Pacers Courtside

There is a great article from the Indianapolis Star about the early years of the Indiana Pacers. Here’s the intro and a link to the rest:

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Pacers were the dominant team in the old American Basketball Association. The Pacers won three ABA national championships and reached the title round in five of the nine seasons the league existed.

When the ABA folded in 1976, the Pacers made a difficult transition to the National Basketball Association. Surviving insolvency only through a telethon the Pacers rebuilt, adapted and emerged in the 1990s as a championship-contending team.

The ABA Years

The Pacers franchise began as a charter member of the ABA in 1967 when a group of eight businessmen invested a few thousand dollars apiece.

The first Pacers coach was Larry Staverman and the first player signed by the team was Roger Brown. A New York City playground legend from Brooklyn, Brown’s promising career was halted during his freshman year at the University of Dayton because of his association with a local gambler. Brown never played a varsity college game and was banned by the NBA.

“Oscar Robertson told me to go to Dayton and find Roger Brown,” Mike Storen, the Pacers’ first general manager, later recalled. Storen found him working the night shift at a General Motors factory and playing Amateur Athletic Union ball when the ABA gave him new life.

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Early years of the Indiana Pacers