George Mikan

Mikan was born in Joliet, Illinois, to a Croatian father, Joseph, and a Lithuanian mother, Minnie,[9] along with brothers Joe and Ed and sister Marie.[10] His grandfather, Juraj (George) Mikan was born in Vivodina, Croatia, then part of Austria-Hungary, in or about 1874.[9] Juraj emigrated to Braddock, Pennsylvania in 1891, where he married another Croatian immigrant, Marija, in 1906 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. On October 17, 1907, Mikan's father Joseph was born, and soon thereafter the family moved to Joliet, where they opened Mikan's Tavern at the corner of Elsie Avenue and North Broadway.[10]

As a boy, Mikan shattered one of his knees so badly that he was kept in bed for a year and a half. In 1938, Mikan attended the Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago and originally wanted to be a priest but then moved back home to finish at Joliet Catholic.[11] Mikan did not seem destined to become an athlete. When Mikan entered Chicago's DePaul University in 1942, he stood 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m), weighed 245 lb (111 kg), moved awkwardly because of his frame, and wore thick glasses for his nearsightedness.[12]

While in high school, Mikan met 28-year-old rookie DePaul basketball coach Ray Meyer. Meyer saw potential in Mikan, who was bright and intelligent but was also clumsy and shy. Meyer's thoughts were revolutionary for the time, when it was still believed that tall players were too awkward to ever play basketball well.[11] In the following months, Meyer transformed Mikan into a confident, aggressive player who took pride in his height rather than being ashamed of it. Meyer and Mikan worked out intensively, and Mikan learned how to make hook shots accurately with either hand. This routine would become later known as the Mikan Drill.[12] In addition, Meyer made Mikan punch a speed bag, take dancing lessons, and jump rope to make him a complete athlete.[4]

Mikan in a game against Long Island University at Madison Square Garden, 1944

Mikan dominated his peers from the start of his National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) college games at DePaul. He intimidated opponents with his size and strength, was unstoppable on offense with his hook shot, and soon established a reputation as one of the hardest and grittiest players in the league, often playing through injuries and punishing opposing centers with hard fouls.[11] In addition, Mikan also surprised the basketball world with his ability to goaltend, swatting balls in flight before they could reach the hoop. "We would set up a zone defense that had four men around the key and I guarded the basket," Mikan later recalled his DePaul days. "When the other team took a shot, I'd just go up and tap it out." As a consequence, the NCAA, and later the NBA, outlawed touching a ball either after it reached its apex in flight or had touched the backboard and had a chance of going in the hoop.[1] Bob Kurland, a 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m) tall center for Oklahoma A&M, was one of the few opposing centers to have any success against Mikan.[13]

Mikan was named the Helms NCAA College Player of the Year in 1944 and 1945 and was an All-American three times. In 1945, he led DePaul to the NIT title, which at that time was more prestigious than the NCAA title.[14] Mikan led the nation in scoring with 23.9 points per game in 1944–45 and 23.1 in 1945–46. When DePaul won the 1945 NIT, Mikan was named Most Valuable Player for scoring 120 points in three games, including 53 points in a 97–53 win over Rhode Island; his 53-point total equaled the score of the entire Rhode Island team.[12]

In 1956, Mikan was the Republican candidate for the United States Congress in Minnesota's 3rd congressional district. He challenged incumbent Representative Roy Wier in a closely fought race that featured a high voter turnout. Despite the reelection of incumbent Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, the inexperienced Mikan lost by a close margin of 52% to 48%. Wier received 127,356 votes to Mikan's 117,716. Returning to the legal profession, Mikan was frustrated after hoping for an influx of work. For six months, Mikan did not get any assignments at all, leaving him in financial difficulties that forced him to cash in on his life insurance.[24]

Problems also arose in Mikan's professional sports career. In the 1957–58 NBA season, Lakers coach John Kundla became general manager and persuaded Mikan to become coach of the Lakers. However, this was a failure, as the Lakers endured a 9–30 record until Mikan stepped down and returned coaching duties to Kundla. The Lakers ended with a 19–53 record, to record one of the worst seasons in their history.[1] After this failure, Mikan then concentrated on his law career, raising his family of six children, successfully specializing in corporate and real estate law, and buying and renovating buildings in Minneapolis.[1]

In 1967, Mikan returned to professional basketball, becoming the first commissioner of the American Basketball Association, a rival league to the NBA. In order to lure basketball fans to his league, Mikan invented the league's characteristic red-white-and-blue ABA ball, which he thought more patriotic, better suited for TV, and more crowd-pleasing than the brown NBA ball,[1] and instituted the three-point line. Mikan resigned from the ABA in 1969.

