George Mikan "Chicago's Greatest Basketball Player of All Time" Presentation Tray

Accompanied by a letter of registration from J.O. Sports, Inc., signed by President and Chief Operating Officer Jarrod Oldridge.

Offered is a sterling silver presentation tray awarded to George Mikan at Chicago Stadium in 1970 by the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry, honouring him as "Chicago's Greatest Basketball Player of All Time." It is a rare and deeply significant artifact from the early history of professional basketball, presented to the man widely regarded as the sport's first true superstar by the city in which his professional career began.

The inscription on the tray's face captures the weight of the honour in a single phrase. Chicago's claim on Mikan was both legitimate and profound. He began his professional career with the Chicago American Gears of the National Basketball League in 1946, signing his first contract after a celebrated college career at DePaul University in Chicago, where coach Ray Meyer transformed the awkward, six-foot-ten teenager from Joliet into the most dominant player in the college game. Mikan was named College Player of the Year twice and an All-American three times, leading DePaul to the National Invitational Tournament title in 1945 and breaking the collegiate single-game scoring record with 53 points along the way. By the time he turned professional, he was already the most recognizable name in basketball, and it was in Chicago that his professional story began.

When Mikan signed on with the Chicago American Gears of the National Basketball League, he won his first professional title in 1947. When the Gears folded, a lottery gave Mikan's rights to the Minneapolis Lakers, and thus began the championship dynasty and the royal lineage of big men that has passed to the likes of Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and those who followed. What that dynasty produced was the most dominant run in the history of early professional basketball. Between 1946 and 1954, teams that featured Mikan on their roster won seven championships across the NBL, the BAA, and the NBA. He was the common denominator in domination.

The statistics and the championships tell only part of the story. The lane was widened in 1951 from six to twelve feet, a change known as the Mikan Rule, to move him away from the basket. The stalling tactics used to keep the ball away from Mikan by the Fort Wayne Pistons in a 19-18 win over the Lakers in 1950 eventually led to the introduction of the 24-second shot clock. Two of the most consequential rule changes in the history of professional basketball exist because of one player. His presence on the floor brought about repeated tinkering of the rules, and off the floor he was able to connect with an indifferent public unsure about the prospects of a basketball league, aiding an infant sport as it crossed the bridge from upstart to big-time, helping it carve out a place on the American sporting landscape it has never relinquished.

In January of 1950, an Associated Press mid-century poll named Mikan the greatest player of the first half of the twentieth century, and from that the moniker of "Mr. Basketball" was at once earned and enshrined for eternity. One night in the early 1950s, the marquee at Madison Square Garden read simply: "Geo Mikan vs. Knicks." He was inducted into the inaugural Basketball Hall of Fame class of 1959 and was subsequently named to the 25th, 35th, 50th and 75th NBA anniversary teams.

The presentation tray offered here was awarded twenty-four years after Mikan first suited up for the Chicago American Gears, and sixteen years after his retirement. That the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry chose to honor him in 1970, by which time the NBA had grown into a nationally recognized league and a new generation of stars had emerged, speaks to the endurance of his legacy and the permanence of Chicago's claim on the man who began his professional journey there. It is an object that places Mikan within the specific context of the city that first gave him a professional stage, presented at a moment when the sport he had helped build was finally receiving the recognition it deserved.