Did you know Minneapolis was once home to the Lakers basketball team? This year marks the 65th anniversary of when the Minneapolis Lakers left town for Los Angeles. On April 26, 1960, team owner Bob Short announced the relocation of the franchise, citing box office struggles, the lack of a permanent home court, and the greener pastures of the West Coast.
The franchise came to Minneapolis in 1947. It was the first major professional sports team established in the Twin Cities and remains the most successful by far. The Lakers won six league championships in their first seven years—as many as all of the other Twin Cities major league teams (Twins, 2; Vikings, 0; North Stars, 0; Wild, 0; Timberwolves, 0; Lynx, 4) have won over the past 65 years combined.
The Lakers were the NBA’s first dynasty. Their pair of “three-peats,” or three consecutive championship wins (1948-1950 and 1952-1954) established the franchise as the “New York Yankees of basketball.” The team’s consistent excellence proved a source of prestige for the fledgling NBA, which struggled to present itself as a steady presence in the country’s sporting consciousness during the decades after World War II. They were a source of pride and prestige for the Twin Cities, too—during their best seasons, they drew large and loud crowds to the Minneapolis Auditorium, St. Paul Auditorium, the Minneapolis Armory, or wherever else they could find a venue.
Convincing area residents to spend their discretionary time and income on Lakers games was quite a task. Minnesota Golden Gophers basketball games drew full houses to Williams Arena, and the statewide love affair with high school basketball was already in full bloom. Competition for the winter leisure hours of Minnesotans extended far beyond the hardwood—Minnesota was then and is now the “State of Hockey.” Ice fishing, snowshoeing, and a number of other outdoor activities helped Minnesotans pass the wintertime, as well. It took a genuinely great professional basketball team to draw a substantial audience.
The franchise didn’t originate in the Twin Cities. They began play in the 1946-1947 season as the Detroit Gems in the National Basketball League (NBL), a precursor to the NBA. To say the least, the Gems struggled. They went 4-40 that winter, posting one of the worst records in the history of professional basketball.
Minneapolis businessman Ben Berger and Twin Cities sports empresario Morris Chalfen (also the founder of the “Holiday on Ice” skating company) purchased the club from its Michigan-based ownership, relocating them to the Gopher State for the 1947-1948 campaign. They paid $15,000 for the franchise—roughly $212,000 today, when adjusted for inflation.
Sid Hartman, then a young sportswriter for the former Minneapolis Star Tribune, played a significant role behind the scenes in facilitating the deal. Hartman organized an NBL game between Oshkosh and Sheboygan in December 1946 at the Minneapolis Auditorium that drew more than 5,000 fans. He surmised that if a couple of small cities in Wisconsin could host professional basketball teams, why not the largest metropolitan area in the upper Midwest? Berger and Chalfen agreed.
Hartman’s efforts to lure the Lakers proved one of his earliest instances as a professional sports booster in the Twin Cities, a role he would embrace for the next 70 years.
Hartman found the Lakers a top-notch head coach in John Kundla, a standout player for the Golden Gophers in the 1930s who had served for one season as the head coach at the University of St. Thomas. Nightclub entrepreneur Max Winter, who later founded the Minnesota Vikings, served as the team’s general manager and took a small ownership stake.
Courtesy of St. Thomas Athletics
Winter played a decisive role in shaping the identity of the franchise. He wanted to present the new team as being Minnesotan as a potluck supper. Initially, Winter wanted to name the team the “Vikings” to evoke the Scandinavian heritage of so many in the state (he would later adopt “Vikings” as the nickname of the professional football team he brought to the area). In this instance, he deferred to the moniker selected in a franchise-sponsored “name the team” contest. “Lakers” was similarly local in its orientation, an homage to the state’s reputation as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” In keeping with his “Vikings” concept, Winter clad the team in light blue and gold, the colors of the Swedish flag, in a bid to win over the area’s large Scandinavian population.
The Lakers would play their home games at the Minneapolis Auditorium, the 10,000-seat arena built during the Coolidge Administration, and the Minneapolis Armory, which seated around 7,000 and was built during the 1930s by the Public Works Administration. At times, the team would play at the St. Paul Auditorium or even the fieldhouse at Hamline University. The lack of a permanent home proved a significant detriment to the team’s long-term financial stability.
