Dana Hunsinger Benbow

dana.benbow@indystar.com

Factory-working men with nothing more to give than $5 or $10 bills showed up still greasy in their uniforms. Children sidled in shyly to hand over coffee cans filled with pennies and nickels, money they scrounged up going door to door.

It was July 3, 1977. Indianapolis was about to lose, in many ways, a monstrous piece of its identity. The city known as the basketball capital was on the brink of losing the Indiana Pacers.

The team, newly minted in the NBA after years of unmatched success in the ABA, was teetering on financial ruin, just a heartbeat away from going under, being sold, leaving Indianapolis.

But how the team was ultimately saved is a priceless, almost unbelievable tale. It's the story of coach Bobby "Slick" Leonard, his wife Nancy and a telethon.

ESPN revisited that time nearly 40 years ago in a detailed interview with Slick and Nancy Leonard Thursday in "30 for 30 Shorts: Slick, Nancy and the Telethon."

"We were busted, no doubt about it," Slick Leonard told IndyStar in 2014 of that 1977 struggle. "We were going to lose the franchise."

It was almost unfathomable. The Pacers had spent nine years in the ABA, known as the gold standard team. They had won three ABA championships, appeared in five ABA finals and captured back-to-back titles in 1972 and 1973.

But with the merger of the two leagues, the Pacers had to give $3.2 million to become part of the NBA. Financial hardship ensued. The team was in major debt. It had missed its last two payrolls. A possible sale of the team loomed.

The Leonards will never forget the dreadful day in 1977. They were in Hawaii where Slick Leonard was scouting college players. Nancy, the general manager of the team, the first woman to hold such a position for a pro sports team, was with him.

"I got this telephone call. You have to come back right now," Nancy Leonard told ESPN. "I said, 'Well, why?' And they said, 'Because we're out of money. And we have no time.'"

"We gave up so much to get in the NBA," Slick Leonard said in the video. "They pulled a massacre on us."

Then-Pacers owner Bill Eason, not a billionaire mogul as NBA owners are today, had been getting loans from the banks based on good faith. But the banks weren't going to do that anymore, they said.

Sitting in a staff meeting back in Indianapolis from Hawaii, Nancy Leonard was at a loss. She couldn't think of a way to get the money. The sources were all dried up.

1977 telethon a magical chapter in the Pacers' fairy-tale story

Until she did think of a way to get the money,

"About the only thing we could do is we could do a telethon," she said at that meeting. "We've got no choice. We've got a week."

And so that team-saving telethon was born. After the math was done, the team determined it needed to convert 8,000 seats into $2 million in cash.

"There were a lot of raised eyebrows," Bill Benner told ESPN. Benner, who now works for the Pacers was a sportswriter covering the Pacers for the Indianapolis Star at the time. "It was totally odd. A telethon for a sports team? Come on."

But on July 3, 1977 using a makeshift set, Slick Leonard walked out in a red blazer and white bell-bottom pants. He would be the face of the franchise, there to plea for its survival.

Bit by bit, the money started coming in. Those kids with coffee cans, families buying tickets. Men pitching in dollar bills at a time.

"This is how much the team meant to the city," Nancy Leonard said. "That got me."

"It was an emotional situation. Nancy came to the mike and started crying," Slick Leonard recalled.But with less than two hours to go, things weren't looking good. Just more than 6,700 tickets had been sold. And then?

"Bob," she said to her husband and to the crowd, 'we're at 8,028."

The crowd erupted.

"It was as big as winning a championship," Slick Leonard said. "I don't think you could pull it off today."

Nancy disagrees. "I'm not so sure I feel that way," she says at the end of the ESPN piece.

But Slick Leonard is sure.

"I look at things and I think," he said, "that was a once in a lifetime deal."

Follow IndyStar reporter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow

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