Category: ABA-American Basketball Association

Original publish date:  May 2, 2017

This is the first in a series of articles that I hope will bring insight into the Indianapolis sports and pop culture history scene as seen through the eyes of former ABA Pacers All-star player Bob Netolicky. I have known Bob for well over 20 years and have had the benefit of his counsel and insight on topics both on and off the court. Neto’s stories are informative, often amazing and always entertaining. Neto has called Indianapolis home for over 50 years and frankly, these stories need to be shared. We meet regularly for breakfast at the Lincoln Square Pancake House at 7305 East 21st Street so I’m calling these articles “Breakfast with Neto”. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
The ABA Indiana Pacers were the powerhouse of the old American Basketball Association, appearing in the league finals five times and winning three Championships in nine-years. By the time of the NBA-ABA merger in 1976, the Pacers had established themselves as the league’s elite. The players were household names and their reputation was now legend. The crowds at the State Fair Coliseum, and later Market Square Arena, where the Pacers held court were always dotted with celebrities from all walks of life. In the Circle City of the seventies, everyone wanted an association with the Pacers. In short, they were rock stars.
During the summer of the 1975-76 season, the Pacers held informal workouts at the Brebeuf high school gym. “The guys would all get together for scrimmages to keep in shape, It was me, George (McGinnis), Roger (Brown), Mel (Daniels), Danny Roundfield and a few others. We would get together and practice with the high school kids there.” says Neto. “One of the guys, I don’t remember who, showed up one day with Marvin Gaye in tow. Marvin was so bad, we made the high school guys take him on their team.”
Wait, what? Motown star Marvin Gaye? THE Marvin Gaye? “Yep, Motown star Marvin Gaye.” Neto replies. “He was in town for a concert as I recall.” Marvin Gaye, Jr. was born on April 2, 1939, in Washington, D.C., to a church minister father and domestic worker mother. He grew up in the Fairfax Apartments on the rougher side of D.C. Although once populated by elegant Federal-style homes on the Southwest side, when Marvin was coming up there it was primarily a vast slum. Buildings were small one or two story shacks in disrepair, many lacked electricity or running water and nearly every dwelling was overcrowded. Gaye and his friends nicknamed the area “Simple City”, owing to its being “half-city, half country” atmosphere.
Young Marvin, who would grow to be over 6 feet tall, became a fixture on the tough D.C. basketball courts. One of his neighbors was future Detroit Mayor and Pistons All-star Dave Bing. Although smaller and four years younger, Bing played alongside Gaye on those DC project courts. The two men forged a friendship that lasted the rest of their lives. Bing continued to excel on the court as Marvin’s skills faded. Ironically, both men landed in Detroit. Gaye turned to song, which led him to Motown immortality; Bing landed in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Marvin once said, “I was always a sports fan but I was determined to play for real. I knew I could. When I was a kid, I was scared to compete. Father wouldn’t let me. Preachers kids weren’t supposed to be football players. Well I decided to change all that. I trained with the Detroit Lions and was convinced I could start at offensive end. You see, I had this fantasy. I was in the Super Bowl, with millions of people watching me on TV all over the world, as I made a spectacular leaping catch and sprinted for the winning touchdown.”
While Marvin was busy helping Berry Gordy shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, he never lost his love of sports. The “Prince of Soul” recorded iconic concept albums including What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On while keeping active on the courts, courses and fields around the Motor City. In the book “Divided Soul; The Life of Marvin Gaye”, author David Ritz says, “Gaye was a good athlete, but not of professional quality. His football playing, just like his basketball playing (where he loved to hog the ball and shoot) were further examples of his delusions of grandeur.” Gaye was a regular at celebrity golf tournaments and loved rubbing elbows with pro athletes like Bob Lanier, Gordie Howe and Willie Horton.
In 1969, The Four Tops’ Obie Benson and Motown songwriter Al Cleveland began working on a song that would eventually become “What’s Going On.” The song was repeatedly turned down by several different Motown acts. The duo pitched the song to Marvin Gaye in 1970. Gaye told a couple friends, Detroit Lions stars Lem Barney and Mel Farr, about the song during a round of golf at Detroit’s Palmer Park Golf Course. Palmer attracted many of the city’s black celebrities, including Joe Louis, Smokey Robinson and The Temptations. Gaye was reluctant to record the as yet unnamed song saying it just didn’t fit his style. Farr and Barney talked him into it, saying that Marvin was the only person who could pull it off.