Team management built the Lakers’ roster from scratch. Since the Detroit Gems had the NBL’s worst record the previous season, the Lakers got the first pick in a dispersal draft of the players from a rival league that went out of business. They selected George Mikan, a 6-foot-10-inch center from Chicago’s DePaul University. “Mr. Basketball,” as he was nicknamed, would go on to be the dominant player in the early years of the NBA. The physically imposing Mikan pulled down rebounds and blocked shots like no other player of the era, and his signature left- and right-handed hook shots made him an equally unstoppable offensive force. A consensus of sportswriters named him the Greatest Basketball Player of the Half Century in 1950.
Courtesy of DePaul Athletics
The Lakers built around Mikan, securing a strong supporting cast that consisted largely of local talent. To drum up local interest, the NBA offered teams “territorial rights” to players from colleges and universities near their city. This entitled the Lakers to the likes of Golden Gophers stars Don “Swede” Carlson, Whitey Skoog, Bud Grant, and Tony Jaros. The team acquired 6-foot-7-inch Hamline University big man Vern Mikkelsen using a territorial pick, as well. Add to that the selections of athletic 6-foot-5-inch Stanford University forward Jim Pollard and wily University of Texas point guard Slater Martin in the draft, and the Lakers had a fantastic team.
Courtesy of Hamline Athletics
In particular, the frontline of Mikan, Mikkelsen, and Pollard dominated the opposition, using their size, strength, and athleticism to impose their will. All three players have since been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The Lakers dominated the NBL in 1947-1948, storming their way to a league championship. Following the season, the Midwest-based NBL merged with the East Coast-centered Basketball Association of America to form what became the NBA. The stacked Lakers teams won championships in 1949 and 1950 as well, proving to be the gold standard of the new league.
Despite the depth and skill of the Lakers roster, the focus of fans and the national sporting press was Mikan, who held the league’s scoring and rebounding records for much of the 1940s and ’50s.
“One time, [the Lakers] pulled up to Madison Square Garden and the marquee said, ‘George Mikan vs. New York Knicks.’ And the guys wouldn’t leave the locker room,” recounts Bitsy Rettke, daughter of Lakers standout Tony Jaros. She remembers the other players saying to Mikan, “‘Hey, you’re the only one on the marquee, you go out and play them.'” She noted that the guys gave Mikan a good-natured razzing that evening before they went out and pummeled the Knicks.
“Get the ball to George [Mikan], that was the mantra,” says former Minneapolis Laker Chuck Mencel. Mencel starred at the University of Minnesota before becoming a territorial pick of the Lakers. He played for the team from 1955 until 1957, when a military commitment forced him to miss several seasons of basketball.
Now 91 years old, Mencel is the last living Minneapolis Laker. He remembers what a thrill it was to play alongside Slater Martin and Whitey Skoog, two of his favorite players growing up in the region. Mencel was ready to return to pro basketball when the team moved to California. Rather than heading for Los Angeles, he decided to retire.
In the early years, fans in Minneapolis had plenty of reasons to cheer. After falling in the 1951 NBA playoffs, the Lakers strung together three more championship seasons from 1952-1954, establishing themselves as the league’s first dynasty.
“There was plenty of cheering and enthusiasm at the games. [The Minneapolis Auditorium] was a fun place to play and a fun time,” says Mencel, noting that he preferred the Minneapolis Auditorium to the smaller, perpetually freezing Armory.
“It was our first major league sports team and they were almost immediately champions. It gave locals something to rally around,” says Joe Nelson, a local collector of Lakers programs, autographs, and memorabilia.
Courtesy of Joe Nelson
“You really knew who they were, the local guys,” says Edina resident Buzz Myers. “It really helped, having them.” Myers, 87, grew up in Golden Valley and was a rabid Lakers fan in the late 1940s and early 1950s. His family didn’t own a television, but their neighbors did, and he spent plenty of evenings at the neighbors’ house watching Lakers basketball on KSTP. On occasion, he got to see the team play in person at the Minneapolis Auditorium or Armory.
“I used to listen to games on the radio and I would act out the games with a little rim and basketball in my house. My older siblings were always upset with me always bouncing the ball around. I’d have a rim on each end of the bedroom and run from one end to the other,” he recalls.
When attending Lakers games, Myers says he remembers the fans as being loud and close to the action, but notes that the team was never the leading sports attraction in town, even during their championship runs.
“It wasn’t as big a deal as it should have been, partly because teams in the league were from smaller cities,” says Myers. “The NBA wasn’t really big time yet.” Teams relocated frequently or simply went out of business. A franchise was as likely to be in a city like Moline, Illinois, as it was New York City. The number of clubs vacillated from 12 to as few as eight during the 1950s.
