If a determined airline crew hadn't made a miraculous landing in an Iowa cornfield 50 years ago, the Los Angeles Lakers likely never would have existed.
A year after surviving the harrowing landing, the Lakers moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, beginning a 49-year run of West Coast success that's virtually unmatched in professional sports. The franchise captured its 15th championship in 2009.
But if that snowy night in January of 1960 had ended in tragedy, the history of the NBA likely would have changed dramatically. Los Angeles eventually would have received an NBA team, but it almost assuredly wouldn't have been called the Lakers. Think of it: The Lakers name never being tied to the star players recognizable by one name: Baylor, West, Chamberlain, Kareem, Magic, Shaq, Kobe. In fact, those players' link even to Los Angeles suddenly becomes tenuous at best.
The Minneapolis Lakers were drawing poorly in 1960 and might have even folded if a crash had killed most of the team and personnel.
“All of the movement west would not have taken place for quite a while after that,'' said Dick Garmaker, an All-Star for the Minneapolis Lakers. “We'd have been down to seven teams in the league. So who knows what would have happened to the NBA at that time?''
Hot Rod Hundley, a Hall of Fame broadcaster who spent most of his 42-year career with the New Orleans and Utah Jazz, played for the Minneapolis and Los Angeles Lakers. He called countless games between the Jazz and Lakers.
Hundley said there's no way to know which direction the NBA would have taken had his plane crashed that night. He only knows it would have been much different.
“You never thought about that when you were on the plane,'' he said. “We all just wanted to get down and out of there.''
Garmaker prefers to put the scare into human context, rather than basketball context. In 1960, his two sons hadn't been born yet.
“That would have really been a tragedy,'' all of the potential lives lost, he said. “I've thought about that very much.''
So has Harold Gifford, a co-pilot on the flight.
“I wonder how many people that are still living, that have been married and had children and grandchildren, that would not have been able to,'' he said. “There were a lot of people in Carroll that were probably pulling for us that night. Maybe some of them even offered a prayer.
“Unless our great maker is an NBA fan. Maybe that's what happened.''
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444-1055, kevin.white@owh.com
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