Although everyone thinks of the Boston Celtics’ eight straight championships, which began in 1959, the Minneapolis Lakers, with center George Mikan, the game’s first dominant big man, were the NBA’s first repeat winners in 1949 and 1950, and they did themselves one better with a three-peat run from 1952 to 1954. Mikan not only was big and strong at 6 ft. 10. in., he was far more coordinated than most players his size, and was known for his ability to make hook shots with either hand. His effectiveness near the basket led to several rule changes. In college, at DePaul, he swatted away so many shots from the rim that goaltending was outlawed. In the NBA, the lane was widened from 6 feet to 12 feet to prevent in from camping under the basket. Also, because some teams resorted to stalling in trying to compete against the Lakers, the league adopted the 24-second shot clock.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
