In 1947, when John Kundla was making about $2,500 a year as the head basketball coach at the College of St. Thomas, I was a representative of the newly formed Minneapolis Lakers, and offered him a contract for double that amount. Despite that offer of $5,000, then upped to $6,000, Kundla kept rejecting it.
Kundla, who died Sunday at 101 years old, was living in a modest apartment in northeast Minneapolis, across the street from where he and the outstanding Schiller basketball team played high school ball. His wife, Marie, finally told me, "Will you get out of here, and stay out of here! John is not interested in taking your job."
The turning point that led him to accept the job to coach in the 1947-48 season was when Dave MacMillan, for whom Kundla had played at the University of Minnesota, told him that he should take it.
Kundla was not the first choice — that was Joe Hutton, who had compiled a great record at Hamline. But Hutton turned down the job because he wanted to coach his son.
I'll never forget the Lakers, then in the National Basketball League, going over to Oshkosh, Wis., and winning their first game under Kundla.
That first team won the NBL Championship, and midway through the season they added George Mikan, who ended up with the Lakers after his team, the Chicago American Gears, folded.
"How lucky can you get?" Kundla told Sports Illustrated in 1997. "We already had a great team, and then we got George, the best basketball player in the first half of the 20th century."
Kundla, who went into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995, revolutionized the professional game. With the drafting of Vern Mikkelsen out of Hamline, he played three big men in the starting lineup for the first time. He had Mikkelsen at the forward spot, with Mikan at center, and Jim Pollard at the other forward.