Marvin finally agreed, coming up with the song’s title while with his two Lions buddies over a few beers after another round of golf. Marvin told the duo that he would only record the song under one condition: if Farr and Barney sang background vocals. The Al=Pro duo thought Gaye was joking, but they soon discovered that he was quite serious. The two men, NFL offensive and defensive rookies of the year just three years earlier with the Lions, agreed even though neither had ever sang professionally before. True, they had been in the studio before as Marvin’s guests, but they never dreamed they would be singing alongside their friend.
The song came at a time when America was coming apart at the seams. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations were the fuel and intercity angst the match. The Watts and Detroit riots exploded after decades of racial bigotry. The Vietnam war raged on. Now, Marvin saw a chance to merge sports with music and social commentary in the epic song “What’s Going On.” Marvin headed to the recording studio alongside two of the Detroit Lions all-time greatest players. The song and album became a hit reaching No. 1 on the R&B chart, selling over two million copies. Not long after the record was released, Gaye dropped another bombshell. Now that he, Barney and Farr were musical collaborators, Gaye told them he wanted to join them on the Detroit Lions.
Gaye was 31 and had never played football professionally. In the book, “Marvin Gaye, My Brother.” Frankie Gaye quoted his brother as saying, “Don’t even try to discourage me. Smokey [Robinson] said I’m insane, but he’s hanging in with me because, you know what?…I’d rather catch a pass and score a touchdown in Tiger Stadium, than rack up another gold record.” Problem was, Barney and Farr couldn’t guarantee a tryout, let alone a spot on the team. Gaye quickly committed himself to an intense workout regimen, running 4-5 miles per day and lifting weights. He arranged workouts at the University of Michigan and transformed portions of his house into a gym, moving his Rolls-Royce and other cars out of the garage to make room.
Gaye bulked up nearly 30 pounds during the training. Gaye was realistic, he knew his NFL dream was a long shot. He trained with Farr, Barney and future Hall of Fame receiver Charlie Sanders. In addition to the university and Gaye’s garage, they trained at parks and local high schools, anywhere a productive workout could take place. Word traveled fast in the Motor city that Motown’s Marvin Gaye was in training for a tryout with the Lions.
Joe Schmidt, then Detroit’s head coach and a fan of Gaye’s music, was impressed when he learned that two of his star players were featured on a hit song of Gaye’s. However, Coach Schmidt, a member of both the pro and college football hall of fame, was less enthusiastic when he learned that the “Prince of Soul” wanted to be a Lion. Nonetheless, Schmidt agreed to meet with Gaye. Marvin put on his best three-piece suit and arrived for the meeting in a limousine. He didn’t waste a second before selling himself in the interview. He told Schmidt that not only could he could start for the Lions, but he could score a touchdown the first time he touched the ball.
Schmidt asked about Gaye’s previous on field experience. Marvin did not attended college and never played high school football either. He told Schmidt that he had dropped out at 17 and enlisted in the Air Force. Schmidt, an eight-time first-team All-Pro whose career started with leather helmets and no facemasks, was worried that Marvin would get hurt. And getting a Motown superstar injured, or worse, would be disastrous for the hometown team.
As a courtesy, Schmidt invited Marvin to a three-day shoes-and-shorts workout at the University of Michigan. He pledged to try Marvin out at several positions, including running back, tight end, wide receiver and fullback. Before beginning his tryout, Marvin said a prayer with Barney and Farr. Marvin did everything he was asked, running routes and lining up wherever he was told to. For a musician, he made a decent football player. But for a football player, he made an excellent musician.
For Schmidt, the thought of turning Gaye loose against heavy hitters like Ray Nitchske, Deacon Jones, or Dick Butkus, was too terrible to contemplate. Marvin Gaye didn’t receive a training camp invite. Regardless, Gaye got his shot at playing in the NFL. He had achieved his personal goal. Unlike later periods of his life, during his short lived dream of playing pro football, drugs -most notably cocaine- were absent.
In 1973, Marvin became one of the 33 owners of the WFL Detroit Wheels, which lasted less than a year despite having Little Caesars founder Mike Ilitch (who would later own the Red Wings and Tigers) among the ownership. After the team folded in September of 1974, Marvin told friends that he wanted to buy another WFL franchise in Memphis, Tennessee so that he could play in the backfield and sing the National Anthem before games.
Marvin’s “post-NFL” music career was sporadic at best. Although albums like “Trouble Man,” “Let’s Get It On,” “I Want You” and the controversial “Here, My Dear,” elevated him to a living legend, soon, drug addiction and mounting tax issues led to a self-imposed European exile in the early 1980s. The song “Sexual Healing,” found on his last album, 1982’s “Midnight Love,” slingshot Marvin to the top of the music world one last time.
