Milt Schoon obit

 He was not on the list.

Milt Schoon, a backup center for the Sheboygan Red Skins for two seasons and a key member of their 1949-50 NBA team, died Jan. 18 at his home in Janesville, Wisconsin, The Press has learned. He was 92.

The colorful Schoon, known as the team jokester, attended two Red Skins reunions in the last 15 years, where he entertained Sheboygan audiences with his tales of the early NBA and the city's unlikely role in it.

Schoon's death leaves only one survivor from the Red Skins' NBA entrant. Teammates Bob Wood (Oct. 26) and Don Grate (Nov. 22) also died in recent months, leaving reserve forward and DePaul alum Jack Phelan, 89, as the last survivor.

Sheboygan, previously a member of the National Basketball League for 11 seasons, played just that one season in the NBA and was a charter member.

Schoon shot a team-best 41 percent from the field and averaged 8.0 points per game for the 1949-50 Red Skins, who beat the likes of the Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and the NBA champion Minneapolis Lakers, who suited up four members of the Basketball Hall of Fame in their starting lineup. He backed up leading scorer Noble Jorgensen, a 6-9 star, and was known for his defensive toughness.

Schoon, a banger at 6-7 and 230 pounds, enjoyed the rugged play of the early NBA, he told The Press in 2007.

"I remember playing at Fort Wayne's North Side High School," he said. "You put 10 horses on a little floor like that and you're going to get some bumps and bruises."

The Red Skins traveled in two station wagons in the early days, through snowstorms and along icy roads and under tight deadlines. The players nicknamed the DeSoto Suburban "The Blue Goose."

"One thing was traveling in those Suburbans. Man, how many scary nights we had with that," Schoon said in 2007. "One time on the way to Moline, Illinois, to play the (Tri-Cities) Blackhawks, we got into a head-on collision near Elkhorn. We finally got to East Moline at 2:30 in the morning after a 1 o'clock day game and we had to play the next night all bandaged up."

Sheboygan was booted from the NBA in April 1950, largely because it was limited to drawing fans from the smallest metro area in NBA history and could seat only 3,500 in its armory, also the smallest facility in league annals.

"The place was full almost every night," Schoon told The Press in 1999, "but still not enough intake to cover expenses."

Schoon, who was inducted into the Valparaiso University Hall of Fame, was a starter on the celebrated "World's Tallest Team" and known for holding all-time great and DePaul star George Mikan to nine points in a game in the mid-1940s.

Schoon began his professional career with the Detroit Falcons of the Basketball Association of America in 1946-47 and then moved to the Flint (Mich.) Dows of the NBL, before joining the Red Skins for the 1948-49 season.

After his time in Sheboygan, Schoon landed with the Denver Frontier Refiners of the National Professional Basketball League for the 1950-51 season. He scored 64 points in one game early in 1951, which stood as a professional record for a decade.

Career information

High school            Calumet (Gary, Indiana)

College

Trine (1941–1942)

Valparaiso (1943–1946)

Playing career            1946–1951

Position            Center

Career history

1946–1947            Detroit Falcons

1947–1948            Flint Dow Chemicals

1948–1950            Sheboygan Red Skins

1950–1951            Denver Refiners