This weekend, Rhonda and I headed down to the Indiana State Fairgrounds for the Greater Indianapolis Garage Sale. We hadn’t been to that show in a couple of years, mostly due to Covid-19 concerns. We enjoy that show simply because it is one of the true flea market-style gatherings left in the Circle City. We always find something. It might be a tchotchke for the kids or a treasure for the wife, you never can tell. Me, I like diving into boxes of old paper. You never know what you’re going to find.
This time, as I thumbed through a box of old paper goods and tickled my way past maps, old greeting cards, receipts, family photos, and travel brochures, I found a hidden treasure. A treasure to my eyes anyway. Folded up into quarters wedged between a couple of totally dissimilar items was a photo of the 1973-74 ABA New York Nets. I was (and always will be) an Indiana Pacers kid. But I always had a healthy respect for three rival teams: The Kentucky Colonels, Utah Stars, and the New York Nets. It always seemed that when the Pacers weren’t winning championships, it was because of one of those damned teams stole one from us. It was a thrill to find the photo just a few hundred yards away from the building they actually played in.
So here they were, dressed in those classic home white uniforms with the stars and stripes ribbon bursting out of their heart and flowing down the side. Julius “Dr. J” Erving was front and center (right where he should be) flanked by Billy “Whopper” Paultz, “Super John” Williamson (who spent some time as a Pacer), Mike “Sugar” Gale, Willie “Rainbow” Sojourner (who gave his teammate the nickname “Dr. J”), Larry “Mr. K” Kenon, Bill “Cyclops” Melchioni, Brian Taylor (who didn’t have a nickname but was so good he deserved one) and a teenaged clubhouse boy named Allan Trautwig. Yes — the same Al Trautwig from MSG Network, ABC, NBC, NBC Sports Network, and USA Network and the pre-game/post-game shows/sometime play-by-play man for the New York Knicks and Rangers during his Emmy Award-winning career.
But the man in that photo that drew my interest was standing in the back row, third from the left. It was “Mr. Excitement” Wendell Ladner. If you are a fan of the ABA, you remember Wendell Ladner. Ladner was born on October 6, 1948, in Necaise Crossing, a tiny, unincorporated town in Hancock County, Mississippi, the far southwest corner of the state. Ladner’s birth seems to be the only noteworthy thing that ever happened there. Ladner played prep ball for the Hancock North Central High School Hawks in Kiln, Mississippi. The school opened in 1959 and for a quarter century Wendell was the school’s star athlete until Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre came along in 1985.
Legendary ABA beat writer (and friend) Jim O’Brien was one of the first to recognize Ladner’s talent. Writing about him in 1972 in the book ABA All-Stars, O’Brien said, “Ladner likes to talk about his town, which he says had about 600 people living in it. The nearest big town was Gulfport, about 32 miles away. ‘None of my friends had driver’s licenses, so without transportation, we couldn’t go to town very often. I’d never been around a town a lot. Necaise Crossing, to me, was a lot of fun. I grew up there and might’ve played basketball from the time I was 9 ‘til I was 17 and went away to college. We’d shoot basketball all day and into the night. We didn’t have any lights, so we’d go out into the woods with axes and cut us some logs. It was no big thing. We’d cut up oak trees that had fallen. We’d chop them up good, and use the splinters to start the fire. We’d have one big fire and it’d light the area so we could play. The only other thing you did was milk cows and ride horses. We raised hogs, too. My family had a dairy barn. We had no heat in the house, except for the big fireplace, and no bathroom. We’d get a wagonload of wood and pile it by our house. We were over at our grandmother’s house killing hogs one day when our house burned down. Some ashes hadn’t gone out, my sister said, and they started a fire again and it caught on some drapes and the whole place went up in smoke.’”
