Gopher Grad and Ex-Gopher Coach Joh Kundla Died today at 101 Years old.

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Iceland12

Iceland12

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Gopher Grad and Ex-Gopher Coach John Kundla Died today at 101 Years old.

Reusse: John Kundla passed away today at 1:50 pm. He turned 101 on July 3.

He went to the U from '36 to '39. He was the Minneapolis Laker's Head Coach from '47 to '59. 1st in the ABL and then starting in '49 the NBA. His teams won 6 titles.

Finally, when he didn't want to move with the Lakers to Los Angeles, he became the Gopher's Head coach. That lasted from 1959 to 1968.

Rest in peace Coach.
 


John Kundla, Winning Coach of Fledgling Lakers, Dies at 101 - NY Times

The Minneapolis Lakers, playing in a 10,000-seat arena and featuring the league’s first superstar, center George Mikan, won five championships in the N.B.A. and its immediate precursor — three of those titles consecutively — in the league’s first decade.

John Kundla, who was 31 when he was hired by the Lakers and coached those teams, died on Sunday at a nursing home in Minneapolis. He was 101 and the oldest living member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., having been inducted in 1995.

His death was confirmed by his son James.

Kundla was named one of the 10 best coaches in the N.B.A.’s history when the league celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1996. (The others were Red Auerbach, Chuck Daly, Bill Fitch, Red Holzman, Phil Jackson, Don Nelson, Jack Ramsey, Pat Riley and Lenny Wilkens.)

Although he largely slipped from basketball fans’ memories over the years, his total of five championship teams in the N.B.A. and its precursor ties him with Riley and Gregg Popovich for third place behind Jackson’s 11 and Auerbach’s nine. He was the only N.B.A. coach to have guided teams to championships in his first two seasons and the first to win three consecutive titles.

“The biggest crowd we ever had was for the Globetrotters, when we drew, I think, around 10,000 people,” Kundla told The St. Cloud Times in 2004, recalling his years in Minneapolis at a time when the N.B.A. was struggling for national attention. “Otherwise, especially for the early years, you had to clap to keep warm in there.”

Kundla had played for the University of Minnesota and was the head coach at the College of St. Thomas (now the University of St. Thomas) in St. Paul when he was named the Lakers’ coach in their inaugural season, 1947-48, in the old National Basketball League...

A 6-foot-2-inch forward, he started as a sophomore for the Minnesota basketball team that tied Illinois for the Big Ten title in 1937.

After Navy service in World War II and one season at St. Thomas, Kundla became the coach of the fledgling Lakers...

Kundla retired from the Lakers after that season and coached the University of Minnesota basketball team from 1959 to 1968. His championship Lakers teams were all white at a time when the N.B.A. was first starting to welcome black players. But he was the first basketball coach at Minnesota with black players on athletic scholarships, and two of them, Lou Hudson and Archie Clark, became N.B.A. All-Stars.

In his last years, Kundla had been a resident at an assisted living community in Minneapolis, where he followed the N.B.A. on television.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/23/sports/basketball/john-kundla-coach-of-fledgling-lakers-dies.html
 


When I was a young tike pops would take me to see the Lakers at the old Minneapolis Armory. Saw Elgin Baylor as a rookie. They also played in the old Minneapolis Auditorium. I remember George Miken had a Saturday morning TV show on WCCO.
 


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