I would not have wanted to run Theme Park Insider for more than two decades if I were not a theme park fan, first of all. But theme parks are not the only entertainment that I follow.
Like many people, I also watch pro sports when I am not visiting or covering theme parks. Yet there is only one pro sports team that I truly have cared for and followed my entire life.
The Indiana Pacers.
If you have been following the NBA Playoffs this year, you know where this is going. For the first time in the team's 58-season history, the Indiana Pacers tomorrow night will play for the NBA championship. The Indiana Pacers first took the court in October 1967 as a founding member of the American Basketball Association, in which the Pacers won three championships - the most in the ABA's short history.
Lazy reporters and commentators dismissed this year's NBA Finals - between the Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder - as "boring" because it does not feature the big-market teams such as the Lakers, Knicks or Celtics, over which ESPN and other media outlets obsess. But fans of the game have been loving this match-up of two franchises that embrace the team game, playing in an uptempo, pass-friendly style that superstar-driven, big-market teams have not played in years.
Off the court, there are plenty of interesting stories waiting to be told about these teams. So please indulge me for a moment while I step away from the theme park beat to tell you a little more about my favorite team.
There is no better history of the ABA - and the Pacers' role in it - than Terry Pluto's "Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association," which employs an oral history style to allow the people who organized, coached and played in the league to tell its story. You can still buy this 1990 book, or check out an oral history of its oral history for a sample of the craziness.
The ABA folded after the 1976 season, with four of its teams joining the NBA that fall: the Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, and New York (now Brooklyn) Nets. The terms of the merger were devastating to the former ABA teams, which had to play steep entry fees to the NBA while foregoing TV revenue. The ABA for years then had to pay a share of their national NBA TV revenue to the owners of one of the ABA teams that folded, before negotiating a buyout.
The Spurs and Nuggets had rich owners that helped pay for the transition to the NBA. The Nets had to sell their star player - Julius "Dr. J" Erving - to the Philadelphia 76ers. And the Pacers? Facing bankruptcy and the potential of seeing the team sold and moved after its first season in the NBA, General Manager Nancy Leonard (the first woman GM of a major sports franchise) came up with the idea of holding a July 4 telethon to raise money to save the team.
Take 15 minutes and watch Slick, Nancy, and the Telethon, a documentary about one of the strangest events in NBA history. Not in the mood to watch a video? You can read write-ups about the telethon here and here.
I am a Los Angeles native, but my grandparents in Indiana sent me plenty of Pacers gear as I was born the same month that the team first took the court. Here's the receipt.
By 1977, we had moved from LA to Indianapolis, so I watched every minute of that telethon, live as it happened. (Yes, I was one of those kids collecting money.) The telethon saved the Pacers, but the team's financial struggles continued until Indianapolis-based shopping mall developers Mel and Herb Simon bought the team in 1983. Herb Simon owns the team to this day, and is now a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Over the years, the Pacers have blown several opportunities to land a franchise superstar. In 1981, the Pacers traded their first round draft pick in 1984 to the Portland Trail Blazers for a center named Tom Owens, who soon washed out of the league. To show just how cursed that trade was, Portland ended up using that pick on another center, Sam Bowie, allowing the Chicago Bulls to use the third pick in that draft on the player that the Pacers would have chosen, a guard from North Carolina named Michael Jordan.
The next year, in the first NBA lottery, the New York Knicks won in what widely has been accused of being a fix. They selected Patrick Ewing, while the Pacers - who came in second in that lottery - took Wayman Tisdale. To this day, the Pacers remain the only franchise in the NBA never to have picked first in the NBA draft nor to have had a first overall pick on their roster.
The Pacers never have "tanked," trading away players to try to amass draft picks and the poor record that would help their chances of landing a top draft pick. Instead, the Pacers have built their team with mid-to-late draft picks and trades. That strategy has led them to playing style that emphasizes team depth over star power. As part of that, they live up to their nickname by playing at a swift pace that often leaves opposing star players gassed at the end of a long season, without a supporting cast that can hang with the Pacers' bench in the playoffs.
The result? An underdog team that runs opponents out of the building, winning with improbably comebacks that leave opponents musing about dark magic. If that sounds like something fun to watch, then please join me Sunday night at 8pm ET (5pm PT) to watch on Disney-owned ABC Game 7 of the Finals - the winner-take-all final game to determine this year's NBA champions.
If you are from Oklahoma, please know that I have no hate for you - just respect for the fans who support their "small market" team just as passionately as Pacers fans support theirs. And if you are from Seattle, know that I am rooting for the NBA to do the right thing and award you an expansion franchise this summer that gets the SuperSonics name and history. (The former Seattle SuperSonics were sold and moved to OKC in 2008.)
But if you do not follow the NBA, please consider tuning in and, maybe, hopping on board the Pacers' bandwagon. I'll save space for you.
And, yes, if the Pacers win, I absolutely will be going to Disneyland.
They should have a basketball themed area in a Disney park. . . An NBA experience, if you will. . .
I remember going to NBA City at Universal once back in the day. While it was exciting to see Thunder memorabilia for sale (along with some remaining Sonics jerseys), they made the right choice to retheme it to Toothsome.
The NBA is followed globally and it has plethora of talented international players. Done the right way I could see a NBA experience work to bring in both US and international visitors. But Disney’s version wasn’t it.
woof. that was a tough one robert.
Robert, your team had an amazing run.
Happy to see my city get a championship!
Thunder up!!!
When Tyrese went down in G5, I told Laurie that the Pacers should sit him rather than risk an Achilles tear that would keep him out all next season. Tonight, you could see the Achilles tear as he planted that right foot. I knew immediately. Honestly, I was surprised that the Pacers kept ahead at the half, but as soon as OKC adjusted to the NBA's boogeyman not being on the court, it was over.
Great run. Happy for the OKC team. Hope the Pacers are aggressive in resting players next year to prepare for a run in '26-27. We have our first round '26 draft pick back now, too.
Now let's go ride some coasters.
sorry about your Pacers...i didn't know you were a big fan until i read this today. I grew up in Norman, OK and although i've never been a big NBA fan and also not much of a fan of my home state these days (but that's a whole other story), i was very happy to see the Thunder win, a first for Oklahoma...the only professional sports team in the state and a championship win without a big marquee name player like Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook. I'd actually love to be in OKC tomorrow for the parade.
Speaking of OKC, it once had one of the most amazing and huge wooden coasters until 1981. The Big Dipper at Springlake Amusement Park was legendary and at one time in the late 50's to late 60's, OKC had 3 local amusement parks, Springlake, Wedgewood Village and Frontier City, which still operates today. Springlake was always the leader. Wedgewood Village had a short life of about 10 or 11 seasons (I don't know what the story is there on why it didn't last longer) and Frontier City didn't start really getting major rides till the mid 1980's
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Ah! Rumble has been my avatar on here from the beginning. I’ll be rooting for the Thunder tomorrow. The Pacers have definitely been a formidable and frustrating opponent through this series. I’m not sure my heart could take another game after 7. Growing up as a kid in OKC never did I think we would have an NBA team much less one that would be on the verge of winning a championship. It’s a weird feeling.
If and when Seattle gets another team, they will get their historical stuff. Okc has no interest in keeping or identifying with it.
Go Thunder!!