Last Friday was an important day in Indianapolis sports history. For that was the day that one of the greatest players to ever lace up a pair sneakers, Roger Brown, was elected to the basketball Hall of Fame. As fate would have it, I found myself standing outside of the old State Fairgrounds Coliseum when I heard the good news about “The Rajah” getting the nod. As I stood looking at the front of the old Coliseum, covered with scaffolding and looking like a busy beehive with skip loaders and men in hard hats busily scurrying in and out, I could almost hear the echoes of cheering crowds within its ghostly shell. For it was the State Fairgrounds Coliseum that Roger called home for most of his career with the old ABA Indiana Pacers.
Many consider Roger Brown to be the greatest player that never played a game in the NBA. Like many Hoosier baby boomers, I grew up watching those great ABA Pacers championship teams inside that grand old building. I must admit, the reason I stopped was to gaze upon the pile of letters that once formed the name “Pepsi Coliseum” on the roof of the building that were now piled neatly outside on the sidewalk. The Pacers’ Mel Daniels preceded Brown with his election to the Hall of Fame in 2012 and it is almost a lead pipe cinch that Pacers coach Bobby “Slick” Leonard will follow Brown into the hall in 2014. Ironic, because those dates parallel the closure, rehabilitation and reopening of the historic State Fairgrounds Coliseum that legendary trio once ruled.
No doubt, Mel was the “steak” of the franchise, Leonard the master chef, but Roger Brown was the sizzle. During the short nine year history of the ABA, the Pacers won three championships and appeared in the league finals five times. They were the cream of the outlaw league whose name became synonymous with the ABA. Since the fall of 2012, I’ve had the privilege of assisting (albeit in a very small way) filmmaker Ted Green with his film Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story which premieres Thursday, February 28 at 9 p.m. on WFYI channel 20. Ted and I were brought together by our mutual friend, Bob Netolicky, himself an All-Star player for the old Pacers and a legend in his own right.
Back in 1997 I, along with Neto and league co-founder and former Pacers President Dick Tinkham, hosted the 30th anniversary reunion of the ABA at the old Hoosier Dome. In that capacity, we produced two short films on the old ABA and I was glad to help Ted in his quest for footage of Roger in action. But make no mistake, this project is all Ted Green from start to finish. Seems like whenever I talked to Ted, he was either on his way to New York City to talk to eyewitnesses from Roger’s playground days, where he is still considered to be a streetball legend, or jetting off to California to meet with Bob Costas, Bill Cosby or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to talk about Roger. All of whom, along with hoops luminaries like Reggie Miller, Oscar Robertson, and Donnie Walsh, can be seen in Ted’s film. Roger’s daughter, supermodel/actress Gayle Brown Mayes and son Roger Brown Jr., who is the spitting image of his dad, can also be seen in the film.
Just in case some of you out there don’t remember Roger, or for that matter the ABA, some history. Roger Brown was the first player the Pacers ever signed. He had been a standout player in New York City and was on his way to stardom at the University of Dayton when he was unfairly connected to a Gotham gambling scheme by a tenuous link to notorious game fixer, former NBA player and convicted felon Jack Molinas. Brown was kicked out of college and by the time the ABA and Pacers were formed in 1967, Roger had been working the night shift at the General Motors plant in Dayton for six years. Along with Roger, ABA standouts Connie Hawkins and Doug Moe were linked to point shaver Molinas. All three players were subsequently blackballed by the NBA, but found a home in the upstart ABA League. Roger and Connie landed in the Hall of Fame, Moe is likely to follow them there, and Jack Molinas has been dead for nearly four decades; killed in a mob hit in 1975.
The documentary is the brainchild of former Indianapolis Star editor Ted Green, whose other credits include last years documentary about Indianapolis, From Nap Town to Super City. The film has taken Ted two years to complete and when I spoke to him by phone Sunday night, he was still “tweaking it.” The final version times out at 70 minutes but Ted insists it could’ve been a miniseries. “Everyone wanted to talk about Roger,” Ted says, “The most common response I got from people I met with was “Anything for Roger, anything for Roger.” It didn’t matter if they knew him as a kid, a Pacer, a city councilman or from afar, they all had memories they wanted to share about Roger Brown.
When you see the film, the first thing that comes to mind is the painstaking attention to detail that pervades. Ted Green interviews people connected to every aspect of Roger’s life. When I asked him how he tracked down all of these people, he replied, “Research is my strong point. I spent hours on the phone trying to locate Roger’s old teammates, school friends and neighborhood pickup game buddies.” he said. In the case of Roger’s high school teammates, he found one, which led to another, and then another. “I stayed in Brooklyn for a week and visited all of Roger’s old stomping grounds. All the parks where Roger played including the original ‘Rucker Park’ where Roger and Connie dueled back in the day and the relocated court carrying the same name where they are still shooting hoops today. I went to Roger’s high school and met with his old coach Howie Rosenstein on the very same court where Roger starred as a prep player.”
Ted met with Roger’s old teammates Les Barbanell (2 years ahead of Roger) and his brother Joel (2 years behind) and interviewed them on the basketball courts they all shared as street ballers back in the day. Ted asked the duo if they remembered “fixer” Jack Molinas. Yes, the duo recalled Molinas as a “bad, bad guy.” Everyone in the neighborhood knew who Molinas was, he was the local wise guy. Joel Barbenell remembers seeing Molinas approach Roger after an afternoon pickup game. But no one thought much about it because Molinas was always hanging around the courts trying to make connections.
