Author: David Shama

Gophers basketball coach Tubby Smith will inspire the crowd by announcing “Let’s Play Hockey” prior to tonight’s Minnesota Wild home game against Philadelphia (the Flyers first trip to St. Paul since February 2003).

The Flyers general manager is Paul Holmgren, the former St. Paul Harding High School, Gopher and North Star player.  There’s speculation Holmgren will be the next USA Hockey general manager for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.

Hockey Canada and the Canadian Hockey League announced on Monday that 37 of Canada’s best junior-aged hockey players (born in 1988 or later) have been invited to participate in Canada’s National Junior Selection Camp from December 10-14 in Calgary. The Wild’s 2007 first round draft pick, Colton Gillies, was among the 37 players invited to camp. https://www.hockeycanada.ca/

With the Twins committed to budget restraint more than some other organizations, it’s hard to believe that reliever Joe Nathan, 33, will be re-signed to a new contract before or after the 2008 season.  Other teams are probably more willing to give him more years and money than the Twins.  Nathan’s salary was $5,250,000 in 2007, according to espn.com.  The Twins options include trading Nathan now but also waiting until the July trading deadline and determining whether the club is in contention.  If not, Nathan might be a valuable pick up for a contending team looking for bullpen help.

Billy Martin Jr., the son of the famed baseball manager, is one of Nathan’s agents.  The younger Martin was just a little kid when Martin first coached and then managed the Twins in the late 1960s.

You have to wonder what the late season energy levels will be and whether injuries can be avoided by Boston’s big three of Kevin Garnett, 31, Ray Allen, 32, and Paul Pierce, 30.  On Sunday, when the Celtics were playing their third game in four days, Garnett played only 23 minutes in an 80-70 win over Cleveland.  Boston has a league best 14-2 record but it’s a long way to April and the playoffs.  Give the Celtics credit, though, for playing great team basketball and still showcasing their big three.

Garnett’s former team, the Timberwolves, has the poorest record in the NBA at 2-14. The worst record in NBA history is held by the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers who finished 9-73. The Wolves have played without starters Randy Foye and Theo Ratliff, and now are without head coach Randy Wittman for an indefinite period because of back surgery today.

Six wins used to qualify a major college football team for a bowl game but with the expansion to a 12 game schedule that’s no longer true.  Among the six win teams not headed to bowl games are two from the Big Ten Conference, Iowa and Northwestern.  Both finished at 6-6.

With the Star Tribune no longer offering a Sunday TV publication, a suggestion for the sports department is to publish a schedule of televised sports for the week on its sports pages.  Even a grid in small type would be helpful.

Local author Ross Bernstein has a new book, “More Frozen Memories,” that includes over 750 photos and text about Minnesota high school, college and pro hockey. Content includes histories of the boys and girls state tournaments, plus the Wild, North Stars, Fighting Saints and Moose.  There are also chapters on all of the state’s college and university teams.  Bernstein has written 40 books and can be contacted at ross@bernsteinbooks.com. Visit his Web site for more information including details on book signings, www.bernsteinbooks.com.

For those of us who loved the Minneapolis Lakers, there’s a little hurt in our souls this week.  The Los Angeles Lakers are in town tomorrow night to play the Timberwolves, and Laker players are wearing a logo this season to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the franchise.  The logo includes the words Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Lakers.

The franchise moved to Los Angeles in 1960.  In the survival guide of what’s important in life—health, family and security—the departure of the Lakers from Minneapolis is trivial.  But those who care about sports do so because it arouses our passions and loyalties.  The more invested emotionally, the greater the highs, the lower the lows.

The Dodgers vacated Brooklyn for Los Angeles in 1958.  Fifty years next year, the pain, anger and disappointment will still linger for older generations of Dodger fans.  No doubt the Dodger fans in Brooklyn have us outnumbered, but our regret over losing the Lakers is no less heartfelt.  Not for those of us who care about the franchise that relocated here in 1947 as the Detroit Gems and left Minneapolis in 1960 after winning five pro basketball championships.

As a kid, I was too young to see the title teams, the last championship coming in 1954. My time was the franchise’s last couple of years when the Lakers had fallen on hard seasons at the box office and sometimes on the court.  The franchise was rebuilding mostly around a young acrobatic forward named Elgin Baylor who hung in the air as if time stopped, habitually twitched his head while dribbling the ball and just as routinely put up 25 to 30 points per game.

Baylor was a deserving replacement to the team’s star of the championship years, George Mikan.  The Lakers’ great center was known as Mr. Basketball and recognized by the Associated Press as the best player in America for the first half of the 20^th century.  Fittingly, his statue is located in the lobby of Target Center, only a few blocks from the old Minneapolis Auditorium where the Lakers played most of their games.

The Lakers have always had great players and teams.  Mikan, teammate Jim Pollard, Baylor, Jerry West (his likeness is the NBA logo), Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant span seven decades of NBA basketball. The Boston Celtics have won the most pro basketball titles, 16.  The Lakers have won 14, but it’s the storied franchise that started here that has won world championships in each decade except one since the 1940’s.  Even the Celtics can’t match that success. (Note: the NBA recognizes the Lakers 1948-49 championship in the Basketball Association of America as an NBA title even though the NBA began in 1949-50. The Lakers won the NBA championship in 1949-50 and three more after that in Minneapolis).

The decade without a title was the 1960’s when six times the Lakers lost to the Celtics in the NBA finals.  In one of sports’ greatest rivalries, the magnificent twosome of West and Baylor created a soap opera in which no matter the finals series, regardless of their lead in the series, and despite home court advantage, the Celtics would somehow find a hero, or get a lucky bounce of the ball on the rim, or find a lucky leprechaun to help them win again.

Those of us following our transplanted heroes watched with both admiration and envy.  We were grateful to see many of the playoff games.  Some of the series finals were on national TV.  Earlier in the playoffs, Laker owner Bob Short, the Minneapolis businessman who had moved the team to Los Angeles in 1960, arranged for games to be televised here.

Short took the Lakers to Los Angeles because the franchise was losing money and often had to scramble for a playing site.  The auditorium sometimes had other events, forcing the Lakers to play at the Minneapolis Armory or St. Paul Auditorium.

The Lakers were pretty much nothing starting out at the box office in Los Angeles, drawing crowds of around 4,000.  Although that raised my curiosity as a kid as to why the Lakers ever left Minneapolis, in time the franchise became among the most popular in all of sports.  The franchise that came to Minneapolis costing $15,000 now is worth $568 million, according to a forbes.com article in January.

In big market Los Angeles, the Lakers have undeniably prospered and acquired high price talent they never could have afforded in Minneapolis.  The Lakers legacy in L.A. is far greater than our city of lakes could have provided.

Still, there aren’t any lakes in southern California and forever more some of us will prefer Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles Lakers.  Happy 60^th!