In the mid-1980s, Mikan headed a task force with a goal of returning professional basketball to Minneapolis, decades after the Lakers had moved to Los Angeles to become the Los Angeles Lakers, and after the ABA's Minnesota Muskies and Minnesota Pipers had departed. This bid was successful, leading to the inception of a new franchise in the 1989–90 NBA season, the Minnesota Timberwolves.[1]

In 1994, Mikan became the part-owner and chairman of the board of the Chicago Cheetahs, a professional roller hockey team based in Chicago, that played in Roller Hockey International. The franchise folded after their second season.

In his later years, Mikan suffered from diabetes and failing kidneys, and eventually, his illness caused his right leg to be amputated below the knee. When his medical insurance was cut off, Mikan soon found himself in severe financial difficulties.[11] He fought a long and protracted legal battle against the NBA and the NBA Players' Union, protesting the $1,700/month pensions for players who had retired before 1965, the start of the so-called "big money era". According to Mel Davis of the National Basketball Retired Players Union, this battle kept him going, because Mikan hoped to be alive when a new collective bargaining agreement would finally vindicate his generation. In 2005, however, his condition worsened.[4][21]

On October 30, 2022, the Lakers retired Mikan's No. 99 jersey.[25]

In 1947, he married his girlfriend, Patricia, and they remained together for 58 years until his death. The couple had six children, sons Larry, Terry, Patrick and Michael, and daughters Trisha and Maureen.[21] All his life, Mikan was universally seen as the prototypical "gentle giant", tough and relentless on the court, but friendly and amicable in private life.[21] He was also the older brother of Ed Mikan, another basketball player for DePaul, the BAA, and the Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA.

Mikan died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 1, 2005, of complications from diabetes and other ailments. His son Terry reported that his father had undergone dialysis three times a week, four hours a day, for the last five years.[4][21]

Mikan's death was widely mourned by the basketball world,[4] and also brought media attention to the financial struggles of several early-era NBA players. Many felt that the current players of the big-money generation should rally for larger pensions for the pre-1965 predecessors in upcoming labor negotiations. Shaquille O'Neal paid for Mikan's funeral, saying: "Without number 99 [Mikan], there is no me."[26] Before Game 5 of the 2005 Eastern Conference Finals between the Heat and the Detroit Pistons, there was a moment of silence to honor Mikan. Bob Cousy remarked that Mikan figuratively carried the NBA in the early days and single-handedly made the league credible and popular.[4] The 2005 NBA Finals between the Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs was dedicated to Mikan.

Mikan is lauded as the pioneer of the modern age of basketball. He was the original center, who scored 11,764 points, an average of 22.6 per game, retired as the all-time leading scorer and averaged 13.4 rebounds and 2.8 assists in 520 NBL, BAA and NBA games. As a testament to his fierce playing style, he also led the league three times in personal fouls.[3][12] He won seven NBL, BAA, and NBA championships, an All-Star MVP trophy, and three scoring titles, and was a member of the first four NBA All-Star games and the first six All-BAA and All-NBA Teams. As well as being declared the greatest player of the first half of the century by The Associated Press, Mikan was on the Helms Athletic Foundation all-time All-American team, chosen in a 1952 poll, made the 25th and 35th NBA Anniversary Teams of 1970 and 1980 and was elected one of the NBA 50 Greatest Players in 1996.[1][3][12] Mikan was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in its inaugural 1959 class, the first NBA player inducted into the Hall. Mikan's impact on the game is also reflected in the Mikan Drill, today a staple exercise of "big men" in basketball.

Mikan's record-setting 1948 Bowman card

When superstar center Shaquille O'Neal became a member of the Los Angeles Lakers, Mikan appeared on a Sports Illustrated cover in November 1996 with O'Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, calling Abdul-Jabbar and Mikan the "Lakers legends" to whom O'Neal was compared. Since April 2001, a statue of Mikan shooting his trademark hook shot graces the entrance of the Minnesota Timberwolves' Target Center.[3] In addition, a banner in the Staples Center commemorates Mikan and his fellow Minneapolis Lakers. He is also honored by a statue and an appearance on a mural in his hometown of Joliet, Illinois.

Mikan's 1948 Bowman trading card was at one point the most expensive basketball card ever sold.[27]

• List of National Basketball Association single-game scoring leaders
• List of National Basketball Association annual scoring leaders
• List of National Basketball Association annual rebounding leaders
• List of NBA players with most championships
• List of Croatian Americans

• Heisler, Mark (2003). Giants: The 25 Greatest Centers of All Time. Chicago: Triumph Books. ISBN 1-57243-577-1.
• Peterson, Robert W. (2002). "The Big Man Cometh". Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 142–149. ISBN 0-8032-8772-0.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to George Mikan.

• Career statistics and player information from NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com
• George Mikan at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame