DON’T LOOK BACK

MINNEAPOLIS — Over recent decades, block after block of downtown Minneapolis’ glass and concrete office towers have inched eastward.

Today, at 5th Avenue South, they come to a sudden halt, their path blocked by perhaps the ugliest building--certainly the smelliest--in Minnesota.

Staples Center--which hosts its first sports event tonight, the Kings’ opener--will be the Lakers’ third home in Los Angeles. The Lakers’ home opener is Nov. 3.

But go back four venues in the Laker history book and you’re here, at the corner of 5th Avenue South and 6th Street, at the main entrance to the Minneapolis Armory.

It’s the Lakers’ last still-standing home in Minneapolis.

And you need only to step inside to understand why, in 1960, Laker owner Bob Short announced he was moving his team to Los Angeles.

In their 12 years in Minneapolis, the Lakers had three homes:

* The Minneapolis Auditorium, with 10,000 seats.

* The Minneapolis Armory, with 7,000.

* The St. Paul Auditorium, with 8,000.

Only the Armory stands today.

A yellow-brick hulk, it looks like a mini-Atlantic City Convention Hall, or a small-plane hangar. The year of its completion as a WPA project is engraved in the cornerstone at the main entrance: 1935.

The building is boarded and locked up, while city and county officials try to figure out what to do with it. It’s protected by court order from demolition.

Inside, on the arena floor, puddles from a recent thunderstorm are everywhere. The stench of mildew and standing water is overpowering.

You can see where the old basketball floor was removed, where George Mikan, Elgin Baylor, Bob Pettit, Bob Cousy and other NBA Hall of Famers once played . . . and shivered, during Minnesota winters.

And what became of the basketball floor, where the great 1950s Laker, Boston Celtic and St. Louis Hawk teams played?

“It’s in storage, somewhere in Minneapolis,” said Ted Walker, a Hennepin County official.

Then, as now, the Quonset-type roof leaked.

Not a tough call, then, for Short to pack up his team and move into Los Angeles’ gleaming, brand-new Memorial Sports Arena.

“I roomed with Rudy LaRusso in those Minneapolis days,” recalls Rod Hundley, a guard on both the Minneapolis and early Los Angeles Laker teams.

“When we heard we were moving to L.A., we were overjoyed. We couldn’t wait. We left immediately. I had a brand-new Olds Super 88 convertible and I was packed up and on my way to L.A. within hours. LaRusso was right behind me, bumper to bumper, all the way.

“The Armory and the two other Minneapolis places we played in were cold and drafty. During Armory games, when it was minus 20 outside, it was awful. You had to blow on your hands just to grip the ball for a free throw.

“We were going from there to the greatest arena in America, the Sports Arena, which was a marvelous facility then, compared to all other NBA arenas at the time. I still love it, even though I know it’s out of date. I still love the exterior of the Sports Arena.”

The Lakers played seven seasons in the Sports Arena, and this past spring completed their 32nd and last in the Forum.

Now, Staples.

Anyone who has been in many contemporary NBA arenas will agree that the new arena, with its 20,000 bright purple seats and three stories of suites, evokes a feeling of both vastness and style that transcends any similar building in the country.

And so it was in 1959, when the Sports Arena opened. It was the best, the standard for a nation. But 40 years later, it was both the oldest and smallest NBA venue.

So a stroll in the Minneapolis Armory, then, is like a walk through the NBA’s Pleistocene era.

The last occupant was the Minnesota National Guard, which moved out in 1986. Underneath the arena floor, where tanks and Howitzers were once parked, it’s dark and damp. Only a few working lightbulbs remain to illuminate the puddles.

The locks have been long removed from the steel-doored ammunition rooms and the shooting range.

Grime and dust rule. On the arena level, if you run your finger through the grime on the yellow tile walls, the tile gleams, as if installed last week.

A rookie on that last Minneapolis Laker team, Dodger executive Tommy Hawkins, remembers the Armory’s rock-hard floor and what passed for plumbing.

“Today’s NBA floors have give, they’re padded,” he said.

“In those days, no one cared about players’ knees or ankles. That wooden floor was laid down right onto concrete. One time our center, Jim Krebs, came down with a rebound in the Armory and his right foot went right through the floor, into a hole in the concrete.

“He was stuck. We had to help him get his foot out of his shoe, which remained stuck. There was a long delay while carpenters came out and put down a new floor section.

“And the plumbing! We had a rule: If someone was using the shower, no one was allowed to flush the toilet. If you did, the guy in the shower got scalded.”

After the Lakers left, the Armory was home to Midwest political conventions, sports events and concerts. When the National Guard left in 1986, it was boarded up.

As the building decayed, developers eyed the property, only three blocks from the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.

There seemed no good reason not to demolish it but in 1993, the Minnesota Supreme Court certified it as having historic status and prohibited its owner, Hennepin County, from bringing it down.

What to do with it? Suggestions have included turning it into a parking facility, a 300-room hotel, a film and sound studio, a county jail, an indoor golf academy and a national volleyball training center.

To turn it into anything would require someone with deep pockets. To bolster the balcony, where there are 12 rows of bleacher seats --deemed unsafe--would cost $6 million alone.

You look up from the arena floor and see a giant clock, high on the north wall. It’s stopped at 9:05.

When did time stop here?

In daytime or at night?

And in what decade?

Laker Homes

IN MINNESOTA

* Minneapolis Auditorium

* Minneapolis Armory

* St. Paul Auditorium

IN LOS ANGELES

* Sports Arena

* The Forum

* Staples Center