Gregg Doyel

She won't have a ticket. She won't need a ticket. Eric Gordon returns to Indianapolis on Tuesday night with the New Orleans Pelicans, and he will scrape up the usual 60 or so tickets for friends and family members, but he won't have to find one for Mrs. Click.

The Pacers have already done that.

The Pacers do it every time, starting six years ago and continuing every year, one of the sweetest stories never told – until now, with Gordon and the Pelicans in town to play the Pacers, and Eric Gordon telling me about Mrs. Click.

And Mrs. Click telling me about Eric.

She tells me about Dec. 19, 2008. Gordon is in town with the Los Angeles Clippers and it's time for the national anthem. He's lined up with the rest of the Clippers when he sees her, leading the kids onto the court, and Gordon breaks all sorts of pregame protocol and leaves his line and starts running her way.

"He ran over and gave me a hug!" Mrs. Click tells me, laughing before telling me about the relationship she has had since kindergarten with a quiet little kid named Eric.

Joyce Click is a music teacher, see. She taught at Fox Hill Elementary when Eric Gordon was in kindergarten, and she taught him every year, kindergarten thru fifth grade. She taught him to sing. Had him playing the drums. And she taught him the national anthem.

"That's the first thing I teach all the kids, and every year we get a group to go sing (the anthem) before an Indianapolis Indians game, or the Pacers," Mrs. Click says. "Eric always liked to go on those trips."

Wait a minute, I'm telling Mrs. Click. Eric Gordon was one of those kids singing the national anthem before NBA games?

"Oh yes," she says. "He was always eager to do that."

Somehow the Pacers heard about Mrs. Click, and in 2008 they invited her to bring a group of kids to Bankers Life Fieldhouse, then known as Conseco, to sing the national anthem. Nobody told Gordon.

"That was the biggest surprise," he says. "I just thought it would be a usual anthem, and there's Mrs. Click."

By then she was at North Central High School, where she has worked for years, including the years when Gordon was the best player at the school, and in the state, maybe the country. Gordon got to school early in those days, getting up shots in the gym before classes began. As the school day was starting, Mrs. Click would walk to her classroom and see Gordon sitting in the hallway by himself, doing his homework.

"We always had a conversation," she says.

One day the routine changed. She didn't see Eric in the hallway. She kept going to her class, and there he was. Sitting there. He wanted her to know something, hoped she already did, but he didn't want be the one to tell her. Too quiet. Too humble.

"That was the day after he'd been named Mr. Basketball," Mrs. Click says. "He didn't say a thing about it, but of course I'd already heard. He was smiling, and I know he wanted me to say something about Mr. Basketball! He's just a really good kid."

And so the national anthem Tuesday will be a really good moment. But the story turns a little sour after that, because Gordon won't be wearing a Pelicans jersey and walking onto the court shortly after Mrs. Click and her group from North Central – the Kings Court Choir – walk off it. Gordon will be in a suit he hasn't picked out yet, sitting in a chair at the end of the bench, missing another game in a career that has seen too many of those.

Since being drafted seventh overall in 2008, Gordon has missed 179 of 502 possible games. When healthy he's a career 17.2-point per game scorer who shoots at a high level and remains on Dan Dakich's short list of players whose athletic ability actually startled him the first time he saw it. Basketball people call it "pop," and Dakich says Gordon has it unlike almost everybody he's ever seen.

"It's a burst of athletic ability that combines quickness with unbelievable strength," says Dakich, the WFNI-1070 host who was Gordon's interim coach at Indiana late in Gordon's one 2007-08 season with the Hoosiers. "He has the strength and burst that I'm telling you, I'd only seen it out of LeBron, and then out of Gordon Hayward. I've not seen everybody, but those are the three who just blew me away."

A series of hamstring and knee injuries have slowed Gordon's progress – from a high of 22.3 ppg in 2010-11, his scoring has dropped every year since to an astonishing 9.5 ppg in 12 games this season – the latest a torn labrum (shoulder) that has sidelined him since Nov. 25 and will keep him out through the new year. Meaning he'll miss the game Tuesday, meaning he will have missed almost as many career games against the Pacers in Indianapolis (three) as he has played (four).

"It's the hardest thing," he says. "It's my one time in town, and people I knew growing up, they're not able to see me play. It's definitely tough to miss this game."

But Mrs. Click won't miss it. Credit the Pacers for making this gesture every year to a visiting player, one of the finest Indianapolis has ever produced. Credit North Central and Mrs. Click for having such a fine music program.

And credit Eric Gordon for leaving that line of stoic NBA players before the national anthem on Dec. 19, 2008, breaking every cool rule in the book to give his music teacher a hug.

May it happen every year, for years to come.

Connect with Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel

NEW ORLEANS AT INDIANA

Tipoff: 7 p.m. Tuesday.

TV: Fox Sports Indiana.

Radio: WFNI-107.5 FM, 1070 AM.

PELICANS (14-13)

Projected starters

Pos. Player PPG Key stat PG Jrue Holiday 15.4 7.3 apg SG Tyreke Evans 16.4 5.7 apg SF Luke Babbitt 4.2 2.1 rpg PF Anthony Davis 24.7 10.2 rpg C Omer Asik 7.5 10.6 rpg 6th Ryan Anderson 15.6 34.2 3FG%

PACERS (9-19)

Pos. Player PPG Key stat PG C.J. Watson 10.9 4.3 apg SG Rodney Stuckey 12.4 2.9 apg SF Solomon Hill 10.6 5.0 rpg PF David West 12.8 6.5 rpg C Roy Hibbert 11.0 7.0 rpg 6th C.J. Miles 11.3 29.3 3FG%

STORYLINES

• Season Debut? : Starting point guard George Hill, who has not played in regular season due to a knee contusion, has been bumped up to questionable for Tuesday's game. For the last few weeks, Hill has participated in practice but Vogel said he wouldn't see game action until his conditioning improved.

• No homecoming: North Central High star and 2007 IndyStar Mr. Basketball Eric Gordon will not play for the Pelicans due to a labrum tear in his left shoulder that has had the former IU basketball player out since late November. Holiday is also familiar with Indianapolis, marrying former Ben Davis soccer star Lauren Cheney.

• Prediction: It's been an up-down run for the Pacers and after the weekend's 180 from season-low to season-high shooting, Indiana really needs things to even out. The Pelicans are a much-improved squad that is holding their own in the competitive Western Conference, thanks in part to Davis, an emerging superstar. Outside of Davis, New Orleans has three other players that average 15 or more points per game, making them difficult to defend. In the past, Indiana has fared well against the Pelicans, leading the overall series 17-11, including an 8-6 edge at home. But the outcome of this game hinges on which Pacers team decides to show up. Play like the loss on Saturday to the Nuggets and the Pelicans' multi-faceted attack will win handily. Come out shooting hot and Indiana is looking at another win. Indiana 99, New Orleans 97.

— Autumn Allison