Curtain Call - Land of 0 Lakers

If you’re a fan of stupid sports esoterica, and if you’re reading this I know you are, then at some point you’ve probably drifted over to the wikipedia page for defunct NBA franchises and chuckled at some of the team names (Providence Steamrollers, Anderson Packers, Baltimore Bullets, absurd). The best part is, because of the weird nature of the NBA’s genesis coming about through the fusion of two pre-existing leagues that we’ll touch on in a moment, this isn’t even a full list of silly things that Midwesterners cheered for in the mid-20th century. Going to the National Basketball League in the 1940s, you could find such delights as the Toledo Jeeps, Oshkosh All-Stars, or the Chicago American Gears for a brief stint of time until they wrapped up play with the end of their 1947 season.

At the end of the 1947 season, the American Gears wrapped up play by capturing the 1947 NBL title over Oshkosh. The team was led by a notable rookie that you’ve probably heard of before, and one who would be responsible in the coming decade for changing the overall structure of the sport of basketball as much as the shot-clock or three-point-line would years down the line. Starring for the American gears was #99 from nearby DePaul University, George Mikan.

And then their owner let his head swell from the success, pulled his team out of the league in pursuit of starting his own ultimately-doomed-league, and that was the end of the Chicago American Gears and George Mikan’s career with his first pro club.

Meanwhile! Another team played its final game in the NBL during the 1947 season, with a much different outcome than Chicago’s championship. The Detroit Gems, so named due to their owners’ jewelry business, finished the year with a 4-44 record, including a 23-game losing streak to cap it off. However, despite the absolutely moribund on-court product, this team wanted to remain in the NBL, and would for at least one more year. However it would not be in Detroit -

That’s great and all that they have a home - but as evidenced by the 4-44 record, while they may not be lacking somewhere to play, they are lacking… I don’t want to disparage the entire roster by saying talent, but also, 4-44. That’s a .083 win percentage, below even such basement dwelling squads as the 9-73 1972/73 Philadelphia 76ers or the 7-59 2011/12 Charlotte Bobcats. There is no way to understate how bad this team was, and the question on the mind of anyone thinking about this inaugural Minneapolis Lakers season is simple: where would reinforcements come from?

Let’s turn back to Mikan for a moment. The star center had considered ending his professional career entirely after that first season, but after putting a hold on that at least for the time being, he faced the new reality of his being subject to an upcoming dispersal draft to deal with Chicago’s departure from the NBL. Well, as luck would have it, the one thing a 4-44 record is good for is the top pick in such a draft. The brand new Minneapolis Lakers had a brand new player at the center of their plans as they brought on Mikan along with a host of stars from the nearby University of Minnesota Golden Gophers college teams.

It should be mentioned that Mikan, when he was in college and even younger, was considered by some coaches to be completely unplayable in the sport of basketball because, I promise this is true, he was too tall. Basketball was a finesse sport, and surely someone as lanky and big as Mikan would be unable to keep up with smaller, more dextrous players on the court. A lot of credit is due to his DePaul coaches for really considering the game in three dimensions for the first time and realizing that Mikan’s dominance relative to the z-axis was something to build around, not to lament - during his college career, they were able to completely rejigger both their offense and defense around Mikan due to the revolutionary idea that being tall, and therefore closer to the hoop in which you are trying to place the ball, is a good thing!

This worked for DePaul; it worked for the Chicago American Gears; and rather than building slowly in this new home as some writers had predicted, it worked immediately in Minneapolis as well. The Lakers went from 4-44 to NBL champions in a single year, with Mikan becoming a two-time NBL champion as Minneapolis finished on top for the 1948 season. They even went and won the very last iteration of the World Professional Basketball Tournament, a competition that had featured NBL teams alongside several other barnstorming or semi-pro competitors for a decade. Once again, rather than being a liability, all Mikan did in his win over the New York Renaissance (the final game in WPBT history) was set the all-time single-game scoring record with 40 points in an MVP-winning performance.

A prety incredible one-year turnaround all things considered by the Lakers, and an incredibly auspicious start to a career for Mikan. However, there is one thing other than him winning a title that links his first two years in pro-basketball: as soon as he wins an NBL title, that team moves on from the NBL. The following year, that other organization alongside the NBL that will help birth the NBA as we know it today scored a huge coup by convincing the Minneapolis Lakers to jump ship - for the 1949 season, they would be members of the Basketball Association of America.

This was a league entering just its fourth season, but it was at least well established enough that this time, a departure from the NBL did not spell doom for Mikan’s squad. Quite the opposite - for the third straight year, Mikan ended up on top of the basketball world as the Lakers topped the Washington Capitols 402 in the Finals to win the 1949 BAA championship, the 3rd different kind of title that Mikan had captured in just a short three year career. And just in the nick of time too, because it would be the last BAA title any team ever won. The following year, as a result of team movement back and forth between the two leagues and out of a desire for increased stability as well as a wider overall swath of the country as their market, the NBL and BAA combined forces for the beginning of the 1950 season. Going forward, there would be one primary name in professional basketball.

I wonder how George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers handle yet another crazy shakeup to the structure of the league.

That’s right, George Mikan has now won a championship in three different leagues and a fourth independent national tournament in the span of just four years as a professional. Also, not for nothing - if you go to the fourth player to Mikan’s right you’ll find yourself looking at legendary Minnesota Vikings coach Bud Grant.

At the risk of repeating myself, the Lakers continue to be pretty good at basketball - while they did not repeat as NBA champs the following year, losing in the semifinals, they did then secure the first ever three-peat in league history with consecutive wins from the 1951/52 season through the 1954/55 season.

And then, having learned from so many owners to this point that the immediate aftermath of a title run is the best time to mak a giant, franchise-defining life change, Mikan does just that.

On the cusp of turning 30, and with a growing family (and a growing list of injuries sustained in the line of duty), Mikan decided that there were no worlds left for him to conquer and retired. He would very briefly re-emerge halfway through the 1955/56 season, but looked every bit like someone who had spent a year-and-a-half away from the game and called it quits for good following another playoff series loss. After suffering just one of those throughout the entirety of Mikan’s career, that was now two straight early exits for Minneapolis, and it was unfortunately a sign of things to come. The Lakers never won a championship in Minnesota without Mikan, and given the gravity that he had commanded both on the court but also as the core of the team’s identity, it makes sense that they struggled in the years following his departure to establish a new way forward.

Mikan’s would retain a place as one of the giants of the game, but as is often the case he would take a back seat to those who would get to stand on his shoulders - he had ushered in the very concept of the “big-man” in the sport, but now Minneapolis lagged far behind teams led by icons of greater stature like Wilt Chamberlain or Bill Russell. Minneapolis’s dynasty would remain an unalterable piece of NBA history, but that too would be outshone by teams like Bill Russell’s Celtics who, in 1956/57, began a dynasty in Boston that would outpace Mikan and Co. by capturing eleven titles in thirteen years, including eight straight at one point.

This is the danger of team having so much of its identity tied up in one star, no matter how transcendent and game-changing they are - they’re gonna leave eventually! The Lakers actually got so desperate that when Mikan’s coach John Kundla was clearly no longer up to the job, they brought in the woefully underprepared Mikan to become the head coach midway through the 1957/58 season before handing the reins back to Kundla. It was a bad year, resulting in a 19-53 record, by far the worst for the franchise since that 4-44 season that handed landed them Mikan a decade ago. But for a franchise that was desperately seeking an answer to who they are, and who the next star to define them would be, there is some silver lining to a terrible year like that - they get to pick another star.

Elgin Baylor was exactly the breath of fresh life that the Lakers seemingly needed, winning Rookie of the Year in his first season and leading the Lakers to the Finals for the first time ever without George Mikan in 1958/59 before they fell to the emerging Boston Celtics dynasty in four games, the first ever sweep in NBA Finals history. For a team that had been financially suffering since the departure of their cash cow in Mikan, this could have been the shot in the arm that they needed.

