1947–48 Minneapolis Lakers season

The 1947–48 Minneapolis Lakers season was the inaugural season for the Lakers in Minneapolis following its relocation from Detroit where it played as the Detroit Gems the previous season. This season would be considered a hard reboot for the franchise, to the point where some fans and sports historians claim that the Detroit Gems and Minneapolis Lakers exist as two separate franchises due to the myriad of ways the franchise reset itself from the past in Detroit to the way it became what it was out in Minneapolis. During this season, on February 19, 1948, the Lakers would play a notable exhibition game against the Harlem Globetrotters to decide which of the two teams were considered the best team of the two at that time; while the Globetrotters would stun the Lakers with a 61–59 defeat for the Lakers due to a buzzer-beating 30-foot shot by Ermer Robinson, the game itself would be a catalyst for not just many more exhibition matches between the two teams for a few years afterward once the Lakers entered the BAA and then the NBA (which saw Harlem winning their first rematch before the Lakers won the rest of their subsequent match-ups not long afterward), but also helped see the end of racial segregation in the sport of basketball as well. The Lakers won the National Basketball League championship against the Rochester Royals. George Mikan led the team with 21.3 points per game and was the league's MVP. After this season ended for the NBL, both the Lakers and Royals would leave the NBL to join the newly rivaling Basketball Association of America (BAA) along with two other longstanding NBL clubs, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons and the Indianapolis Kautskys, though Fort Wayne and Indianapolis would rebrand themselves as the Fort Wayne Pistons and Indianapolis Jets respectively in order to join properly due to the BAA not allowing for teams to have brand promotions as a part of their team names on display.

After talks of a 1948 championship series between the champions of the National Basketball League (which were the Minneapolis Lakers) and the newly-rivaling Basketball Association of America (which were formerly the older rivaling American Basketball League's own Baltimore Bullets, which was also the BAA's original Baltimore Bullets franchise) ultimately never came to fruition, it was decided that the Lakers would also participate in what would ultimately become the final World Professional Basketball Tournament ever held. In the final tournament ever held, the Lakers would crush the original American Basketball League's Wilkes-Barre Barons (who were the only non-NBL professional team competing in that event) 98–48 in the quarterfinal round and barely held on against the Anderson Duffey Packers with a 59–56 win in the semifinal round before winning the final championship over the independent New York Renaissance with a 75–71 victory that year, with the championship match having them being led behind George Mikan's tournament record and (MVP performing) 40 points scored that night.