Lakers had brief across-the-river competition in Twin Cities

John Kundla's 100^th birthday on Sunday caused a look back at the origin of pro basketball in the Twin Cities. A little remembered footnote is there were two local teams that started play in the fall of 1947:

The Minneapolis Lakers of the National Basketball League, a league that had started in 1937, and the St. Paul Saints of the Professional Basketball League of America, a league that had been formed that summer by Maurice White, owner of the Chicago Gears.

The Lakers were a replacement for the Detroit Gems, a dreadful NBL team that was going to be defunct. The Saints represented one of the 15 teams in new cities that White found to join him in the fledgling PBLA.

St. Paul was in the Northern Division with White's Gears, Grand Rapids [Mich.], Louisville, Omaha, Kansas City, Waterloo [Iowa] and St. Joseph [Mo.]. The Southern Division consisted of Houston, Atlanta, Birmingham, Tulsa [Okla.], Chattanooga [Tenn.], Oklahoma City, New Orleans and Springfield [Ill.].

The Lakers won the NBL title in 1948, moved to the Basketball Association of America and won that title in 1949, and then joined the merger of the BAA and NBL into the NBA for the 1949-50 season. There were four more titles in the next five seasons in Minneapolis.

The Lakers moved to Los Angeles after the 1959-60 season. The organization will be playing its 70^th season in 2016-17.

That includes the original 1947-48 season, which is not part of the NBA's official record book. The NBA adopted the BAA (which started in 1946-47) as its official forerunner, rather than the NBL.

The Minneapolis Lakers played their first official game on Nov. 1, 1947 on the road against the Oshkosh All-Stars and won. Starting then, the Lakers have a regular-season record of 3,278 wins, 2,137 losses, for a winning percentage of .605.

The St. Paul Saints are in the archives with a better winning percentage. The Saints were 6-3 (.667) when the Professional Basketball League of America folded on Nov. 13, after three weeks of operation.

Maurice White's idea was to build the league around George Mikan, the superstar big man out of DePaul in Chicago. White was paying Mikan a large sum, and he figured that Big George would fill arenas around the country when the Gears came to town.

When the PBLA folded, the NBL held a draft for the rights to negotiate with those players. The Detroit Gems had been 4-40 the previous season, and that gave the Lakers the first choice in the dispersal draft.

They took Mikan, of course, and outhustled the BAA suitors to sign him. You might have read or heard Sid Hartman's tale of the Mikan signing a couple of times.

Lost in the quick demise of Maurice White's PBLA is this:

Mikan's first home game at the Minneapolis Auditiorium was not his debut that season in the Twin Cities.

The PBLA had started on Oct. 25 with a game between Atlanta and Oklahoma City in Wichita, Kan. – the 1947 equivalent of major league baseball starting its regular season in Australia.

The St. Paul Saints played their first game two nights later with a road victory over the Waterloo Pro-Hawks. On Halloween night, the Saints played their first home game against Mikan and the Chicago Gears.

Mikan scored 17 points to lead the Gears to a 59-49 victory. Bruce Hale, the Saints' player-coach, equaled that 17. The crowd in the St. Paul Auditorium was announced at 3,128.

The hard-working folks at APBR.org, the Association for Pro Basketball Research, actually came up with unofficial All-Star selections for the brief existence of the PBLA.

Mikan and Bob McDermott from Chicago, Hale from St. Paul, Colby Gunther from Atlanta and Jim Gibbs from Tulsa were on the first team. Future NBA great Paul Seymour of New Orleans and the Saints' Jack Dwan were the forwards on the second team.

The 6-foot-4 Dwan was signed by the Lakers and was a contributor to the championships in 1948 and 1949. Hale played in the NBA, coached at the University of Miami and for the Oakland Oaks in the ABA (where the star would be his son-in-law, Rick Barry).