This newsletter is a revision of a story that appeared in the Indianapolis Star on Feb. 17, 2016.
The Indiana Pacers are one win away from their first NBA championship since joining the league in 1976 as they face the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night. At one point, it wasn’t certain the team would make it past that first season.
They were one of four ABA teams that merged with the NBA prior to the start of the 1976-77 season. The others were the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, and New York Nets.
But the price paid to join the NBA was a heavy one for the team.
In addition to the $3.2 million entry fee, the Pacers and the three other surviving ABA teams entering the league had to compensate the ABA franchises that folded (the Kentucky Colonels, Virginia Squires and Spirits of St. Louis).
Two other teams folded early in the 1975-76 season, the San Diego Sails after playing 11 games and the Utah Stars after playing 16.
And the new NBA teams also were barred from sharing TV revenues for four seasons.
They called it a merger, Bob “Slick” Leonard, then the Pacers' coach and general manager said. "They should have called it a massacre."
Something needed to be done in 1977 to save the team.
It began with one man's "crazy idea," drawing first laughter -- then criticism.
To some, holding a telethon to save a pro sports franchise seemed almost sacrilegious. The financially strapped Indiana Pacers, after all, were not needy children.
Chet Coppock, a former Indianapolis sportscaster, recalled that many at the time wondered: "Why should we bail out a bunch of guys making 300 grand a year?"
But the 16 1/2 -hour "Save the Pacers" Telethon of 1977 was never about saving players' jobs. It was, Coppock says, about saving a city's self-image.
To have lost its beloved Pacers to another city would have devastated a community still seeking a major-league identity.
"If we lose that team, do you think we build the RCA Dome?" asks Leonard. "Do you think we get the Colts?"
From the team's first days in the American Basketball Association in the late 1960s, Indianapolis had a love affair with its pro basketball franchise.
Five trips to the ABA Finals in nine seasons produced three championships and a legion of followers. In 1974, the Pacers moved into state-of-the-art Market Square Arena.
For years before Mel and Herb Simon bought the club in 1984, the franchise struggled financially.
"It was sort of hand-to-mouth from one year to the next," recalls Hudnut, who says the city approached Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Anton "Tony" Hulman and Wendy's founder Dave Thomas about investing in the team.
"We were trying to hold the thing together . . . with chewing gum and Scotch tape."
The situation reached crisis in 1977.
One club payroll was not met. It took a contribution of $100,000 from a group of local businesses to keep the franchise going through June.
The team announced that unless season-ticket sales reached 8,000 by the end of that month, the club would be sold to someone who might take the franchise elsewhere. And that in turn would have spurred another catastrophe as the $23.5 million MSA would lose its main tenant.
Other events could be held there, of course, but the Pacers were the reason the arena was built in the first place, says retired architect Jim Browning, who did some early sketches when the arena was just a dream.
"A rock concert," Browning says, "certainly wasn't a justification for an arena."
So, far more than a sports team was threatened by the 1977 financial crisis, which appeared to be fatal to many.
Enter Elmer Snow, general manager of local station WTTV (Channel 4), which aired Pacers games. Snow responded to the need for more ticket sales by telling a community leader, "Hell, if you want me to, I'll even hold a telethon if it'll help."
The two men laughed.
"It was just a crazy idea," recalls Snow.
But the idea gained credence when a local physician, Dr. Charles Rushmore, offered his expertise. Medical director of what is now Ameritech, he had staged a telethon for the American Cancer Society and knew how it was done.
An organizing committee was formed and musical acts booked. Local media personalities put aside competitiveness and agreed to take turns as pitchmen.
Leonard was called the general manager. But he says most of the day-to-day running of the franchise fell to his wife, Nancy, who with her staff took to the ticket-sale campaign with zeal.
But as the telethon approached, the Pacers still were more than 2,000 tickets short of the target. At the time, Leonard described the stakes:
After a decade of building the Pacers, it had all come down to "72 hours to get the job done."
The telethon began on the night of July 3 in the sweltering 500 Ballroom of the Indiana Convention Center. WTTV, providing the equipment and technicians, originated the telecast. WRTV (Channel 6) and WTHR (Channel 13) aired major portions of the show.
Coppock, then sports director of WISH (Channel 8), served as an emcee. There were no rehearsals and no script. Just a bank of phones and a crude tote board.
Along with the Leonards, broadcasters and past and current players pleaded with viewers to save the team.
Corporations bought blocks of season tickets. And the youth of Indianapolis emptied their piggy banks.
In the early morning hours of the telethon, Bob Leonard was handed a note: "I am a little girl. I am nine years old. I’d like to give the Pacer $5 because I like them. They are a good team."
Seven-year-old Carl Cushingberry went door-to-door in his Indianapolis neighborhood collecting money. By day's end he had $15 for the cause.
As the telethon wore on, the emotion -- and the audience -- built.
But the outcome wasn't clear until, just 10 minutes from going off the air, Nancy Leonard took the microphone. With tears in her eyes, she said season ticket sales had topped 8,000.
Bedlam.
Coppock took the microphone and began screaming. "You did it! You people did it! Central Indiana did it! You people bailed out the Indiana Pacers!"
But even as he celebrated, Coppock wondered: Could this be real?
Did the Pacers really sell that many tickets in less than a day?
"That was a little theatrical," concedes John Jewett, who as president of Market Square Associates was one of the forces behind the telethon. But it was no stunt. "It was sincere, real."
And surreal.
An emotionally drained Bob Leonard led the crowd in an off-key version of Back Home Again in Indiana.
Even after the telethon ended, pledges for season tickets kept coming in. With the goal of 8,000 reached, a group formed by Market Square Associates put up about $800,000 in working capital. That ensured the Pacers a second season in the NBA.
The city's can-do attitude was trumpeted after the telethon by The Indianapolis News in a sports-page editorial. "We did it!" the headline read.
"The big businessman, the little businessman and John Q. Public all joined hands in putting the Pacers over the top," the editorial said. "Now that we're solidly in the NBA field, let's shoot for the moon -- an NBA championship, of course."
It would be 23 more years before the Pacers made it to the NBA Finals, losing in six games to the Los Angeles Lakers.
But most believe they wouldn't have made it to 1980 had it not been for this once-in-a-lifetime event.
"I don't know that it's ever been done," says WTTV executive producer Peggy McClelland, who operated a camera for the telethon. "Where else could something like this happen but in Indiana?"
Bob Leonard, ever the coach, put it best:
It was a total team effort.
ABA Championship Series
The Indiana Pacers played in the ABA Championship Series in five of the nine years of its existence, winning the title three times.
Here are those appearances:
1969: Oakland Oaks def. Indiana Pacers 4-1
1970: Los Angeles Stars def. Indiana Pacers 4-2
1972: Indiana Pacers def. New York Nets 4-2
1973: Indiana Pacers def. Kentucky Colonels 4-3
1975: Indiana Pacers def. Kentucky Colonels 4-1
NBA Finals
This is Indiana’s second appearance in the NBA Finals.
2000: Los Angeles Lakers def. Indiana Pacers 4-2
2025: Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder tied 3-3