1974-75 for the ABA Indiana Pacers was a season of change. They moved from the State Fairgrounds Coliseum where they had won three league championships (1970, 1962 and 1973) to Market Square Arena. Three of the team’s perennial Allstars were gone: Roger Brown, Mel Daniels, and Freddie Lewis (along with Rick Mount and Hoosier Billy Shepherd) were all Memphis Sounds. Sure, the Pacers still had fan favorites Billy Keller, Bob Netolicky, Don Buse, and Darnell Hillman, and a couple of promising rookies, Billy Knight and Len Elmore, but make no mistake about it — this Pacers team was all George McGinnis.
That season, the Pacers finished 45-39 and finished third in the Western Division behind the Denver Nuggets and San Antonio Spurs. McGinnis earned co-League MVP honors alongside Julius Erving with Big Mac having the best season in Pacers history, leading the league in scoring 29.8 ppg. (which is still a team record), finishing 5th in rebounds (14.2), 3rd in assists (6.3), 2nd in steals (2.61), and 4th in 3-point FG Pct. (.354). The league was down to 10 teams though, so the Pacers breezed through the playoffs behind Big Mac’s 32.3 pts., 15.9 rbs., and 8.2 assists in 18 games. They beat the Spurs 4-2, then the Nuggets 4-3 despite Denver’s astonishing 65-19 regular-season record. The Pacers were dubbed the “Cinderella team” of the ABA and most thought they were on their way to a fourth championship against their rival Kentucky Colonels.
The Pacers were heavy underdogs against both the San Antonio Spurs team led by George Gervin, Swen Nater, Rich Jones, Donnie Freeman & James Silas and the Denver Nuggets team led by Ralph Simpson, Mack Calvin, Fatty Taylor, Byron Beck, Dave Robisch, Mike Green and Bobby Jones. So they pulled out their secret weapon: Dancing Harry. Although Dancing Harry is best remembered by most old-time Pacers fans as the team mascot, in truth, he was a hired gun brought in especially for the playoffs.
Pacers fans didn’t know what to think when Dancing Harry emerged from the stands and onto the court wearing a floppy sequined hat, platform shoes, and funky superhero cape to put a hex on the visiting team. His cue was Leo Sayers “Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)” which quickly became the unofficial theme song of the 1974-75 Pacers. Dancing Harry called it “putting the whammy on them.” During timeouts, Harry would sneak up behind a referee and put the whammy on them. The audience would laugh, the referee would turn around and Harry would play innocent. Then Harry would circle the opposing team’s huddle and squat, wiggle, undulate and gesticulate with outstretched arms, one not quite as far as the other while pointing and shaking his fingers at the enemy players. His hexes excited the crowd and distracted opponents.
His name was (and still is) Marvin Cooper. Born in 1943 in Baltimore Maryland, Cooper played basketball in high school at Baltimore’s Mount Saint Joseph. As a prep player, he performed impersonations of Elvis Presley for the team in the locker room. According to a May 10, 1973, Village Voice article, “One night, he was tricked by his friends to go on stage at a dance, where he performed ‘Hound Dog.’ His photo was placed in the school’s yearbook with the caption: ‘Mt. St. Joe’s Elvis Presley keeps the dance and swing.’” Later, Cooper sang and danced as part of an eight-piece band that played in clubs around Baltimore.
Although most identified with the Pacers, Cooper’s first love was the Baltimore Bullets and their star Earl “The Pearl” Monroe. Legend states that Cooper, a traveling pork sausage salesman, sometime nightclub singer, and part-time pool shark, successfully hustled Monroe in a Baltimore pool hall one day, and Monroe paid him off with tickets for a Bullets home game. And just like that, Dancing Harry was born. Cooper performed in both the NBA and the ABA for the Pacers, Bullets, New York Knicks and Nets. Cooper also danced at some New York Yankees home games in 1974 while the Bronx Bombers played their games at Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium was undergoing renovations.
According to the Pacers website, on April 16, 1975, Sandy Knapp from the Pacers office (who also holds the honor of being the first woman in management in men’s professional basketball) called Cooper and asked him to fly to Indianapolis that night for a playoff game against San Antonio at MSA. His mother drove him to the airport, where he picked up his prepaid ticket and flew off to Naptown for Game 6 of the Hang ‘em High series. That series is still recalled as one of the most bombastic in either team’s franchise history. The Pacers won the first three games of the first-round Western Conference semifinals, including the first two in San Antonio. They lost Games 4 and 5 in games that had become increasingly physical. The fans were becoming increasingly rowdy, Pacers coach Bob “Slick” Leonard was threatening referees, and Spurs coach Bob Bass was blasting the Pacers fans and players in the newspapers.
In Game 4 the Spurs beat the Pacers by one point in front of a rowdy crowd at MSA. In Game 5 at San Antonio, Spurs forward Rich Jones was kicked out of the game after he retaliated to an elbow from Pacers guard Kevin Joyce with a punch to Joyce’s chin. The Spurs won 123-117 to bring the series to 3-2. After the loss, Slick Leonard called Indianapolis Star reporter Bill Benner and threatened, “If that’s the way they want to be, then they’ve really asked for it. If they want to bad-mouth our team, our franchise and our city, then we are really going to go after them Wednesday night. I’ll take the microphone myself if I have to incite our fans. I want our crowd fired up and angry…If they want a bloodbath, that’s what it will be.”
For Game 6 at MSA, the Pacers passed out four-leaf clovers and rabbit’s feet to fans for good luck, they hung a bad luck ladder over the Spurs locker room doorway to the court and they handed out cowboy hats and badges to the local media and stat crew, deputizing them as a posse for the Pacers. But the Pacers secret weapon was Dancing Harry. It worked and the Pacers won Game 6 by a score of 115-100 to take the series. Leonard ordered that champagne be waiting in the postgame locker room and after the first-round victory, the Pacers celebrated as if they had just won a championship.
The fans loved him, the players had never seen anything like him and most importantly, the Cinderella Pacers had won. For his efforts, Dancing Harry was paid $200 plus room and board. Unsurprisingly, Dancing Harry was rehired for the Western Division Finals against Denver. Nuggets head coach Larry Brown had won an ABA-best 65 games that season, 20 more than the Pacers, and the Nuggets had lost just two home games. The Pacers needed all the help they could get.
If Dancing Harry was in Denver for Game 1, his presence went unnoticed by the local press. The Pacers lost Game 1 and all that people remember was that Big Mac bent a rim after a monster slam-dunk. Dancing Harry showed up for Game 2 at MSA though. To the confusion of a standing-room-only crowd of 7,491 at Denver’s Auditorium Arena, the Pacers won Game 2, 131-124, to take homecourt advantage. With each Pacers victory, Dancing Harry’s fame was growing as was the fan’s adoration of him. The Pacers took Cooper to 38th Street clothing stores and bought him a whole new court wardrobe (which they swapped out tickets for).
The Pacers held a mock funeral for the Nuggets before Game 3. In a nod to the series “Hang ‘em High” theme, before the game an effigy of one of the players, hanging from a noose, was lowered from the MSA catwalk. The Pacemates wore holsters and toy pistols, and white cowgirl hats, and paraded wanted posters featuring mugshots of Nuggets players around the court. Dancing Harry, dressed in a brand new gold lame cape, glitter gloves, a feathered cap trimmed with two rows of white fur, a gold turtleneck shirt, and brown platform shoes, was featured on the cover of the game program. The Pacers won, 118-112 to take a 2-1 series lead. At one point, Dancing Harry even hijacked the public address microphone and urged fans to get out there and buy tickets for Game 4 at MSA. After the game, Dancing Harry celebrated with the players in the locker room. Even Slick Leonard, famous for being an old-school purist, told Sports Illustrated “I think it’s great. I know I’d hate to have Harry put his famous whammy on me.”
Harry showed up for Game 4 but the Pacers didn’t. They got blown out 126-109, sending the series back to Denver. For Game 5, Dancing Harry traveled on the plane to Denver. The plane had a telephone on it and Dancing Harry blew it up. He called WIBC and went live on the air, he called his mom and she didn’t believe he was calling her from an airplane, he called all his friends and he even recorded a Pacers promo that was played on the air for the remainder of the playoffs. All this hubbub caught the attention of the Denver Nuggets and they came up with a plan of their own.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
