George Mikan: The Games I’ll Never Forget, 1948, 1954

[Here’s yet another notable installment culled from Basketball Digest’s long-running series, “The Game I’ll Never Forget.” This specific remembrance, published in the Digest’s Summer 1997 issue, comes from the all-time great center George Mikan. No intro needed for Mikan, so I’ll move ahead, noting Big George chose two games, not one. He rambles a bit, but in a good way, especially the bit about Ma Collins. If you enjoy the vintage NBA, this post is definitely worth the brief read. All right, George, the blog is all yours. Go ahead and tell it like it was.] **** When I started out, I was constantly fighting the battle to overcome the perception that I was too big. When I went to Notre Dame to try out, they thought I was too tall to play. In those days, there were a lot of short, fast guys, and they thought big guys were too slow to be effective. Ray Meyer of DePaul helped change all of that. He liked big guys. He thought of me kind of like a quarterback on a football team. It turned…