In 1983, Marvin Gaye won the only two Grammys of his career and delivered a soulful, moving rendition of the national anthem at the NBA All-Star Game. Farr and Barney last saw Gaye at the Detroit stop in June of the singer’s 1983 tour, Marvin’s last. Twelve years had passed since “What’s Going On” was released on Super Bowl Sunday in 1971. The album is today credited with changing the course of popular political music. Hard to believe, but only 3.500 showed up for Marvin Gaye’s concert at Indianapolis’ Market Square Arena on December 30, 1983. Barely 4 months later, on April 1, 1984, Gaye’s father, Marvin Gay Sr., fatally shot him at their house in Los Angeles. At first, fans thought the news was just a bad April Fools’ Day joke. Sadly, it was true. Motown’s Prince of Soul was gone.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the ABA. A 50th anniversary reunion is in the works in Indianapolis in April of 2018. Bob Netolicky, former Pacers & League President Dick Tinkham and noted journalist / author Robin Miller are putting the finishing touches on a new ABA retrospective book titled “We changed the game” due to be released in late 2017. A book signing / party will be held at the Irving Theatre to coincide.
Oh, about that book. It is being published by Hilton Publishing Company. HPC co-founder, Dr. Hilton Hudson II, grew up in Indianapolis and attended high school in our city. Dr. Hilton was one of the those high school kids shooting hoops with the Pacers at Brebeuf high school back in the summer of 1975. Full circle in the circle city.

Original publish date:  March 19 2017

Detroit 7’0″ high school phenom Reggie Harding had a brief, but hauntingly promising, stint with our Pacers fifty years ago during the team’s first season in the upstart ABA. He had recently been cut loose by the Chicago Bulls after just 14 games into that milestone season of 1967-68. Harding had been the first player in the history of pro basketball to sign a contract as a high school player. He was selected by the Detroit Pistons and played parts of four seasons in the NBA. He lasted only 25 games with the Pacers; his career was over by the age of 26. He became legendary for his “world’s dumbest criminals” style antics off the court that began well before he left high school.
Here was a man who drew guns on teammates, became addicted to heroin and repeatedly robbed stores in his own neighborhood thinking no-one would ever finger him for the crimes despite being the only 7-foot tall black man in the area. He paid for his crimes with a bullet in the head fired by a man he believed was his friend and he died at the age of 30 on a trash strewn street in the Motor City on September 2, 1972. Although Reggie’s exploits are viewed somewhat comically after all these years, mainly because no one got hurt, there was at least one incident pinned on Reggie Harding that is sad and damaging in the worst way.
In 1960 Reggie Harding was a prep star for Eastern High School. The were in the second of four consecutive Detroit Public School League men’s basketball season titles from 1959-62. Reggie averaged 31 points and 20 rebounds per game while shooting an astounding 60 percent from the field for the Indians. He would earn first team high school All-American status by Parade Magaine that year. However, those sparkling hoops credentials weren’t enough to hide the tarnished image Reggie carried around with him.
While a Sophomore, Reggie had been arrested in upstate Michigan in the summer of 1959 for stealing a truck and was sentenced to probation. Reggie’s size (He was 6′ 11″ as a Freshman) taught him that he could intimidate adults on the streets, let alone kids in hall. If Reggie wanted your lunch money, or your car keys, Reggie got ’em. He didn’t even need a weapon. His most oft used tactic was to simply grab his prey by the shoulders and lift them several inches off the ground.
In 1960, when Reggie was eighteen, he was arrested for the charge of having “carnal knowledge” of a minor in Detroit. According to court records, the victim was a 15-year-old named Jean. During his trial for statutory rape, Harding admitted to the encounter but claimed in was a consensual act. At the time, Reggie Harding was ranked as the best prep player in the state and he was acquitted. That same year, Reggie allegedly raped a 17-year-old Detroit girl named Florence Glenda Chapman, better known as Flo Ballard of the Motown super-group The Supremes.
In 1958, Florence Ballard was a junior high school student living in the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects in Detroit. There she met future singing partner Mary Wilson during a middle-school talent show and they became friends. Named “Blondie” and “Flo” by family and friends, Ballard attended Northeastern High School. Wilson soon enlisted another neighbor, Diana Ross, then going by “Diane” for their group named “The Primettes”. The group performed at talent showcases and at school parties before auditioning for Motown Records in 1960. Berry Gordy, head of Motown, felt the girls were too young and inexperienced and encouraged them to return after they graduated from high school. Flo dropped out of high school while her group-mates graduated.
