Mikan era, but he had a healthy number.

Long before Rambis, Mikan wore glasses that gave him a mild-mannered look, but his opponents weren’t fooled.

“His brother, Ed, played for the Chicago Stags,” said Martin, now 75 and residing in Houston. “In one game, George had blackened his brother’s eye, scrapped him up pretty good.

“We went out to dinner with his whole family afterward and George’s mother [Minnie] said to him, ‘Why do you have to beat your little brother up so bad?’

“George told her, ‘Momma, if you’d have been out there, I’d have beat you up too.”’

Mikan has many admirers, but none bigger than Kundla, his coach, now 85 and still residing in Minneapolis.

“He made me a great coach,” Kundla said, “and made Minneapolis a big league city.”

Kundla, like everyone else who mentions Mikan’s playing days, focused on his competitive nature.

“I remember one game,” Kundla said, “in which we were two behind with five seconds to play and George gets fouled. Sid Borgia, the old referee, comes up to George at the free-throw line and says to him, ‘We’ll see who chokes now.’ It wasn’t George. He made the free throws and we won in overtime.”

Mikkelsen, 72 and living in the Minnesota suburb of Minnetonka, remembers Mikan’s team concept, not only on the floor, but off it as well.

“Anywhere George was invited, he insisted that we all go along,” Mikkelsen said. “One time, George was asked to attend a New Year’s Eve party at somebody’s house. He wanted us all to go. I asked him if he was sure we were all invited. Turned out they were expecting one and they got 10 of us, one bigger than the other. But George felt if one was invited, we were all invited.”

Retired but Still Rebounding

Mikan retired after the 1953-54 season, sat out a year, but was lured back the next season for 37 games by a desperate, struggling Laker team. Those 37 games, however, convinced Mikan he should have stayed retired.

Ever the good soldier, Mikan gave in to another Laker appeal--to be the coach--for the 1957-58 season. But after his team lost 30 of its first 39 games, he quit.

Mikan went on to become the first commissioner of the American Basketball Assn. and then devoted his energies to his second love, the law, practicing for 20 years.

But he never lost touch with pro basketball, playing a key role in bringing the sport back to Minneapolis with the formation of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The city honored him last spring with the unveiling of a 9-foot statue that will remain in the Target Center.

Today Mikan and Pat, his bride of 54 years, live comfortably in the gated Scottsdale community of Grayhawk.

Diabetes may have taken one leg, but not his spirit. Mikan proudly unscrewed his prosthetic leg for a visiting reporter, then screwed it back in and implored the reporter to pull it off.

Meekly, the reporter tried with no success.

“Go ahead, pull harder,” said Mikan.

Still no luck.

That elicited a big smile from Mikan.

“I’m going to get a new one pretty soon,” he said, describing an upgraded model that will allow him to fulfill a new goal: to get back on the nearby golf courses, Talon and Raptor.

The Mikans keep busy visiting their six kids and 15 grandchildren, and watching his old team on television.

Whether his jersey or team banners ever make it to Staples Center, Mikan made it clear his heart will always be there.

“Once a Laker,” he said, “always a Laker.”