On his college years, Ladner told the sportswriter, “‘I never watched my weight in college. I just ate all the time. I never trained like I should have. This is a lot different from college. It’s a lot rougher. In college, I had to go against guys my size, but now most of the people I play against are a lot bigger.’ O’Brien added, “That’s how he got started. Now Ladner would like to improve his play and help the Pros to build a winner in Memphis. ‘I think I’ll be a lot better,’ he said at the start of his second season in the ABA. ‘I’m still making too many fouls and lots of mistakes, but I know when to take a shot now. You know, I really was surprised I had a rookie season like I did. I just wanted to make the team. I didn’t think I’d make it. But in the first exhibition game, I scored 17 points and grabbed 15 rebounds, and it surprised me that I could do something like that. The biggest surprise, of course,’ he continued, ‘was making the All-Star team. It was an honor to make it…the only rookie on the West team. That was a big thrill.’ Brute strength and a desire to excel are among his most recognizable traits. He has good basketball instincts and is unusually quick for a man his size. ‘I like the way he rebounds and gets the ball out in a hurry,’ said (coach) Babe McCarthy. ‘He could be a big asset in a fast-break attack.’ ‘I’m not going to live on my first-year reputation,’ Ladner told us. ‘I have to prove it this year again and get back into that All-Star game.’”
Ladner was a star at the University of Southern Mississippi from 1966 to 1970 averaging 20.5 ppg and 16.5 rpg for his career. His 1,256 career rebound mark is still the second-highest in USM history and the highest among 3-season players. His SMU career stats: 650 out of 1,410 Field Goals, and 261 out of 390 Free Throws for a total of 1,561 points place him 11th all-time in scoring at Southern Miss and his career scoring average of 20.5 is still the best in school history. He owns 14 of the top 16 rebounding performances in Southern Miss history including a school record 32 rebounds against Texas-Pan American, 31 against Old Dominion, and 30 against Louisville during the 1969-70 season. Ladner was drafted in the second round of the American Basketball Association draft by the Memphis Tams and was signed prior to the NBA draft, where he was projected to be one of the top 20 prospects.
From 1970 to 1973, Wendell played for the Memphis Pros, Carolina Cougars, and Memphis Tams, all utterly forgettable teams. Ladner was named to the 1971 ABA All-Rookie team, and selected to the ABA all-star game his rookie season alongside Dan Issel and Charlie Scott, the ABA’s Co-Rookies of the Year. That year, on January 24, he set his career-high points total of 34 in a Memphis win over The Floridians. During those years, the 6 ft. 5 inch, 220-pound power forward developed into one of the league’s toughest enforcers while averaging 16 points and 10 rebounds per game. Unsurprisingly, he also averaged over 4 fouls per game during that time, leading the league in 2 out of his first 3 seasons, in both of those foul-leading seasons, he made the all-star team. He was the enforcer for five ABA teams during his career, which lasted from 1970 to 1975. His job was to protect his star teammates like Dr. J and Dan Issel by roughing up anyone he viewed as playing too rough.
Early in the 1971-72 season, playing against the Nets in New York, Ladner was ejected from the game during an overtime period for what an official termed “a malicious foul” on superstar Rick Barry. Ladner said it was necessary for him to play Barry aggressively, but insisted he didn’t mean to hurt him. “I sure wouldn’t want to break his leg and put him up in bed with his family,” said the good old boy from Mississippi. He said it wasn’t a dirty play, and even stopped by the Nets dressing room to explain it to Barry. “I know one thing,” said Barry. “If you were trying to hurt me, you would have done a better job of it.”
One of the great stories about Ladner involves a former ABA player named John Brisker whom I profiled years ago in a Weekly View story that actually led to my appearance in a Beyond the Paint documentary on ESPN (I appeared sandwiched in between Rick Barry and Julius Erving no less!). Ladner regularly squared off against Brisker, widely considered to be the meanest, roughest, toughest player in the history of the ABA. Legend claims that Ladner once marched into the Pittsburgh Condors’ locker room before the game started yelling, “Hey, John, you wanna fight right now or wait for the game?” Brisker and Ladner often beat each other bloody on the court, only to hang out together at a local bar afterward. Those were the kind of stories that made Wendell Ladner a legend and Wendell Ladner was the kind of player that made the ABA legendary.
Next Week: Part 2
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.
