The man who changed basketball is finally recognized by his team

There was a time when basketball was not for very tall people. Big guys were mocked.

Then came George Mikan (1924-2005), 2.08 m, severely myopic, initially despised because of his deep-bottle glasses and lack of agility. The sport was never the same again.

The giant became the NBA’s first superstar. He dominated the North American league in an overwhelming way and led the Lakers to five titles between 1949 and 1954. Finally, next Sunday (30), he will have his number 99 retired by the team that is currently from Los Angeles.

In Mikan’s time, the Lakers were from Minneapolis. It wasn’t until 1960 that they were taken to California. In 1979, they came under the control of the Buss family, whose roots are rooted in the sunny west coast. And the history of the days of Minneapolis, in the frozen state of Minnesota, has suffered a kind of erasure.

The Lakers are now the NBA’s greatest champions, tied with arch-rivals Boston Celtics with 17 titles. Half a dozen were in Minnesota (six, if you count the 1948 one, in the NBL, another professional league), but the team honored ten LA Lakers players by removing their uniforms –Pau Gasol, it has been announced, will be 11th–, none of the MPLS Lakers.

Amidst the numbers hoisted to the top of the gymnasium – and to a microphone, by legendary narrator Chick Hearn – there is only a pennant bearing Mikan’s name and those of other important figures from the turn of the 1940s to the 1950s, such as Jim Pollard and John Kundla. That, finally, will change, in a ceremony to be held at halftime of the match against the Denver Nuggets, at Crypto.com Arena.

It is no exaggeration to say that George changed basketball and made it a popular sport. People like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal said it all, pivots who followed in the footsteps of the original NBA idol.

Mikan became such a huge figure that a 1949 Knicks v Lakers, an iconic image of a rising league, was billed as “Geo Mikan v/s Knicks” at a panel at Madison Square Garden in New York. Something unimaginable a decade earlier, when he auditioned for the Joliet Catholic varsity team. Embarrassed, he played without glasses. Which only added to the shame.

Failing, he went to play at a school in Chicago, two hours from his hometown of Joliet, Illinois. Then, also failing at the prestigious University of Notre Dame, he stayed at the tiny DePaul University, where he was training to be a lawyer.

“No matter where a tall guy went back then, there was always someone to tell him he couldn’t do something,” George told the Chicago Tribune.

But Ray Meyer, assistant coach at the failed test at Notre Dame, became DePaul’s coach. And, seeing potential in the gangly giant, he bet on him. He made the pivot take dance classes, included him in the training of the university’s boxers and developed an exercise that to this day is a fundamental part of the development of basketball players.

In “Mikan Drill”, the athlete lays down with the right hand, catches the ball, keeping it high, and lays down with the left hand. Keeping the ball high is important, because it makes it difficult for opponents to attack. In George’s case, 70 years ago, the move put him out of reach of (much) lower rivals.

With dance lessons, “Mikan Drill” and a discipline in training that would be replicated by athletes like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, he became the great name of basketball, which was then the ugly duckling of North American team sports. americans. And he came to be called Mr. Basketball.

Its impact was unprecedented. After a successful university career, the Illinois man began to accumulate titles as a professional. Then, the BAA (Basketball Association of America) –name of the NBA (National Basketball Association) between 1946 and 1949– took the Minneapolis Lakers from the NBL (National Basketball League) and grew.

The Lakers, who had already won an NBL title with the number 99, won five of the first six trophies they disputed in the BAA/NBA – in 1951, the ace played with a broken ankle and failed to triumph. The stats produced by the player were an aberration.

In 1946/47, for example, the overall use of BAA pitches was 27.9%. In 1947/48, it reached a commendable 28.4%. Mikan arrived in 1948/49, hitting 41.6% of his attempts, with a then astronomical 28.3 points per game.

“I had a right hook, and everyone was aggressively marking it. Then Professor Meyer had me, during the holidays, practice a thousand hooks a day, 500 on each side. The left ended up being better than the left hook. right, then it became difficult to stop me,” he told The New York Times.

In an interview given to Sheet in 1997, at age 72, Mikan still carried some of the humility of the time he was mocked.

“I was never graceful on the court. To be honest, I was really clumsy. […] I only knew adult basketball. But I put in a lot of effort to develop a good shot. Jumping ropes all the time, trying everything. Until I learned to throw the hook, my main merit, “he said.

Because of him, the NBA had to change its rules. The lane, where attendance has a limited time, has been widened so that George is not constantly next to the basket. It also ended up being forbidden to play with the ball on a downward trajectory, because the big Minneapolis center took anything that approached him from the target.

Another change has already come between Mikan’s first and second retirement – ​​he stopped in 1954 and returned briefly in the 1955/56 championship – but it has everything to do with him: the institution of the ball possession clock, now 24 seconds . In a 1950 duel, the Fort Wayne Pistons deliberately held the ball for most of the game so that the rival would not have a chance to attack. Won 19-18.

“Nobody shot. Either hit the ball or passed it to a teammate,” he told Sheet, 25 years ago. “For me, the embarrassment was even greater. I was the one who scored the Pistons’ victory. I tried to block a shot, but I deflected the ball the wrong way, into our own basket. Absurd!”

George would still be decisive for a change in the rule that dictates the current game – ironically, again, less receptive to the big guys. As the main director of the ABA (American Basketball Association), the NBA’s rival between the 1960s and 1970s, he adopted the three-point shooting line, used until then only experimentally. The NBA regulated its lineup of three in 1979, and Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors are the defending champions because of that.

Mr. Basketball today has a statue at the entrance to the Target Center in Minneapolis, home of the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Lakers are no longer from Minneapolis, but they will finally revere with the least – the retired shirt – the one who paved the way for one of the greatest sports clubs in history.

Mikan died in 2005, with problems arising from diabetes, without the pension that the North American basketball league currently offers its idols. Shaquille O’Neal, a three-time Lakers champion, paid for the funeral.

“He showed us how to do it,” said Abdul-Jabbar, who won six NBA titles taking the hook to its highest level. “I certainly wouldn’t have had this shot if I hadn’t learned the moves watching George Mikan play,” Kareem said.

“He showed the world that a big man could be an athlete,” said Wilt Chamberlain, 2.16 m. “He wasn’t some big guy who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. He was a splendid athlete. He was the league’s first superstar.”