He’d post up his mother
George Mikan, who died last week, had a brother, Ed, who also played center in the NBA. The two, at times, went at it.
Slater Martin, George Mikan’s teammate with the Minneapolis Lakers, recalled a game in Chicago.
Ed Mikan played for the Stags and afterward they all went to a tavern owned by the Mikans’ parents.
“Ed was all bruised and nicked up,” Martin told the Houston Chronicle. “He had a cut over his eye, scratches on his face.
“His mother, who was Croatian and called George Georgie, on this night said, ‘Georgie, why beat up your brother like that?’
“He said, ‘Mama, if you had been out there, I’d have beat you up too.’ “
•At Mikan’s funeral Monday at Scottsdale, Ariz., former Lakers teammate and Hall of Famer Vern Mikkelsen recalled playing against Mikan in college, when Mikan was at DePaul and Mikkelsen at Minnesota’s Hamline University.
Mikkelsen, who was held to one basket in the first half, said he complimented Mikan at halftime, saying he was glad that he’d got at least one basket.
According to Mikkelsen, Mikan said, “And you won’t get another.”
Didn’t have to take him literally
A little more than a week ago at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, driver Jaime Camara crashed into a wall while spinning doughnuts to celebrate winning an Infiniti Pro Series race.
On Sunday, Greg Biffle did the same thing after winning the Nextel Cup race on the Monster Mile at Dover, Del.
Biffle smacked the wall just as crew chief Doug Richert was telling a television interviewer, “He drove the wheels off the thing.”
Spurred him to comment
Magic Johnson, among those on an ABC conference call to promote the NBA Finals, was asked by San Antonio News-Express television writer Jeannie Jackle if the Spurs’ national image was getting any better.
“I wish we, and by we I mean the Lakers, had the Spurs’ image,” Johnson said.
Well, winning wouldn’t hurt
Things couldn’t be looking much bleaker for the San Francisco 49ers, what with the release of the off-color training video that the San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Ostler calls the “feel-queasy film of the summer.”
Ostler offers this advice: “People are laughing at the 49ers. What to do?
“When all else fails, try playing better football.”
Bar examination
Dan Freeman, a retired computer consultant, has set a goal of visiting 1,000 bars this year, Associated Press reported.
“Just goes to show the lengths some guys will go to get David Wells’ autograph,” Dwight Perry wrote in the Seattle Times.
A real long shot
From an Associated Press dispatch out of New Zealand:
“A 6-year-old racehorse named Rain, Hail or Shine died in its paddock – after being struck by lightning.”
The last word
Alan Schwarz of the New York Times, on the relative anonymity of baseball’s draft compared to the NFL’s draft or the NBA’s:
“If no one has heard of the players, can the draft make a sound?”