The NBA is celebrating its 76th anniversary. The celebration during last season demonstrated this, with references to constant classifications and with an All Star that was dedicated to the League itself. Many years have passed since 1949, when the professional competitions of the NBL and the BAA, which predominated at that time, merged. The first, created in 1937, was active for 12 years at the dawn of basketball, with practically informal games and teams from cities that were located near the Great Lakes. The second appeared in 1946, after the Second World War and with a clear intention of professionalizing a sport that the Harlem Globetrotters had monopolized since 1926, when they began to mix their on-track exhibitions with an emphasis on entertainment.
Back then, basketball had nothing to do with what it is now. Fewer teams, a clear predominance of white players that did not begin to be resolved until the 1950s; no three-point line, long and tedious possessions and little shooting away from the rim. The NBA came directly from the BAA, indispensable for the current acronym, founded as an original idea to fill stadiums like Madison Square Garden and complete their capacity, something that was not achieved then with boxing and ice hockey. The Syracuse Nationals, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia Warriors and Minneapolis Lakers were born in the BAA and are considered to be the four founding teams of the NBA and, furthermore, the only four that are still active. The first reside today in Philadelphia under the name of the Sixers, the Warriors are located in Golden State and the Lakers changed Minneapolis for Los Angeles in 1960. Only the Celtics maintain the original name and city. The greens, along with the Angelenos, are also the historical leaders of the competition with 17 rings. The Warriors, with 7, are third. The Sixers, despite their age, have fallen behind with 3 and have not won since 1983, their last championship.
It was a process of adaptation and change. The beginnings are never easy: there were cities that demanded teams and there were only 11 at that time, a figure very far from the current 30, established in 2004. Nor were 82 games played (they ranged around 60 and 70). And neither steals nor blocks were counted, something that took a long time to happen and that at that time had no place in the statistics sheets, lost in memory. There are practically no graphic documents or videos either. And the photographs are few and repetitive. History books are the only ones that record what happened then and what originated in that foundation and early years. An era that had a common denominator: George Mikan. The maker of the first great dynasty in NBA history.
A giant of 2.08
George Mikan was born in Joliet, Illinois to Croatian parents with roots in Vivodina, near Karlovac. Already tall since he was little, he destroyed a knee in his childhood that kept him bedridden for a year and a half. As much as he played basketball in his spare time, he did not practice the sport as such until well into his adolescence. Paul Mattei, head of the athletic department at De Paul University, came to watch a game between Quigley (the Archbishop’s Seminary to which Mikan belonged) and St. Leo’s, one of the strongest training teams in the world. state. And that beardless, lanky boy with glasses was in charge of getting away: 24 points and victory. Mattei offered Mikan to enter DePaul University, something that the center did not tell his parents, who found out months later through the press.
Ray Mayer, a rookie coach, just 28 years old, crossed his path, who was also responsible for Mikan changing basketball. It was assumed then, when nothing was known about this sport, that the higher you were the worse you would play, but Mikan made his 2.08 a virtue to be a true finisher near the rim and develop a lethal hook, capable of executing with both hands thanks to training with Mayer. Furthermore, the first changes in the rules came with him, since it had to be prohibited to catch a ball in a downward trajectory and put it into the hoop, a rule that is still in force today and that Mikan took advantage of when it was legal. His height caused the defenders to make a total zone around him so that he did not receive the ball, so the center used that tactic when one of his teammates threw. After all, he didn’t even have to raise his arms to be taller than everyone else.
Champion on all sides
Mikan came to the NBL in 1946. He did so after leaving the university, completing the cycle of four seasons and an enviable resume: Best NCAA Player on two occasions, three times named All-American and an NIT title for DePaul being named best player. of said tournament after scoring 120 points in 3 games, including 53 against the University of Rhode Island, the same as their rivals scored combined in said final, in which Mikan’s team won 97-53. After his permanent exhibitions, Chicago American Gears acquired his services. He played 7 games with them, averaging just over 16 points per night and participating in winning the title against the Rochester Royals, whom they beat 3-1. After that, the owner of the Gears wanted to remove the team from the competition so that it ended up in another one that barely lasted a month. The players had to be distributed among the 11 teams remaining in the NBL. And Mikan arrived at the Minneapolis Lakers, the place where his true legend was forged.
