A Laker legend has passed away: George Mikan

[adidas11]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylc=X3oDMTBpYTg2ZTBwBF9TAzk1ODYxOTQ4BHNlYwN0 bQ--?slug=ap-obit-mikan&prov=ap&type=lgns

[samikeyp]

already posted in NBA forum with full story and link.

http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17436

[adidas11]

Good, it needs to be posted in this forum as well.

[samikeyp]

.

[Sec24Row7]

Last time anyone in Minnesota won anything.

[FearDaFro]

Last time anyone in Minnesota won anything.

Uh, ever heard of the twins?

[Solid D]

The original "Franchise". Best wishes and prayers for comfort for the Mikan family and George's many friends.

Here's to #99. One of my favorite numbers.

[FearDaFro]

probably the one player in NBA history thats closest to Tim Duncan. Mikan INVENTED big man fundamentals. Could shoot with either hand, perfected the baby hook, could go glass with the best of them.

[samikeyp]

The original superstar big man....too bad the Lakers ignored him for years. At least though they eventually rectified that mistake....the NBA treated him like shit the whole time.

[SenorSpur]

I saw the "Behind the Lines" feature on him several weeks ago. The guy was in bad shape, health-wise. He was suffering from diabetes and confined to a wheelchair, he'd lost one of this legs to the disease and was having problems with his fingers and toes. His other knee was shot and had been replaced many years ago. He was taking insulin and was on other painful medication which had its own side effects.

This guy was truly the NBA's first great center and original superstar. For all his accomplishments, he was virtually strapped for cash because he played during a time where players were not eligible for an NBA pension. Because he was having trouble paying for his mounting medical costs, he was forced to auction much of his NBA memorbilla. He lived a modest, quiet life and his son was his caretaker. Somehow through it all he wasn't bitter kept a smile on his face.

He wasn't seeking sympathy. He only sought to bring light to his situation and other NBA vets like him, who were unable to derive a reasonable standard of living because they had little to no income. He hoped the current NBA players association would see fit to fund a pension fund for those retired NBA pioneers forged the league into what it has become.

Rest in peace, Big George.

[Sec24Row7]

The twins are automatically losers because they play Baseball which next to competative eating is probably the most boring sport in the world to watch.

If you need to pull a crap sport out of your hat like baseball to make your state a winner....

You need help.

[samikeyp]

I saw the "Behind the Lines" feature on him several weeks ago. The guy was in bad shape, health-wise

I saw that too....truly sad.

[jalbre6]

The twins are automatically losers because they play Baseball which next to competative eating is probably the most boring sport in the world to watch.

If you need to pull a crap sport out of your hat like baseball to make your state a winner....

You need help.

Minnesota won back to back NCAA hockey championships in 02 and 03. :blah

[FearDaFro]

The twins are automatically losers because they play Baseball which next to competative eating is probably the most boring sport in the world to watch.

If you need to pull a crap sport out of your hat like baseball to make your state a winner....

You need help.

My state? Huh?

If you think Detroit is in Minnesota.......you're the one that needs help.

[jalbre6]

My state? Huh?

If you think Detroit is in Minnesota.......you're the one that needs help.

I would like to think that he knows you're not in Minnesota, considering the Pistons won the title just last season.

[samikeyp]

You never know....alot of people are pretty crappy at geography!

[tlongII]

Dead Lakers Forum

[CosmicCowboy]

all those M states by those big lakes are the same...:lol

[ShoogarBear]

Even more importantly for Spurs fans, Mikan was the first ABA Commissioner and the guy who okayed the three-point shot and the red, white, and blue ball.

[boutons]

The New York Times
June 2, 2005

George Mikan, Big Man Who Changed Basketball Rules, Dies

By FRANK LITSKY

George Mikan, the first superstar in modern professional basketball and a big player so dominant that college and pro rules were changed to handcuff him, died on Wednesday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 80.

He died in a rehabilitation center where he was being treated for diabetes and kidney failure, his family told The Associated Press. He had suffered from heart and kidney problems for several years.

At 6 feet 10 inches and 245 pounds, Mikan was never as naturally smooth as such modern basketball icons as Michael Jordan. He grew up self-conscious and self-doubting, but through relentless hard work made himself the paramount inside player from 1946 to 1956 in organized pro basketball's early years. He led his teams to seven league championships in nine years, including five National Basketball Association titles with the Minneapolis Lakers.

His trademark was a deadly sweeping hook shot with either hand. He was the N.B.A.'s scoring leader three times and rebounding leader twice, and finished with 11,764 career points. He averaged 22.6 points a game in an era of less-refined shooting and lower scores.

Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, the pre-eminent centers of the decade after Mikan's, were entranced by his accomplishments.

"You were my hero," Russell told him. "I studied everything you did."

Chamberlain said, "He showed a big man was not just a freak," adding, "not just some big guy who could hardly walk and chew gum at the same time."

The Associated Press named Mikan the best basketball player of the first half of the 20th century. He was selected to the Professional Basketball Writers Association's 10-man all-time team, the N.B.A.'s 50th anniversary 50-man all-time team and the National Invitation Tournament's all-time team.

In 1959, he became the first player elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Ed Macauley, a contemporary who lost a tooth while defending Mikan, once said, "His elbows should be in the Hall of Fame."

At least Mikan's elbows were relatively healthy. His career medical report included a broken left leg, right leg, left arch, right foot, nose, right wrist, thumb and three fingers, plus 166 stitches.

Through it all, he prevailed, even when rules were introduced to limit his effectiveness. At DePaul University in Chicago, he recalled, "we would set up a zone defense with four men around the key and I guarded the basket." Then, "when the other team took a shot, I'd just tap it out." To negate that, the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1944 banned goaltending.

In the N.B.A., when his team had the ball, Mikan parked one step from the basket like a monument, and if the ball got in his hands it was a sure field goal. The league countered by widening to 12 feet the 6-foot lane under the basket where an offensive player could stay only three seconds at a time. The next year, wider lane and all, Mikan scored 61 points in one game.

In a 1950 game, the Fort Wayne Pistons decided that the only way they could beat Mikan and the Lakers was to hold on to the ball. They did that for minutes at a time and won, 19-18 - the lowest-scoring game in N.B.A. history. A few seasons later, the N.B.A. introduced the present rule that required a team to shoot within 24 seconds of getting the ball.

George Lawrence Mikan was born on June 18, 1924, in Joliet, Ill. At age 8, he stood 5-9; at 11, 6 feet; at high school graduation, 6-8. He used to stoop to make himself look shorter.

"I became round-shouldered, ungainly and so filled with bitterness that my height nearly wrecked my life," he once said. "Later, I found that a tall man didn't have to accept clumsiness."

The 1975 book "Superstars" told this story: "Even college teammates teased him about his size, especially with one jingle: 'Mikan's girl is 10 feet tall; she sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall.' "

In high school, he wanted to be a priest and for a time studied in a Chicago seminary, leaving no time to play schoolboy basketball. He did play in summer on playgrounds and wanted to go to Notre Dame, but Coach George Keogan rejected him as "hopelessly clumsy."

He found a home at DePaul, where Coach Ray Meyer tried to rectify his clumsiness with a training regimen of three hours a day, five days a week for six weeks. He skipped rope, shadow-boxed and ran. The routine helped, and he became an All-American three years and the college player of the year twice. He graduated in 1946.

His first pro team was the Chicago American Gears of the National Basketball League. After one season, he moved to the N.B.L.'s Minneapolis Lakers. One season after that, the Lakers and three other N.B.L. teams joined the new Basketball Association of America, which a year later became the N.B.A.

Mikan, earning $12,000 a year, so captured the public's imagination that the N.B.A. often sent him on the road a day early to drum up publicity for his next game. He was still in his prime when he retired at 29 because, he said: "I had a family growing, and I decided I wanted to be with them. I felt it was time to get started with the professional world outside of basketball."

Two seasons later, with the Lakers struggling, he returned, but was only a shadow of himself. Then he retired as a player for good. Two seasons after that, he became the coach of the Lakers, got off to a 9-30 start and quit.

After basketball, he worked in Minneapolis as a corporate and real-estate lawyer. He bought and renovated buildings, owned a travel agency and ran for Congress as a Republican (he barely lost).

From 1967 to 1969, he was the first commissioner of the American Basketball Association. Later, he helped Minneapolis acquire the N.B.A.'s new Minnesota Timberwolves franchise.

He lived in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, Minn., and Scottsdale, Ariz. A brother, Ed, also played basketball, as a center in college at DePaul and in the pros; he died in 1999.

Of all the tributes paid to George Mikan during his career, perhaps the grandest was on the marquee outside the old Madison Square Garden. It read :

WED BASKETBALL

GEO MIKAN

VS. KNICKS

[Sec24Row7]

I wasn't talking to Piston fan, I was making a general statement.

Everyone knows that Detroit isn't in Minnesota.

If it was, Michigan might be a nice state to visit.

[Mark in Austin]

Shame on the NBA and the Lakers for not taking care of their own. Forcing him to sell of his memorabilia in order to pay medical bills? That is despicable.

[polandprzem]

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