A new owner, Bob Short, had taken over the team in 1957 in order to avoid the franchise moving to Kansas City, but now he was beginning to suffer the same financial losses as his predecessors and was himself considering the thought of greener pastures. At this point New York City became relevant for a couple of reasons; one of which being that with emergence of Baylor and the known cash flow problems of the lakers, teams like the Knicks came calling after that rookie season to try and pry away the Lakers’ new budding star. To Short’s credit, he rebuffed them, acknowledging that for all the issues staying in Minnesota presented him, the last thing that was potentially keeping them there was the potential of Baylor going forward.

But also relevant was a recent departure from New York City that had borne fruit for a different franchise: the newly minted Los Angeles Dodgers. Just like the pioneers a century before sought the “Land of Opportunity” on the West Coast, California represented a new fertile ground for sports franchises looking to capitalize on the population explosion. It was on Short’s mind to be sure, but to again give him credit where it’s due, they remained in Minneapolis for at least one more year. And thus tipped off the 1958/59 season.

Baylor was electric this season, averaging 34.8 points and 19.8 rebounds per game as the team reached the playoffs to face their recent western rivals, the St. Louis Hawks. The series was chippy, to say the least - to say more, it would be factually accurate to describe it as a fistfight.

The Lakers found themselves up 3-2 as they returned home for a Game 6 that could send them to their second consecutive Finals. Maybe if they’d managed to secure that Finals berth, it would have shown Short enough to keep the team in the Land of 10,000 Lakes for at least a little bit longer. But that home crowd instead watched a 117-96 beatdown of their home team as the Hawks forced a pivotal Game 7 back in St. Louis. There are a number of Game 6s in history in basketball (the 2014 NBA Finals) or even in other sports (the 1986 World Series) where even if it didn’t mark the literal end of the series, it felt for all the world like a decisive end, and based on boots on the ground reporting from the arena that was indeed the sense that evening.

The closure for this season came two nights later when the Hawks held off a late Lakers push to win 97-86. The closure for the franchise would come a little later. But for now, let’s zoom in on that very last game.

The internet is an amazing place - that we can just pull up a pretty high-quality scan of the box score for this game, for free, with just the slightest of effort is nothing short of a technological miracle. It’s easy to lose sight of that some times, and bears repeating before I make an admission.

I do not know who recorded the last stat for the Minneapolis Lakers.

I can tell you what stats were recorded that night, sure, and there are some fairly detailed accounts of the overall flow of the game from several newspapers published the following day. But unlike baseball, the boxscore cannot provide any detailed chronology; and with this predating ESPN by decades, they are unable to fill in any blanks as they have for NHL and NBA games for this series. I am at a loss as to whom I should attribute this final moment of Lakers history. And so I am making an editorial decision, based on the following excerpt from one of those writeups the following day.

This is Rudy LaRusso.

LaRusso was yet another tangential connection in the twilight of the Minneapolis years between the Lakers and the city of New York. Born in Brooklyn, LaRusso was drafted out of Dartmouth by the Lakers the year after Baylor. While he didn’t quite have the draft stock of his surefire-#1-pick teammate, going instead midway through the second round, he quickly established himself as another one ofthe building blocks for the next great Lakers team that would be able to finally step out of the shadow cast by the giant Mikan. When teams came calling for Baylor in that offseason, their first response to a “no” on that front was to ask about LaRusso instead. Once again, we must give Bob Short credit where credit was due - much as with Baylor, he recognized that if the Lakers were to continue being a functioning organization, they would need the combined star power of both of their young pieces.

But much as a player like Erica White of the Houston Comets would find out 50 years later, a rookie fighting against the dying light in a franchise’s final season can only make so much of a mark on their history. That Fleer card of LaRusso shows that by the time such things went to print, he was already branded by the new city that would claim the Lakers that offseason, as Short followed the lead of the Dodgers and set up shop in Los Angeles.

