![]() ![]() In its first year the NBA consisted of 17 teams competing in three divisions. The BAA and the NBL merged after that season, and the NBA was born for the 1949-50 campaign. Game 6 was played on the Lakers' home court, and Minneapolis came away with a 77-56 win and a BAA Championship. Mikan played Game 5 with a cast on his hand and still pumped in 22 points, but Washington prevailed. In Game 4 Mikan sustained a broken wrist, and the Capitols came away with a win. Minneapolis notched three quick wins to open the best-of-seven series. ![]() ![]() The BAA Finals came next, and the Lakers faced the Washington Capitols, who were coached by Arnold "Red" Auerbach. Minneapolis squeezed out a one-point win in Game 1, then stormed back from a 12-point third-quarter deficit to take Game 2 and sweep the best-of-three series. Minneapolis swept the Chicago Stags in the first round of the 1949 playoffs before attention shifted to a division finals matchup that pitted the Lakers against the Royals. His 28.3 points per game led the league and accounted for one-third of the Lakers' point production. Rochester and Minneapolis dueled for the top spot in the BAA's Western Division, but the Royals edged out the Lakers by one game, even though the tall, broad-shouldered, and extremely agile Mikan played with unstoppable force. When the Lakers arrived in New York to face the Knickerbockers, the marquee at Madison Square Garden read "George Mikan vs. The biggest name of all was Mikan, and fans flocked to see him in every BAA city. The addition of the four NBL teams now gave the league the big-name players it needed. The BAA was already an eight-team league that included franchises in such major markets as New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. Return to top of pageīefore the 1948-49 season began the Minneapolis Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons and Indianapolis Kautskys (later renamed the Jets) jumped to the Basketball Association of America. Mikan paced the circuit in scoring during the regular season with 21.3 points per game and was tops in postseason play with an average of 24.4 points per contest. Minneapolis lost only two games during the postseason, one in the first round and one in the finals against the Royals. After winning the Western Division by 13 games, the team disposed of the Oshkosh All-Stars, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and the Rochester Royals. Minneapolis walked away with the NBL crown that season. But once the bespectacled Mikan joined the Lakers there was no stopping them. Coaching the squad was John Kundla, who had been hired away from the University of Minnesota. The club featured a fine forward named Jim Pollard and one of the better playmakers in the league in Herm Schaefer. The Lakers were a good team even without Mikan. The first-year Minneapolis Lakers landed Mikan strictly by chance. But the new league lasted barely a month, and the players on White's teams were distributed among the 11 NBL franchises. ![]() White's plan was to create a 24-team circuit called the Professional Basketball League of America, in which he would own all of the teams and all of the arenas. Prior to the 1947-48 campaign Maurice White, president of the American Gear Company and owner of the Chicago team, pulled the club out of the NBL. He joined the Chicago American Gears at the end of the 1945-46 season, then led the Gears to the NBL Championship the following year. Mikan was a 6-10 giant of a man who had dominated college basketball in his four years at DePaul. A strange series of events early that year landed the Lakers the biggest prize in the game at that time-center George Mikan. The Minneapolis Lakers' first season was 1947-48, when the team entered the National Basketball League. ![]()
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