The University of Minnesota drew much larger crowds to Williams Arena than the Lakers did to any of their regular venues. The multigame high school basketball showcases on Friday afternoons-into-evenings at the Auditorium outdrew the Lakers, too.
“The Lakers never had Friday night home games. The Minneapolis high schools all played there,” says Myers, referring to the Minneapolis Auditorium. All winter long, high school games began at 2:30 p.m. and ran until after 10 p.m. Annual events such as the weeklong Sportsman’s Show would keep the Lakers out of the Auditorium after the high school season ended, which proved particularly difficult for the Lakers. Most of their late-season and post-season home dates were held at smaller venues, limiting both the team’s home court advantage and potential box office for their most enticing games.
Myers was a high school basketball standout in the Twin Cities and remembers the impact that watching the Lakers had on his own game.
“The jump shot was almost unheard of. Whitey Skoog and Jim Pollard were the first ones here with the jump shot. That changed my game. Before that it was all set shots,” Myers says. He cites Pollard as his favorite player, one of the few who played above the rim and could be characterized as a leaper in the NBA’s early days. Pollard earned the nickname “Kangaroo Kid” for his unparalleled athleticism.
Courtesy of Joe Nelson
During their early years, the Lakers were so unstoppable that one team, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, the predecessor to today’s Detroit Pistons, tried holding the ball for minutes at a time to shut down Mikan and company. Fort Wayne pulled out a 19-18 victory in the Nov. 22, 1950 “stall ball” game but the bush league strategy that Fort Wayne employed led eventually to the installation of a 24-second shot clock in the NBA.
The dominance of the Lakers underneath the basket led to another significant rule change. “The key,” or “the lane,” the restricted area around the rim, was historically six feet wide. Players can only remain in “the key” for three seconds at a time. The likes of Mikan, Pollard, and Mikkelsen so often dominated play around the rim that the league widened it to 12 feet to open up the game, preventing them from simply posting up and asserting their will right next to the basket.
During their dynastic era, the Lakers played a series of games against the Harlem Globetrotters, the sport’s most popular team and top showmen. Rather than exhibitions that showcased the Globetrotters’ unique feats of dribbling and shooting, these were legitimate competitive contests. The Globetrotters won the first two meetings between the clubs, but the Lakers won the last six in a series that stretched from 1948 until 1955. The games were typically played in Minneapolis and drew massive crowds to the Auditorium.
In April 1954, the Lakers won a grueling seven-game series against the Syracuse Nationals to secure the franchise’s sixth championship in seven seasons. Mikan won NBA Finals MVP honors for the first time. Not long after the victory, Mikan retired and moved to the front office, which was part of a larger transformation of the Lakers’ roster—most of his championship comrades would soon retire or join other clubs.
As glorious as the first half of the 1950s were, the decade’s later years were the doldrums for the Lakers. Attendance dropped considerably after Mikan’s departure and only worsened as the team faded from contention. Local interest corresponded closely with the team’s on-court success.
“Attendance was down from what it had been, so Mikan thought making a comeback might stimulate ticket sales, which it probably did,” says Mencel of the star’s brief return. Mikan played for the latter half of the 1955-1956 season but retired again after the team lost to the St. Louis Hawks in the Western Division playoffs.
As attendance dropped, Berger considered selling his interest to a group from Kansas City that wanted to relocate the team to Missouri. Instead, he allowed for a local sale of stock in the team, enabling more than 100 people and businesses in the Twin Cities to purchase shares in the club. A local attorney named Bob Short became the majority shareholder and team president.
Team ownership was never a prominent presence around the team. Mencel remembers management as friendly and unobtrusive. Max Winter, who soon sold his shares in the team, swung by the locker room from time to time but was far from a regular presence. Whether he was in management or on the team, Mikan was everyone’s pal.
“Mikan was the nicest guy that you could meet,” says Dan Jaros, son of Tony Jaros. The Jaros and Mikan families got together for Christmas every year, and George became the godfather of Tony’s daughter, Bitsy.
“Mikan and dad were best friends for a very long time. I think that started because they were roommates, and I think they were roommates because they were Catholic,” says Bitsy (Jaros) Rettke. “George was very sweet. Just kind. I don’t think he was big on his own success. I think he felt like if it wasn’t for those guys, he wouldn’t be what he came to be.”
The era of good feelings under Bob Short proved to be a brief one. Short said that the team was losing money almost every single night, no matter where the team played. Wanderlust soon got the best of Short—he was soon on the hunt for a new city with a permanent home court.