Mikan, con su habitual número 99BettmannBettmann Archive/Getty Images
The Lakers defeated the Royals in the Finals in 1948, repeating the 3-1 with which the Gears had won the previous year. Specifically, the Royals and Lakers went the following year to the BAA, then a rival competition, along with the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons and the Indianapolis Kautskys. And they won the title again (4-2 to the Capitols with more than 30 points on average from Mikan, who was injured during the series without caring), which is considered the last in said League and also the first in the NBA, already configured at the end of the season when both companies merge. Mikan, therefore, won everywhere: in the NBL, in the BAA and in the NBA. The center became famous to unusual levels, allowing basketball to become one of the most followed sports in the United States and his image being advertised to extreme levels. In Madison, in a duel between the Lakers and the Knicks, it was announced saying “Mikan plays against the Knicks.” His teammates didn’t even change: “They said that only you play against the Knicks, so he goes out and plays. We are waiting for you here.”
The dynasty is forged
The first of the 17 Lakers rings was in 1949, but with the NBA already definitively configured, four more arrived: in 1950, 1952, 1953 and 1954. Only the one in 1951 escaped, when the Royals beat the Knicks in some vibrant finals (4-3) and they avenged the losses against Mikan (who broke his leg in the series in which the Lakers were eliminated) in the most recent past. The Lakers dominated the League with an iron fist during that time, in which the rebound statistics (nonexistent until then) were established in 1950-51, when Mikan went to 14.1, second after the more than 16 of Dolph Schayes, another great center of the time, linked first to the Nationals and then to the Sixers, the same team with a different name. He did lead the competition in that aspect in the following two seasons, in addition to leading in scoring for three consecutive years, the first of them still in the BAA.
Changes in regulations were a constant in Mikan’s career. Danny Biasone, owner of the Syracuse Nationals, was one of the promoters of establishing the possession clock and the 24 seconds were set in 1954. Many remembered how the teams that were ahead maintained possession when they were ahead and only He could stop them with fouls, which made the games last forever. Mikan was in one of them: in 1950-51, in a Lakers game against the Pistons, the score was 19-18 against the (then) Fort Wayne team. From that moment on, they did not attack again: out of fear of Mikan, who scored 15 of his team’s 18 points (83.3% of the total), they dedicated themselves to passing the ball endlessly until the game ended. One more anecdote for a player who was not the only rule he saw change, since in 1951-52 the 3-second rule in the zone was changed, causing the penalty zone (1.80 meters) to be larger. large (went to 3.60). The objective was for the centers to play further… and it was achieved. Mikan then saw his scoring numbers diminish, going to 23.8 that season, without the title of top scorer and dropping below 40% in field goals. But he kept winning: that title and the next two.
An eternal legacy
With more than 10 broken bones and the need to receive stitches up to 16 times, Mikan retired at the age of 30. He claimed that it was to be with the family and he returned a year later, but he was not the same as before and he stayed with numbers of just over 10 points and 8 rebounds, without the explosiveness or vertical jump of yesteryear. The constant rule changes precipitated the end of the first great historical player in the NBA, who was part of the first great dynasty in a squad that he shared with names like Vern Mikkelsen, Jim Pollard, Slater Martin or Clyde Lovellette. With the legendary John Kundla on the bench, the Lakers dominated the early days of the NBA and forever established the name of a franchise that continued adding rings later, upon moving to Los Angeles, and that is today one of the most successful organizations. profitable in the world.
Along with George Mikan and Kareem. Shaquille was not afraid to take on the challenge of being the new great center of a franchise that had had the best. He made it.
Mikan retired with 7 championships between the NBL, BAA and NBA. He was MVP of the All Star Game (which he played 4 times in 1953, he was in the Best Quintet 6 times and was elected MVP of the NBL in 1948. Chosen among the 50 best players in history in 1996, he was also remembered last year when he entered the top 75 on the occasion of the anniversary. After his retirement, he briefly went through the Republican Party and was the first commissioner of that ABA that gave the NBA so many problems in the 70s. There he established the three-point line and the tricolor ball, more patriotic from his point of view as it represented the United States flag. In 1969 he retired from public life, but he still had time to, behind the scenes, be one of the promoters of the creation of the Timberwolves. Thus, an NBA franchise, orphaned since the Lakers had moved to Los Angeles, returned to Minneapolis.
Mikan’s legacy is eternal. The first great historical player, he was the center par excellence and retired with 11,764 points, with an average of 22.6, throughout his professional career, retiring as the historical scoring leader. One of the pioneers of modern basketball, he fought against the little pension that players retired before 1965 received from the NBA (about $1,700), a fight that he did not see end after he died in 2005, after long years of fighting against the diabetes. With a statue in the lobby of the Target Center and a banner at the top of the Crypto Arena, the photo that Mikan took with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal in 1996, after the latter’s arrival in the United States, is also historic. Lakers. His training methods are still valid today and his nickname, Mr. Basketball, is the same as his figure, an intrinsic part of the history of the NBA. The first great pivot. The first great player. The first superstar. Quite a legend.
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2024-05-13 13:16:22
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