George Mikan died and part of my childhood went with him. Years ago I was a young boy lying on the living room floor with the radio tuned to a Fairmont station listening to Dick Enroth describe the Minneapolis Lakers games. Saving my allowance so that I could buy a Minneapolis Tribune to read about the team. We got the Minneapolis Star, but I liked the Tribune’s sports section, especially the Tribune’s columnist Dick Cullum over the Star’s Charley Johnson.

Minnesota was not in the upper echelon of states. It wasn’t even a flyover state. We were too far north for that. We did take pride in a few things: Our Minnesota Gopher football team, Antal Dorati’s Minneapolis Symphony, and a fast talking politician named Hubert Humphrey. But for the most part, when people thought of Minnesota, if they thought of it at all, they thought of snow and cold and asked how can you live there? We were considered unsophisticated bumpkins with nothing to offer, except fishing in the summertime.

Not that we thought that opinion was all bad. My Norwegian uncle would have said, “It keeps the riff-raff out.” He also could have cared less what New York or L.A. thought of him. Without fanfare we led our lives and were good caring people. In fact, remnants of that time have filtered down through the decades and are now known as Minnesota nice. However, we definitely were not big time, particularly in sports. George Mikan changed all that.

Mikan and the Lakers played games in New York City. Quite a change from the Minneapolis Millers playing the Toledo Mud Hens. George Mikan was the dominant player in the NBA and he played for us. You could follow the Millers and I did, but they weren’t playing the best in baseball. The Lakers were playing the best in pro basketball. Not only that, Minnesota players were on the team.

Hamline’s Vern Mikkelsen, Joey Hutton, Jim Fritsche and Minnesota’s Whitey Skoog, Dick Garmaker, Chuck Mencel, Ed Kalafat and Bud Grant to name most of the Gophers. We were just as good as any team in the league. In fact, better.

Sid Hartman, Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist, has recently written about Mikan and the Lakers. It was from the perspective of a mover and shaker at that time. My viewpoint was much different and I didn’t know the negatives about the Lakers. I didn’t know about the hold outs or the troubles the team might be having internally. In those days the media was extremely kind to local teams. That was not only true for the Lakers, but to almost everyone in the public eye. This all changed after Nixon’s Watergate, but at the time Mikan’s Lakers were the favorites of the media. There was no question in my mind that our Lakers were the best basketball team to ever come down the pike.

My only problem was no one else I knew in my little prairie town was very interested in Mikan and the Lakers. The local high school team was considered more interesting and perhaps rightfully so. I pretty much had the Lakers to myself. I followed the team, rooted for them and seldom missed

a broadcast. I didn’t realize Mikan was leading Minnesota sports into a new era.

Like the present day quarterbacks in the NFL, he got all the credit if they won and all the blame if they lost. It was a lot like Harmon Killebrew of the Twins. You loved to criticize Killebrew, his lack of speed, his strikeouts, but let no one else put him down, for he was our Harmon Killebrew. The Mikan criticism was of the same stripe, but I knew his true worth. George Mikan proved, beyond all doubt, that Minneapolis and Minnesota were winners. We were fortunate that Mikan, although a fierce competitor, was a good man. He was respected not only for his skills, but also for his character. He left a prideful legacy for Minnesota and basketball. I know he left this long ago child with wonderful memories.

(John Laging writes a commentary on regional and state sports topics from his home in Preston.)