Star report

Indiana Pacers long-time announcer and former coach Slick Leonard will find out if he has been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame at 3:30 p.m. Friday.

The ABA Committee will elect one player, coach, referee or contributor. It will be announced on NBA TV and at Hoophall.com. Mel Daniels (2012) and Roger Brown (2013) were selected by the committee the last two seasons.

Leonard was 529-456 in 12 years with the Pacers, winning ABA titles in 1970, '72 and '73. He has spent 29 years with the team as a broadcaster.

"If anybody could get a team up for a game, it was Slick," Roger Brown told Sports Illustrated for a 1978 article. "He was crazy and he wanted to win so much that he'd pick a fight with anybody he thought wasn't putting out.

"Mel Daniels, Bob Netolicky and I were all deputy sheriffs, so we always carried side arms. Some of the other guys on the team had permits to carry guns, too, and sometimes to ease the tension before a game we'd practice our quick draws on each other in the locker room. Slick would always be able to get our attention, though.

"He used to like to grab a hockey stick at halftime when we were getting our butts beat and try to start a fight with Neto or one of the guys. Those guns didn't scare him."

Dick Motta is the only coach to win a title and have more victories than Leonard and not be elected to the Hall of Fame. Motta was 935-1,017 over 25 seasons as a coach, Leonard 573-534 in 14 seasons.

Leonard, a Terre Haute native, was a two-time All-American at Indiana University, captaining the 1953 NCAA champions, after playing at Terre Haute Gerstmeyer High School. He played seven years in the NBA with the Minneapolis and Los Angeles Lakers.

He is a member of the Indiana Basketball and Indiana University hall of fames, was named the ABA's All-Time Coach by a panel of national sportswriters and broadcasters and the Pacers hung a banner with the number 529 in his honors.