To Cut or Not to Cut - The George Mikan Story

If the game show host asks you who the outstanding basketball player of the first half of the 20th Century was and you want to be a Winner, you must choose “George Mikan” and make that your final answer. His story is an inspiration for all those ‘clumsy’ kids. Mikan played with the Minneapolis Lakers in the late 1940s. He was 6 feet, 10 inches tall, a standout giant in those days. As a high school student in Joliet, Illinois, and as a freshman at Notre Dame, he had been an unsuccessful overgrown, clumsy youth.

In 1943, he enrolled at DePaul University in Chicago under a new coach, Ray Meyer. Coach Meyer also saw an awkward giant trying to play basketball. However, he saw something else; this young man had dreams and the determination to work toward them. The Coach, as he became known, spent hours on end working independently with Mikan and the results are in. Mikan was an All American in 1944, 1945, and 1946. In 1945, he led DePaul to the championship of the biggest college tournament of that time, the National Invitational Tournament. He led the Lakers to 6 titles in the National Basketball Association, he was individual scoring leader for 3 years, he was on the all-star team every year that he played, he was elected to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame, and to cap it off, in a special poll taken in 1950, he was named the greatest basketball player in the first half of the 20th century.

That’s what dedication and hard work can do for you, and it does tell us a lot about Ray Meyer and why he was such a successful coach. What if he had cut Mikan from his Blue Demon squad? Would Mikan have gone to another school, or would that have been the last in a series of failure messages, the straw that broke the camel’s back? I wonder if he ever thought about giving up on himself.

You may want to read about another basketball player; the one voted the best basketball player of the second half of the 20th Century – a fellow by the name of Michael Jordan – and find out how he got along in his high school career.

A Personal Note – Peter P. had the privilege of watching Mikan play with the Minneapolis Lakers against the Chicago Stags in Chicago a while back (O.K., a long while back). His defense was great, he owned the boards on both ends of the court, and his hook shots, either hand, were awesome.