University of St. Thomas Athletics
Throwback Thursday: St. Thomas' 1960s connection to LA Lakers
9/30/2020 11:41:00 AM | Athletics, Men's Basketball
The Los Angeles Lakers are now playing in the NBA finals for a league-best 32nd time in their 60-year history since leaving Minneapolis for southern California in 1960. The Lakers won game one on Wednesday night against the Miami Heat to take a 1-0 series lead.
Only one other NBA franchise -- Boston, with 21 -- has made more than 10 finals appearances. The Lakers come into this series 16-15 all-time in finals' results (5-1 as Minneapolis Lakers).
Here's a profile on Louie Mohs, a St. Thomas connection to the storied NBA franchise. This was first published in 2017 for the Tommie-Johnnie football program sold at the Target Field football game:
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Small-town Minnesotan makes it big. Rubs elbows with legends. Helps build a Hollywood legacy.
That's the story that Louis Mohs compiled as he rose to become general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers, a role he had until his sudden death in 1967 at age 71.
A gifted athlete, Mohs grew up with 13 siblings, the son of an immigrant. He starred in college athletics at both St. John's and St. Thomas, and actually holds a degree from each institution. Mohs was a player in the early years of the NFL, too.
He made all-conference in basketball in 1915-16 with St. John's and completed what was then a two-year degree option with the Johnnies.
Three years later, Mohs came to St. Thomas to complete his degree. As a student in St. Paul from 1919-21, he was a four-sport athlete (football, basketball, baseball and track). He played on the first MIAC championship team in any sport, the 1920 Tommie baseball team. He was an ROTC major, and worked on the staff of the Purple and Gray newspaper and Kaydet yearbook.
The St. Thomas yearbook said that Mohs "could always be depended on to play a hard game, and was working from whistle to whistle."
A 6-foot-4, 220-pound offensive tackle in football, Mohs went on to play in the NFL for the Minneapolis Marines. In one victory, Mohs' team shut out the Orang Indians, captained by legendary athlete Jim Thorpe.
One of Mohs' St. Thomas multi-sport teammates was Everett McGowan. Before he became a world-class speed skater, McGowan competed here alongside Mohs in football, baseball and track
Leader in business, basketball
Mohs was also later a successful Minneapolis newspaper executive. He hired a young man to his circulation team and later lobbied for that individual to get a writing job in the newsroom. That's how Sid Hartman's Twin Cities newspaper career began.
Mohs moved around the country with his family. He took on several metropolitan newspaper jobs where he was tasked with turning around slumping subscription trends. He also worked as a part-time scout for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minneapolis Lakers.
In 1960, Mohs was tabbed by team owner and fellow St. Thomas graduate Bob Short to run the Lakers in their move from Minneapolis to Los Angeles.
Long before Magic Johnson and Showtime took roots, Mohs had a tough job to sell an indoor sport in the shadow of the NFL's Rams and MLB's Dodgers. He went west with only one player under contract from the old Minneapolis Lakers – Elgin Baylor – and was saddled by a small budget.
Mohs drafted guard Jerry West and helped hire a young energetic radio broadcaster Chick Hearn to help sell tickets and grow interest. From Mohs' years in Los Angeles, Baylor, West, Gail Goodrich and Hearn all were later inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Lakers made the NBA finals five times in a seven-year span under Mohs' front-office leadership, losing four times to the Boston Celtics.
Years later, Mohs' oldest daughter, Martha, explained in a letter she wrote to LA Times columnist Jim Murray that nothing came easy.
"It was difficult in the beginning. Bob Short, the owner, had sent my Dad out with the team and a debt of $300,000 with the order, 'Call me for anything but money.'
"That very first year was lean. My Mom recalls, quite happily, how our family bought the first basketballs, how Mom washed the team jerseys at home, how we all sat up late at night after home games, counting ticket stubs, how the young players, out before their families arrived, would come over for home cooking.
"The team in the early 60s was a family nucleus with all the wives and children gathering for holiday parties while the team was on the road. At each home game, everyone involved sat in one corner area of the old Sports Arena and silently prayed, not necessarily for the team but watching the counter mark for each fan's arrival. Once it had marked 4,000, we knew we had made it into the black for the game--and sometimes that was a struggle.
"But with marvelous players, the likes of Baylor and West, and with LaRusso, Selvy, Hawkins, Felix, Hundley, Schaus, along with the voice of Chick Hearn, L.A. soon learned to love the Lakers."
Jim Murray
Murray, who died in 1998, was a legend in sports journalism. He's the last sports columnist to win a Pulitzer Prize for sports commentary (1990), and one of only four all-time to be so honored.
Murray responded to Martha Mohs Higgins' 1985 letter with a column where he shared more early memories:
Dear Martha:
Do I remember those years?! Better than last year.
I recall so well the last story I did as a magazine reporter was a 10-day trip with the Lakers called in the book, "Ten Tall Men Take a Trip."
I hate to brag, Martha, but I was one of the only writers west of the Pecos writing on pro basketball in those days. I know I was the only columnist. Even in New York, the citadel of basketball, the journalistic heavyweights like Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon, and Dick Young pretty much ignored basketball.
In order to draw in those days, pro basketball had to schedule doubleheaders with the Harlem Globetrotters. I remember, I went to the Sports Arena one Sunday afternoon in the first few months I was writing a column, and the Lakers were playing a playoff game against the St. Louis Hawks--and the "crowd" on the Sports Arena counter was 2,400. They get that to watch them practice today.
Your Dad, Lou Mohs, told me Wilt Chamberlain was making $15,000 a year in those seasons, and that was also what they paid Jerry West.
You bet, I remember Lou Mohs and Fred Schaus and Hot Rod and Elg and all the guys. I learned more basketball in one trip with those guys than I have since. The game kind of passed me by when they stopped having 3-to-make-2, and something called the "loose ball foul" came into being. We didn't have any fancy-schmancy rules about "loose ball fouls". You got a foul, you went to the line in those days.
We used to go on trips in quaking, asthmatic old planes, one of which had plowed up a cornfield in a blizzard with the Lakers one night, and often, the little two-engine wheezer would be occupied by both Lakers and Knicks en route to a doubleheader in Syracuse or Kankakee.
I remember those days proudly, as you do, because Lou Mohs commissioned a portrait of me by the Laker center, Gene Wiley, a painting that still hangs in my living room. "That's in appreciation," Lou told me. But about that time, Bob Short got a whole bunch of portraits of General Grant, or whoever it is on thousand-dollar bills, when Jack Kent Cooke bought the club from him for $5,175,000 in cash.
I like to think we all kind of washed jerseys for the Lakers in those days, Martha. But you and I and Chick Hearn and Jerry West and Elgin are the only ones around who remember it. Thanks for bringing it up.
Sincerely,
JIM MURRAY, 1985.