Ted met with Roger’s sister Judy, who, along with her brother’s son Roger, Jr., still lives in the Brooklyn house where she and her Hall of Fame brother grew up. Judy recalled gangster Molinas lending her 17-year-old brother and his friend Connie Hawkins his convertible for a trip to Coney Island. She remembers because she went along on the trip. But, as Ted Green is quick to point out, that’s not a crime.
“These guys were railroaded,” states Green. “These teenagers were held against their will for four to five days without access to a lawyer and with no idea what they were being accused of. There were no ‘Miranda’ rights back then. They were grilled several times a day, relentlessly questioned. They broke them. The police broke them.” These false accusations cost Roger three years of college, three years of pro ball and a lifetime ban from the NBA. Even though Roger eventually challenged, won, and reversed the ban late in his career, he never forgave the NBA for the injustice. He loved Indianapolis and credited the town, the fans and the Pacers with giving him his life back.
Roger shunned the NBA’s offer for a twilight career and stayed in the Circle City after his playing days to serve on the Indianapolis City Council. Ted explains, “Roger loved to go on ‘ride-alongs’ with the Indianapolis Police Department. Even while still playing for the Pacers, Roger would often ride along on the night shift with officer Paul Harden. Roger was appointed a ‘Special Deputy’ with IPD and was considered one of the guys.” Brown and retired cop Harden remained best friends until the day Roger died. Take it from me as a kid who grew up in Indianapolis idolizing Brown and all of the old Pacers. Roger was a class act. I first knew him as a player, then a politician and later as a neighbor in the old Vantage Point apartments that were recently torn down. It is not often in life when one discovers that childhood heroes are truly worthy of that admiration upon reaching adulthood. But Roger Brown was that and more.
When I spoke with Ted last evening and asked him how he was, he immediately answered, “tired.” Ted Green is in the final stages of his two-year quest to get this film done. Within the next couple of weeks, he will do countless radio and TV interviews and see his film premiere on WFYI next Thursday night. The Pacers are having a special “Roger Brown Night” Tuesday the 26th at the Fieldhouse during the game against Golden State and Ted says, “a lot of the guys are coming in for it. Slick, Mel, Neto, Darnell, Freddie…they’ll all turn out for Roger.” But when asked about his fondest memories surrounding the project, he defers to the many people he met who were behind the scenes in Roger’s life.
“The coolest moment in my life was when I got the phone call that Roger had made the Hall of Fame and I started calling his closest friends and family to spread the word.” Ted says, “I got to tell his son Roger Jr., his sister Judy, his wife Jeannie and 80-year-old Arlena Smith the good news. Arlena is the unsung hero of this story. She and her husband Azra (now deceased) took Roger into their Dayton, Ohio home after he had been let go from school. Roger really had no place to go and they treated him like a surrogate son, got him a job at the GM plant, and helped him back on his feet again. They were there for him at his lowest point. People were crying and thanking me for what I did. I thought ‘I didn’t do anything, Roger did it all.’”
Ted has developed close relationships with most of the parties involved. On Thursday the 21st, there will be a special showing of the film at Neto’s house for the players only. “There will be a lot of moist eyes in the room that night,” says Ted. “It was amazing for me to see these great big men, giants really, tear up as they talked about Roger. The end of the film is very moving. Every interview about Roger’s passing ends in tears and with no embarrassment. They all believe Roger was wronged and a good guy who didn’t live long enough. Those guys were a family.”
What resonates most with Ted is the depth of feeling that these legends shared when talking about Roger. Oscar Robertson, the man who recommended Roger to the Pacers, laughingly spoke of what he termed as the “I-75 series” played by hoops stars from Cincinnati and Dayton. These hardwood greats would gather at a nondescript junior high school gym (that has since been torn down) to play pickup games. No crowds, no refs, no scoreboard. Just basketball. Can you imagine Oscar Robertson (in my opinion the greatest pre-Jordan NBA player to ever lace up a pair of sneakers) guarding Roger Brown? Ted reports, “Oscar and many of the guys I talked to who played in those games said it was pretty much a wash. A stalemate.”
Ted speaks highly of every person he worked with or interviewed during filming. That’s just the kind of guy he is. But he was pleasantly surprised by Reggie Miller and Bobby Leonard in particular. “Reggie Miller was the first of the modern day players to pay homage to the stars of the old ABA. He had then, and maintains, a healthy respect for the history of that league.”
Ted continues, “And Slick epitomizes Indiana basketball. He was a star in high school, an All-American at IU and a great player in the NBA. To say nothing about his coaching in both the ABA & NBA. He belongs in the Hall of Fame. When I asked Slick if he was sorry he didn’t get the nod for the Hall of Fame this time, he smiled and said ‘no, I’m in the College and High School Hall of Fame and my name is up in the rafters at the fieldhouse, what else could I ask for? I just hope I live long enough to see my front line go into the Hall of Fame.’” With Roger’s election and Mel’s induction, he’s two thirds of the way there. Most basketball experts believe the third, George McGinnis, will join his teammates soon and make Slick’s wish come true.
If this article has piqued your interest about Roger Brown, the ABA Pacers or the work of master documentarian Ted Green and you can’t wait till this Thursday, I urge you to go to your web browser immediately and type in “Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story” and watch the worthy segments contained therein. Not only will you soon realize that Ted Green is one of the finest filmmakers in the city, you’ll see why Roger Brown is our newest Hall of Famer. Believe me, Mel Daniels’ tribute poem to his friend and teammate Roger Brown is worth the effort by itself.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