LaRusso spent seven years in LA versus just the one in Minneapolis. He, and teammate Baylor, are far more associated with that home than with any other - as are the Lakers at this point, despite the complete lack of freshwater lakes anywhere near the area, but who’s counting? LaRusso had a solid career during his time there, and in 1962 got some small measure of vengeance against those Hawks that had unceremoniously ended his and the Lakers’ time in Minneapolis when he went off for 50 points to set the record at the time for the most in any game by a Jewish NBA player. Hell, by the end of LaRusso’s career, his 11,507 career points outpaced George Mikan’s career total. To be fair, so have 393 other players and counting at this point - just goes to show what kind of effect timing can have on a legacy.

Compared to those Lakers who will live on in LA, Mikan remains firmly in the fossil record in Minnesota specifically. He’d end up being instrumental in the establishment of the Timberwolves franchise some 30 years later, but even before bringing basketball back, he was the basketball memory that remained larger than any other in the minds of Minneapolis. But the inverse to this legendary and titanic figure like something out of Greek antiquity is that with all the space that he took up in the early league lore, there wasn’t much left for these other teammates that made up the brief existence of the Minneapolis Lakers. He did cast an impossibly large shadow after all.

Turning back west to LaRusso - he would appear in the NBA Finals with the team on four different occasions, but they would lose every single one of those series to their archenemies in Boston led by the new most dominant big man in basketball, the aforementioned Bill Russell. While the Lakers now nearly equal their East Coast counterparts in trophies, their legacy in Los Angeles for 20 years was that of losers, perennial second bananas that existed only to be beaten by the Celtics on their way to yet another title time and time again.

That’s the legacy of LaRusso and the Lakers in LA, but what to make of his Minneapolis legacy. After all, there’s so little tangible evidence of it. There is one other Fleer trading card from his time in Los Angeles, in which he is taking a contested shot against those same St. Louis Hawks, and at first glance it’s possible based on the jerseys and the lack of city identification that the photo at least may have come from his time in the midwest even if the card itself reads Los Angeles.

But there is at least one photo for sure of LaRusso from the rookie season, and this is where we’ll leave him and the Minneapolis Lakers for good. Once again, they are playing the Hawks. This photo, much like the one of Elgin Baylor cold-cocking Cliff Hagan, comes from as late as possible in the midwest portion of Laker history as possible - that 1958/59 playoff series against St. Louis. In the image, pictured below, both teams scramble for a loose ball on the court. The quality is, frankly, bad, but thanks to the thorough caption work by the good folks at The Fresno Bee in 1959, we can no for sure that the shadowy figure third from the left is none other than Rudy LaRusso, standing on the edge.

Maybe you can try to force a metaphor about his place in history being right there at the edge, about the literal shadow that he and his teammates find themselves in due to poor lighting representing the shadow of Mikan that they could never escape, about how this image of him being in the playoffs on the outside of the action looking in would come to represent all the many times that he and LA would climb the mountaintop only to be unceremoniously pushed back down by Boston. If that deepens the meaning of this snapshot of history for you, I welcome you to do it.

But even without that, I find something beautiful about the fact that no matter how brief of a time LaRusso spent in Minneapolis - hell, no matter how brief a time the lakers themselves spent in Minneapolis - it is impossible to avoid making history entirely. It may not be the history that one wants to make, perhaps because it’s ripe with failure or because it serves as a stepping stone for someone else’s history. But just like every moment any athlete spends on the field or on the court or wherever they ply their trade, it is history nonetheless. The record never stops recording, and it will remain history even if only in a piecemeal fashion that some obsessive will cobble together thanks to sports-reference and a Newspapers.com account. No matter what heights the Lakers have reached and will continue reach in Los Angeles, their origins will remain in Minneapolis; and at the very least, so to will this moment of Rudy LaRusso’s life, preserved forever in black and white amber.