Ann Meyers took her best shot at making the Pacers

"Annie was one of the best basketball players ever. I didn't say male or female. I said ever." – Bill Russell, Boston Celtics legend

So here she was. One of the best players ever. No matter that she was a woman. Gender was just that, an easy label the sports world clung to that meant nothing to her.

Here she was, Ann Meyers, one of the best basketball players ever and she was about to prove it.

Inside Hinkle Fieldhouse in September of 1979, with Indiana Pacers coach Slick Leonard watching. With so many news cameras pointed her way, clicking nonstop, that she started feeling "uncomfortable."

Here she was, a 5-9 guard with white socks pulled up to her knees in, what she says was, the best shape of her life. Ready to step onto the court and try out for the NBA against the Indiana Pacers' top rookies and a mishmash of other NBA wannabes.

No woman had ever done what she was about to do. And if some were calling it a hoax, vowing that there was no way a woman could ever compete with a man on the court, Meyers was just as adamant that it wasn't.

"I knew that I was not going to go in there and embarrass myself or the Indiana Pacers. That was not my purpose," said Meyers (now Ann Meyers Drysdale), 60, in a 1992 interview given to WRTV-6. "I had been playing the game of basketball all my life and I was raised that way. So, from day one, I knew what I was doing."

She was serious. As Meyers stepped onto the court that first day of tryouts, she believed she had a real shot – a chance at becoming the first woman to make it into the NBA.

***

It had all happened in dizzying fashion. Pacers owner Sam Nassi called her on the phone. He wanted Meyers, the No.1 women's basketball player in the nation, to try out for his team.

On Sept. 5, 1979, just days before the Pacers rookie camp was to start, Meyers became the first woman to sign an NBA contract. It was worth $50,000.

She was 24, with so many basketball accomplishments under her belt that an NBA tryout seemed like an apt next gig.

Meyers had been the first high school player to make a national team, the first woman to receive a UCLA basketball scholarship, the first four-time All-American and the first NCAA Division I player to record a quadruple-double.

She was the 1978 college Player of the Year, leading UCLA to an AIAW national championship. She had won a silver medal with the U.S. Olympic basketball team. She was the first player drafted to the Women's Professional Basketball League, a precursor to today's WNBA.

And yet, with all of those accomplishments, she had one nagging regret – the time she turned down a chance to play with the boys.

Meyers had spent the summer before her senior year of high school playing on the boys basketball team. She was supposed to continue and play with the boys her senior season. But people started trying to talk her out of it.

No way. Not possible. You're a girl. Don't embarrass yourself.

Meyers listened to them.

She wasn't going to listen to the naysayers this time, even though one of those naysayers was a daunting figure.

"I said, 'Ann you don't want to do this,' " Leonard recalls telling Meyers. "'You don't want to do this.' "

"Slick really tried to talk me out of it," Meyers said in the 1992 interview. "He wasn't used to that. I mean, he came from an era that, you know, women belonged in the home raising their children and taking care of their man."

Despite that warning from the man who ultimately would make the Pacers player cuts, she did it anyway.

Was she nervous? Of course.

"But I think the guys were more nervous than I was," she said. "Here was this woman competing against them to play in the NBA."

***

Nervous around guys, Meyers was not. There were 11 kids in her family. She grew up in La Habra, Calif., playing against boys.

"She was beyond capable to sit on any bench in the NBA," said her oldest sister, Patty Meyers, the starting center on Cal State Fullerton's 1970 national championship team. "She just didn't have the height."

Patty Meyers compares her sister to the greatest of basketball greats.

"She can play all five positions, which very few people can do," she said, "besides Magic Johnson and LeBron James."

Ann Meyers lettered in seven sports, including softball, badminton, field hockey, tennis and basketball. She earned 13 Most Valuable Player awards in high school. Her brothers and sisters watched it all happen. It seemed everything Annie put her mind to, she did.

So, there was no lack of confidence from her siblings that she could make the NBA, said Patty Meyers.

"Maybe the only one in the family who thought she wouldn't make it was Dave, who played in the NBA (the No. 2 pick in the 1975 draft)," she said. "Was she good enough to make it? He knew she was. But you know, men are stronger than women. I don't care if she was 4-9 or 5-10, she would be like a little pinball among these guys. That's the truth."

Ann Meyers never thought about that. She was ready to fight for this.

"In our family, if there is an opportunity, we've always gone for it," said Patty Meyers. "No matter how impossible the dream might be."

***

So there Ann Meyers was on the court at Hinkle. Shooting, running drills, speeding down the court to stop a guy making a fast break.

And that is when she realized, these guys thought of her as one of them.

"They accepted her just like another player," said Leonard. "I tell you one thing. She was better. She was better. We had a bunch of guys come in trying out and she was better than a whole bunch of them."

Better, yes, but she still was a woman. And it made some of the guys uneasy.

At one point during her three days of tryouts, Meyers was facing John Kuester (later the coach of the Detroit Pistons) in a one-on-one drill.

"(We) collided and I went down," Meyers said. "I was fine, but John's natural instinct was to worry that he'd hurt me. He bent down next to me. 'Are you OK, Annie?' "

She was OK – on the court. But the emotional buildup, physical exertion and attention of the sports world took their toll.

"It was really tough," David Craig, the Pacers athletic trainer at the time, told WRTV-6. "I know that she would go to the locker room after every practice almost in tears, if not in tears. It was rugged."

As those three days of tryouts played out, five or six guys were cut. Meyers was still in the mix.

Then, Leonard called her into his office.

"I cut her just like any other player," Leonard said. "I felt bad when we started the cut down. I felt bad about it. She really did do a great job. I was proud of her."

Meyers smiled. Thanked Leonard. Accepted her fate.

Then, she went to her hotel room and cried.

***

There are no regrets on Meyers' part. At a news conference after the tryouts, she sat next to Leonard beaming.

"The players were super to me," she said. "They helped me tremendously out there. A lot of times, they made me look good."

She held on to a compliment she received from assistant coach Jack McCloskey: "Fundamentally, she's better than half the guys out there," he said.

Meyers has called her decision to try out for the NBA "the best decision of my life."

Her connection with the Pacers opened the door for her to become a broadcaster and earned her an invitation to the Superstars competition, where she met her future husband, Don Drysdale. The two had three children before the former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher and Hall of Famer died of a heart attack at age 56 in 1993.

After her career as a player, Meyers made her mark as an expert analyst on ESPN, NBC, ABC, FOX Sports and CBS. She has done commentary for men's and women's basketball, softball, tennis, volleyball and soccer since 1979.

Today, she is vice president of the Phoenix Suns and the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury. She is also a member of the Suns broadcast team.

"I was involved in a lot of firsts in my life," Meyers said. Making an NBA team didn't turn out to be one of them.

"She was always a smart player. She always stayed ahead of the competition in terms of preparation. That's why she's a great executive today." -- Julius Erving, NBA great

Follow Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow.