ST. PAUL, Minn. — So revered was George Mikan that when a young Hamline University forward named Vern Mikkelsen managed to score a basket on him during a college game, he apologized.

"I apologized to him as we ran downcourt. I didn't know what else to say," Mikkelsen recalled yesterday. "He laughed at me and said it was OK that I scored on him, but he told me it won't happen again."

It was that combination of courtesy and competitiveness that made Mikan a pioneer on the court and an idol off it. Basketball's first "big man" and the NBA's first superstar died late Wednesday at age 80 in a Scottsdale, Ariz., rehabilitation center, where he was being treated for diabetes and kidney disease.

"In the sports I've been involved in and the people I've played with and against, and the people I've coached and coached against, he was the greatest competitor I've ever been involved with," said former Vikings coach Bud Grant, a teammate of Mikan's on the 1950 Lakers team that won an NBA championship.

"In sports," Grant said, "there are great competitors, but he was a fierce competitor. He wanted the ball in every tough situation and never wanted to come out of a game. He was a great inspiration to the whole team."

Mikan was a star before he turned pro, dominating college basketball to the point that the NCAA was forced to create the goaltending rule to keep the bespectacled, 6-foot-10 center from flicking the ball out of the basket. He later joined Mikkelsen under coach Johnny Kundla on the Minneapolis Lakers, creating pro basketball's first dynasty and forcing rules changes there, as well.

"They widened the lane because of George, moving it from six feet to 12 feet (in 1951), but it didn't hurt him," Mikkelsen said. "He was so active for his size. The extra space actually helped him. He would either pass off to one of us or turn inside and score himself. He was the first guy his size to be able to put it all together like that."

Mikan's Lakers won five league titles in the first six years of the franchise's history, starting a dynasty that would be reborn in Los Angeles after his retirement, because of injuries, in 1956. When the NBA was expanding in the late 1980s, Mikan was instrumental in luring the league back to the Twin Cities.

He averaged 23.1 points per game in seven seasons and was the NBA's most valuable player in 1948 after averaging 28.3 points. His presence in the early days of pro basketball was so profound that a Madison Square Garden marquee advertising a Lakers-Knicks game once famously read "Geo. Mikan vs. Knicks."

"He was the greatest," Grant said. "He was the dominant player."

Said NBA commissioner David Stern: "We may never see one man impact the game of basketball as he did, and represent it with such warmth and grace."

Mikan was so popular — or, sometimes, unpopular — it became a distraction. Last year he told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that items were routinely thrown at him in opposing arenas, including a five-inch knife in Rochester, N.Y., and a radiator cap in Fort Wayne, Ind.

"People bothered him all the time," Kundla said. "I would cut his phone off in the hotels and have all the calls for him come through me."

Mikan's health had been failing the past several years. He suffered from diabetes and kidney failure, and one leg was amputated in 2000. He recently was hospitalized for six weeks for treatment of a diabetes wound in the other leg and for the past five years had undergone kidney dialysis three times a week.

"He had a fierce determination to excel, which he exhibited in his athletic career and business career," his son Terry Mikan told The Associated Press, "and that probably extended his life five years."

The entrance at Target Center, home to the Timberwolves, features a life-size bronze statue of Mikan, erected in 2001. In 1996, a panel of players, coaches and media members selected Mikan as one of the NBA's 50 greatest players.

Mikan's impact went beyond his playing days. As commissioner of the NBA's rival American Basketball Association in 1967, he came up with the still-famous red, white and blue basketball and was instrumental in introducing the three-point line.

More recently, Mikan had lobbied the NBA to increase pensions for old-time players. His son Terry said he was receiving a monthly pension check of $1,700 at the time of his death, and that most of his father's awards and memorabilia had been sold.