How a pro team in Detroit turned into the Los Angeles Lakers

Time to play for Gems

The roster of the Gems had some local college players. Guard Paul Juntunen was from Wayne State, forward Frank Mekules had played at Michigan State and forward Tom Meyer had gone to the University of Detroit.

The coach was Joel Mason, who had recently retired as a football player for the Green Bay Packers. He was at the time an assistant coach for Wayne State’s football (yes, they had a football team back then) and basketball teams. He had played basketball at Western Michigan, so he had some experience.

While there was no official color barrier in pro basketball, like there was at the time in baseball (Jackie Robinson was still a year away), black players were still rare. So give credit to Mason, Winston and Boring for having Wilbert King on the squad. King had been with the Harlem Globetrotters, and in the summer played baseball for the Homestead Grays, a member of the Negro Baseball League.

Two other black players, Nat (Sweetwater) Clifton and Sonny Boswell, played for Detroit in exhibition games.

However, when the games started, it was soon obvious the team was terrible. How bad? The Gems were both the worst offensive team in the league (by five points!) as well as the worst defensive team (by three points a game). They had a net rating of minus-15.

The highlight of the season was a two-game winning streak, with victories over the Chicago Gears (who were missing star center George Mikan) and then an overtime win over the Youngstown Bears on Christmas Day, when a clock malfunction disallowed what would have been the winning basket by the Bears.

It was the only time the Gems had consecutive wins in the season.

To start 1947, Mason resigned as coach (he would go on to be the head basketball coach at Wayne State for many years) and Fred Campbell, who had 18 points in the win over the Bears, was named player-coach.

As the losses piled up, Ferndale High’s huge gym became unnecessary, and the Gems moved to Holy Redeemer High School. It was located in southwest Detroit, near the Ambassador Bridge. The gym held only 1,000 but it was enough for the number of fans the Gems were attracting.

The Gems did have one more big win, over the Western Division leading Indianapolis Kautskys, to give them a 4-18 record. However, the Gems lost their remaining 22 games, and they finished with a 4-40 record. On a percentage basis, it was the worst record of any professional basketball team, before or since.

The end of the Detroit Gems

Having finished the 1946-47 NBL season at the bottom of the standings, and playing their home games in a small high school gym, the Gems had certainly not gotten off to a good start.

However, two Minneapolis businessmen, Benny Berger and Morris Chaflen, offered Boring and Winston the sum of $15,000 (the equivalent of $190,000 now), for the franchise. Boring and Winston had lost a great deal of money on the team, so they accepted the offer.

Berger and Chaflen moved the team to Minneapolis and renamed it the ‘Lakers’, since the state of Minnesota is known as the ‘Land of 10,000 Lakes’.