In the summer of 1960, just weeks after meeting Berry Gordy, Flo went to a sock hop at Detroit’s Graystone Ballroom. She had attended with her brother Billy, but they accidentally lost track of each other in the crowded dance hall. She began to walk home in the dark but accepted a ride home from a young man whom she thought she recognized from the newspapers, a local high-school basketball player. According to her friends and family, that man was Reggie Harding. Instead of being driven home, Ballard was taken north of Detroit to an empty parking lot off Woodward Ave and Cantfield Blvd where Reggie raped her at knife point.
For the next several weeks, Ballard secluded herself in her room, away from friends and family. She even hid from her bewildered band mates when they came to call. Eventually, Ballard told Wilson and Ross what happened to her. Although the girls were sympathetic, they were puzzled by Ballard’s subsequent behavior; she had always been strong and resilient, but now her personality had changed. Wilson described her friend Flo as a “generally happy if somewhat mischievous and sassy teenager.” Now she was sullen and withdrawn, prone to sudden rages and arguments with no explanation. One thing didn’t change for Flo though, she never mentioned the rape again.
The girls continued working after the assault with Florence as the group’s original lead vocalist and Diana and Mary singing lead on alternating songs. Despite Berry Gordy’s reluctance to work with underage girls and admonition to come back after their high school graduation, the group persisted on getting signed to Motown by sitting on the steps of Motown’s Hitsville USA building and flirting with Motown’s male artists & staffers as they came and went. When a staff producer would come outside looking for people to provide background vocals or hand-claps, the girls were the first to volunteer. In January 1961, Gordy agreed to sign The Primettes on the condition they change their name. Flo Ballard chose the name “The Supremes”. Gordy agreed to sign them under that new name on January 15, 1961.
The group struggled in their early years with the label, releasing eight singles that failed to crack the Billboard Hot 100, giving them the nickname the “no-hit Supremes”. During this period, they provided background vocals for established Motown acts such as Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells. In the spring of 1964, the group released “Where Did Our Love Go”, which became their first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100, paving the way for ten number-one hits recorded by Ross, Ballard and Wilson between 1964 and 1967.
According to Mary, Florence’s vocals were so loud that she was made to stand seventeen feet away from her microphone during recording sessions. Florence’s voice (which went up three octaves) was often described as “soulful, big, rich and commanding,” ranging from deep contralto to operatic soprano. Flo was known for her trademark onstage candor (which included telling jokes), she became popular with audiences & most of the jokes were in response to Diana Ross’ comments. As Flo’s jokes became more frequent, Miss Ross was not amused. Florence acknowledged the widening gap between the trio when she told an interviewer that she, Diana & Mary now had their own hotel rooms unlike in the past when they all shared one room. To combat these issues and silence those demons from her past, Florence turned to alcohol which resulted in constant arguments with Mary and Diana. Flo’s shot clock was winding down.
Eerily, Reggie Harding’s rise in pro basketball paralleled Flo Ballard’s rise in the music industry. Reggie was signing with the hometown Pistons at the same time Flo was signing with the hometown Motown records. By 1967-68 while Reggie was struggling with the Bulls, Flo was struggling with The Supremes. As Reggie missed practices and plane rides, Flo missed rehearsals and performances. By March of 1968, Reggie was out of pro basketball and Flo had left The Supremes. Both became addicts; Harding to heroin, Ballard to alcohol. By 1972 Harding was dead and Ballard was on a slow march towards an early grave.
Mary Wilson would later attribute Ballard’s self-destructive behavior to the rape by Reggie Harding when she was a teenager. Ballard’s adult personality had turned to cynicism, pessimism and fear or mistrust of others. After Harding’s murder vacated the headlines, newspapers revealed that former Supreme Flo Ballard, with three children and no career, had now applied for public welfare relief. As a member of The Supremes, Flo sang on sixteen top-40 singles (including ten number-one hit songs). In January of 1969, Florence performed at one of President Richard Nixon’s inaugural galas. Two years later, Flo’s home was foreclosed and she was an alcoholic. Florence Ballard died at 10:05 a.m. on February 22, 1976; her official cause of death, following years of alcoholism and mental stress, was coronary thrombosis aka: a heart attack. She was only 32 years old. Florence is buried in Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery located in Warren, Michigan. Florence Ballard’s grave is just a short walk from Reggie Harding’s, who is buried nearby.