Best basketball rivalry? Globetrotters vs. Lakers

With the Harlem Globetrotters appearing at the Target Center on Friday and Saturday in their 90th season, it brought back memories of what I think was the greatest basketball rivalry ever played between the Globetrotters and the Minneapolis Lakers, because at the time blacks were not allowed to play in the NBA and the Trotters had a team made up of the greatest black players in the country.

The two teams played seven games between 1948 and '52, with five at the Chicago Stadium, one at the St. Paul Auditorium and one at the Minneapolis Auditorium. The Trotters won the first two — helped by the fact that team owner Abe Saperstein insisted on selecting his own officials.

The first game drew one of the biggest crowds in the history of Chicago Stadium, 17,823, and the two games played in the Twin Cities had people lined up at 5 a.m. to get tickets. Standing room was such a crowded situation that the local fire marshals almost called off both games and had to be begged to let them go on.

The Lakers featured the great George Mikan, who went up against Inman Jackson, one of the greatest to ever play the game.

The Lakers had won the National Basketball League title in 1947-48 but did not get credit, and it was given to the rival Basketball Association of America. But the Lakers won the BAA title the next season, and then the NBA title in 1950-51 and 1952-53 — all seasons in which they faced the Globetrotters.

The teams also played one game in 1958, even though it didn't have the same importance as the earlier games because by then the Lakers were a shadow of themselves and black players were playing in the NBA.

However, the Lakers did win that '58 game, and the Globetrotters featured a young Wilt Chamberlain on the squad.

On another subject concerning Saperstein, I was present at the NBA draft in 1950 when the Boston Celtics broke the color line by drafting Chuck Cooper out of Duquesne. The meeting broke up when that happened, because the NBA was drawing sellout crowds on doubleheaders, with the Globetrotters playing one game of the doubleheader and NBA teams playing the other.

Several owners tried to persuade Celtics General Manager Red Auerbach to not select Cooper because they knew Saperstein would cancel all of the Globetrotters games as a part of those doubleheaders, and that would kill attendance. That is just what happened.

After Cooper was drafted, Earl Lloyd and Nat "Sweetwater'' Clifton were selected in later rounds, becoming the second and third black players to be drafted.

With the news that Tuesday's broadcast of the Tampa Bay Rays' game against the Cuban National Team was ESPN's highest-rated preseason baseball game since 2004, it may be worth remembering that in 1959 the Minneapolis Millers, then an American Association team and the farm squad of the Boston Red Sox, played a tremendous seven-game series against the Havana Sugar Kings, who were part of the International League, in what was known as the Little World Series.

The Millers that season had added Carl Yastrzemski to their playoff roster; he was only 19 at the time. But the squad, which was managed by Gene Mauch, had finished 95-67 with great performances from outfielder Chuck Tanner and pitchers Tom Borland and Ted Bowsfield, who eventually reached the majors.

The Sugar Kings had future major leaguers Mike Cuellar and Luis Arroyo on their team along with Cookie Rojas, who had played professionally before the series with the Millers.

The first two games were at Met Stadium, with each team winning one game. But bad weather forced the final five games to be played in Havana, which was undergoing a communist revolution at the time.

That meant all of the Millers had to stay in their hotel when they weren't playing.

The series went seven games with the Sugar Kings winning Game 7. Still, the team was disbanded the following season by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and it was a year later that Cuba started its national baseball system.

• Gophers men's basketball coach Richard Pitino said there may be a decision this week on whether the three players who were suspended late in the season — Nate Mason, Dupree McBrayer and Kevin Dorsey — will return next season. "We'll all meet this week and kind of make the decision moving forward. It's something where we want everyone to take a deep breath," Pitino said. "It's tough to finish the season like that. We thought we had really good momentum from the Maryland game and then the Rutgers game, but then to lose those three guys and Joey King getting hurt, it was a tough pill to swallow. But it was a decision we thought was the best for our program moving forward."

• It's hard to believe that Iowa had three schools in the NCAA men's basketball tournament in Iowa, Northern Iowa and Iowa State, and Wisconsin had two schools in the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin-Green Bay. Minnesota had zero.

• Bill Self, the great basketball coach for Kansas who has won every place he has coached, was at Tulsa from 1997 to 2000 before going to Illinois. But I recall Harvey Mackay, a Gophers booster, almost had Self sold on taking the Gophers job. In fact only when the Illinois job opened did Self pass up the Gophers.

• Andrew Wiggins scored 23 points on 10-for-15 shooting in the Wolves' 113-104 victory over Sacramento on Wednesday night. Wiggins has scored 20 or more points in 42 games this season and has tallied at least 20 in eight of his past nine games. … If you thought Warriors star Stephen Curry is good now, the headline in a recent New York Times article read "Curry Says He Can Get Better, and 29 Teams Shudder."

• The Gophers baseball team played its home opener Tuesday. That's the earliest the Gophers have played an outdoor home game since 1900. Since 1900, the average date of the Gophers' first outdoor home game is April 13.

• A recent MLB mock draft for 2016, done by MLB Draft Countdown, had the Twins selecting Logan Shore with the 15th pick out of the University of Florida. Shore played his high school baseball at Coon Rapids before becoming one of the best college pitchers in the nation. He is one of the aces for the Gators, who are ranked No. 1 in the country. This season, Shore is 4-0 with a 2.23 ERA in five starts. He has struck out 38 and walked only three in 32 ⅓ innings.

Sid Hartman can be heard weekdays on 830-AM at 6:40, 7:40 and 8:40 a.m. and on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. shartman@startribune.com