The Lakers enjoyed a resurgence in 1958-1959, thanks in large part to the selection of Elgin Baylor with the first pick in the NBA Draft, which the team earned by finishing last in the league the previous season. Standing 6-feet-5-inches tall, Baylor combined speed, cunning, power, and athleticism. He drove into the lane and scored like no previous player in NBA history. Baylor earned Rookie of the Year honors, averaging nearly 25 points and more than 15 rebounds per game, finishing third behind Bill Russell and Bob Pettit in Most Valuable Player voting.
Courtesy of Seattle University
As the Lakers’ first African American star, Baylor faced down explicit racism, primarily when the team played on the road. In 1959, he refused to play in a game in Charleston, West Virginia, because he and two Black teammates were refused rooms by a local hotel. Team owner Bob Short took the Lakers instead to a different hotel where the entire team could stay. The Lakers played the next day against the Cincinnati Royals, but Baylor boycotted the game.
While many in the sports press called for the league to fine Baylor, NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff refused to penalize him. The NBA’s willingness to support a player making a stand for civil rights proved a powerful precedent for athletes in the 1960s who took stands against segregation and on other social and political issues.
Baylor led the Lakers back to the NBA Finals in 1959, where they lost to the Boston Celtics, inaugurating a fervent basketball rivalry that extends to the present. The Lakers failed to repeat that success in 1959-1960, however, as the team fell out of contention early in the season. Whispers about the team’s departure grew louder as the season waned.
When the season came to an end, so did the Lakers’ time in the Twin Cities. In 1965, Short sold the team to Canadian media mogul Jack Kent Cooke, who continued to build the Lakers into one of the most valuable properties in sports.
Fans and sportswriters in the Twin Cities alike conceded the struggles the team had faced at the box office. The team’s lack of a true home exaggerated box office struggles by making the team’s potential gate inconsistent. At times, fans weren’t even sure where the team would be playing upcoming games.
NBA officialdom encouraged the franchise to retain the Lakers moniker, believing that the name’s championship pedigree would help drum up interest in a market with as abundant spectator and recreational offerings as any city in the country. “The thing that bugs me the most is, I don’t mind teams moving, but I don’t see why they can take the name with them,” say Myers, noting how little sense the moniker made in Los Angeles, a region with few natural lakes.
Moreover, the NBA remained a fledgling organization in the early 1960s. The complete disappearance of the league’s first dynasty just a few years after their championship runs would further demonstrate the NBA’s institutional instability.
Professional basketball returned by fits and starts to the Twin Cities. The Minneapolis Muskies of the American Basketball Association (ABA), a rival league which eventually merged with the NBA, played the 1967-1968 season at the Metropolitan Sport Center in Bloomington. They drew poorly and relocated to Miami after one season. The Minnesota Fillies of the Women’s Professional Basketball League called the Twin Cities home from 1978 until 1981.
It would be nearly 30 years before Minnesota got another NBA team, with the establishment of the Timberwolves in 1989. In 1999, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) added the Minnesota Lynx franchise, which has proven the closest heir to the Lakers in terms of on-court success, winning four league titles and seven conference championships.
Glimpses of the Lakers remain in certain spaces around the Twin Cities. “They do have the one banner in Target Center that lists the Hall of Famers,” says Nelson, noting also the statue of George Mikan outside the Target Center and a display at the Minneapolis Armory.
Another space where the memory of the Lakers remains is Tony Jaros River Garden, a bar in Jaros’ hometown of Northeast Minneapolis. The lime-flavored cocktail, the “Greenie,” invented at the neighborhood haunt is now as well known as the original Minneapolis Laker that established the bar back in the 1950s. Like virtually every player of his era, Tony Jaros had an off-season job—he got into the bar business and established one of Northeast’s most beloved watering holes, living upstairs with his family.
Proprietor Dan Jaros, the son of Tony, said his father rarely spoke of his time as a Laker, but everyone in Northeast Minneapolis knew about the local sports hero. “Growing up, older guys were always telling me about my dad,” says Dan.
“My dad was about the humblest person you’d ever want to meet in your life. He was borderline shy,” says Rettke, who retired from the bar business a few years ago. Occasionally, someone comes in who still remembers Tony as an athlete.
While no longer based in Minneapolis, it’s impossible to overlook the Lakers’ impact on Minnesota sports, past and present. The franchise created a firm foundation upon which a great pro sports town has been established. Every time you look at the NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, or MLB standings and see “Minnesota,” you see the legacy of the Minneapolis Lakers.
