Mark Bennett: Mural of 'Slick' Leonard's rescue of Pacers has hometown touch

Oct. 8—The motivations to drive to Indiana's capital city go beyond sports.

Savoring the wild omelets at Cafe Patachou. Gawking with the kids at the dinosaurs in the Indianapolis Children's Museum. Perusing the retro goodies in the candy shop on Monument Circle. Wandering through the shops on Mass Ave.

Still, Indianapolis' allure includes sporting events, from Colts, Pacers and Indians games to NCAA tournaments, the Indy 500 and the Indy Mini-Marathon, among others. In pre-pandemic times, 4.4 million people attended games and events at facilities operated by the Capital Improvement Board of Marion County in 2017, according to a 2018 study by the IUPUI Sports Innovation Institute. When all levels of sporting events, pros and amateurs, are included, those activities comprise 2.7% of the Indianapolis metro economy.

Indy is more than sports, but its development into a major U.S. metro can be traced to athletics.

That credit often goes, deservedly, to the era when former Mayor Bill Hudnut's vision led to the building of the Hoosier Dome and the relocation of the Baltimore Colts to Indy and a cascade of other additions that followed.

But July 3, 1977 paved the path for that. The gumption of Terre Haute native Bobby "Slick" Leonard and his wife Nancy fueled that pivotal day's results. Slick, the Indiana Pacers' coach then, and Nancy, the NBA team's general manager, saved the franchise with a homespun telethon to sell 8,000 season tickets and cover the club's payroll.

Now a mural commemorating that moment, by Terre Haute artist Becky Hochhalter, will hang inside the Pacers' 21st-century home, Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Hochhalter, whose murals grace walls throughout the Wabash Valley and beyond, was among 23 Hoosier artists chosen by the Indy Arts Council and Pacers Sports and Entertainment to create art pieces to tell the stories from the history of the Pacers, the Circle City itself, the fieldhouse and Indiana high school basketball.

Hochhalter chose 1977's "Save the Pacers" telethon from a roster of possible topics for her pieces, along with a depiction of Indy business brothers Herb and Melvin Simon buying the NBA club in 1983. Hochhalter's 3-dimensional murals and the other artists' pieces will be unveiled at the "Art of the Game" open house from 5 to 7 p.m. in Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

The Leonards' telethon was an obvious choice for Hochhalter.

"Of course, that one stood out because of the local connection," she said Tuesday.

Bobby Leonard was born and raised in Terre Haute, where he starred on the basketball court at Gerstmeyer High School, the Indiana University and then in the NBA. Leonard got nicknamed "Slick" as an NBA rookie while playing cards with his Minneapolis Lakers coach George Mikan and teammate "Hot" Rod Hundley. After his playing career, Leonard coached the Indiana Pacers to three championships in the American Basketball Association and then through the team's transition to the NBA after a 1976 merger with the ABA. His wife, Nancy, became the Pacers' general manager as the first woman to hold such a position for a major sports franchise.

The Pacers and three other surviving ABA clubs paid dearly to merge with the venerable NBA. They paid ridiculous fees to the NBA, including liability costs, $3.2 million up front and years of forfeited television revenue.

Once their first NBA season ended in the spring of 1977, the Pacers were broke. In a June meeting, the club owners told Nancy Leonard they needed to raise $2 million in a week, to bankroll the Pacers' next 1977-78 season, or lose the team. Nancy came up with idea to do a telethon, taking a page from comedian Jerry Lewis, with the goal of selling 8,000 season tickets, enough to cover the $2 million. The Leonards hosted it, with a quickly assembled stage, phone banks, homemade signs. Slick wore a typically splashy red sport coat and white bell bottoms, and Nancy a white pantsuit and red shirt.

It went on for 16 1/2 hours.

"I admire the creativity," Hochhalter said. "It took some creativity to come up with the idea. It also shows the dedication of Slick Leonard to that team and that franchise, and the lengths that he and his wife went to."

In an emotional final two-hour push, they reached, and exceeded, the goal, drawing 8,020 season-ticket purchases from fans. Nancy, in tears of joy, announced it to the audience.

Hochhalter's mural shows Slick and Nancy jubilant, surrounded by images of the Pacers' old home of Market Square Arena, the team's original logo and the year, 1977. She painted those scenes in acrylic and latex on aluminum cutouts, giving that mural, and the other of the Simon brothers, a 3-dimensional look. Both pieces measure 3 feet-by-4 feet and weigh nearly 100 pounds, making their mounting in the fieldhouse's VIP suites a bit tricky.

The murals are the ninth and 10th for Hochhalter this year. She's currently crafting a massive mural of Terre Haute's past, present and future on the exterior of historic Terminal building downtown, a project she'll likely complete next spring. The Pacers murals join others she's done in the Indianapolis area, including in Fishers, Noblesville and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The new murals in the fieldhouse represent a turning point for Indianapolis, said another Vigo County native, filmmaker Michael Husain. The 1983 West Vigo High School graduate researched the "Save the Pacers" telethon and produced the 2016 documentary, "Slick, Nancy and the Telethon" for ESPN's "30 for 30 Shorts" series.

"The moment, beautifully captured here [in the mural], is the moment which set in motion much of the next 45 years," Husain said Tuesday from Indianapolis, where he runs Good Vibes Media. "It's the moment the Pacers were able to stay in Indianapolis. It proved how passionate the fan base was about sports. Just a few years later, the Colts moved to Indy. New stadiums were built. The Pan Am Games [came to Indy]. The NCAA relocated its headquarters. The Super Bowl came."

The idea that a major league sports franchise could be saved with a one-day telethon by raising $2 million in season-ticket sales seems ancient now. The Pacers' estimated value today, according to Forbes magazine, is $1.67 billion. and that's just 22nd-best in the NBA.

Thus, 1997, was "a more innocent time for professional sports," Husain said.

Perhaps only then, and only in Indiana could that scene, shown in the new mural, really happen. But it did. and it gave Indianapolis a new future.

"Indianapolis has become a solid, mid-sized city in part because of its foundation and support of sports," Husain said. "And I'd say many of those things don't happen without Nancy announcing this moment, that the fundraising goal to keep the Pacers alive had been met."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.