For Game 5, the Nuggets brought out a mascot of their own: “Robota The Wicked Witch of the West.” Robota’s job? To counteract Dancing Harry hexes, Nuggets team president Carl Scheer decided to bring in a witch to put a hex of their own on the Pacers. Dressed entirely in black, Robota stood behind the Pacers bench for almost the entire game throwing curses at the Pacers and staring seriously and silently, her long blonde hair framing a pair of glaring eyes shooting daggers at the Pacers players. During pregame warmups, she carried a broom and on the sidelines, she posed with her fingers in a menacing Spock-like gesture aimed toward the players. For dramatic effect, Robota jabbed pins into a life-sized cutout of McGinnis while standing next to a smoking cauldron at midcourt. The bizarre-looking witch put a spell on the entire Pacers team but her curses and hexes backfired when the Pacers destroyed the Nuggets in a 109-90 blowout. By the end, the Denver fans were booing their team and “Robota The Wicked Witch of the West” equally.
Meantime, the Indianapolis fans were wild about their mascot. Before Game 6, a closeout game for the Pacers, local newspapers and regional TV and radio stations were all in for Dancing Harry. He was featured in cartoons, photos, and headlines and adopted as Indiana’s own, even though his home was in Baltimore. Denver won Game 6 in Indianapolis by a score of 104 to 99 before a record crowd of 17,421 at MSA. The loss sent the tiebreaker finale back to Denver.
The fans didn’t blame Harry, though. Bobby Leonard cried foul by pointing out that the Nuggets shot 31 free throws to the Pacers’ 13. Slick said the game was “the stinkingest job of officiating I’ve ever seen. All you ask for is a fair chance. Well, we sure as hell didn’t get it tonight. Every call went against us. We didn’t get a blow all night. Let’s let ‘em call ‘em the same way Saturday night in front of their fans and we’ll see what kind of guts they have.” For Game 7, Harry again traveled on the team plane, this time with a lucky stone from Pacers’ president Tom Binford, who told him it had belonged to the Apache Indian warrior, Cochise. When reporters told Harry that the stone didn’t bring much luck to Cochise, he responded, “Hey, Cochise never lost in Denver.”
The Denver fans were surly for the final game of the series. As Harry whipped his whammies on the Nuggets players, the Denver fans booed and tossed coins and popcorn boxes at the Pacers mascot. One fan threw an empty whiskey bottle that landed at his feet. While the incident surely bothered Dancing Harry, it didn’t bother the Pacers as they won the Western Division championship 104 to 96. McGinnis finished with 40 points, 23 rebounds, and eight assists, and Keller scored 19 of his 23 points in the first half alone. Once again, coach Bobby Leonard had champagne in the locker room, champagne on the flight home and champagne at Leonard’s Carmel restaurant for the team party the next day. Hundreds of adoring fans greeted Dancing Harry and the team at the airport.
Although the series ended on May 3, the season wasn’t over. The team now moved on to the league finals against their border-state rivals the Kentucky Colonels. In typical ABA style, The Colonels home court, Freedom Hall, was busy hosting concerts from such disparate bands as KISS and ZZ Top to Porter Wagoner and Tommy Dorsey. The arena was not available until May 13, meaning the Pacers would have a 10-day break between series. Kentucky had an even longer wait, having closed out their series on April 28. Enough time that Colonels Louie Dampier and Artis Gilmore had time to drive to Indianapolis to watch Game 6 and scout the Pacers. But were the two all-star hall of famers scouting the Pacers or Dancing Harry?
Turns out, Kentucky has a surprise for their ABA Championship Finals series. The Colonels brought out a dancing mascot of their own they named “Colonel Super Fly.” For the opening game of the finals in Louisville on May 13, 1975 (a Tuesday night) Kentucky countered the Pacers Dancing Harry with Colonel Super Fly. Super Fly was 13-year-old Michael J. Tolliver, an 8th grader at Samuel V. Noe Middle School in Louisville. Super Fly youth and style made the clothes-conscious Dancing Harry seem old and shabby by comparison. Taking a page out of Jackson Five Era Michael Jackson’s playbook, Super Fly showed up in a glittering snow-white suit, hat, gloves, shoes, and cape accented by a cane. According to a Sports Illustrated article, Super Fly displayed “footwork, tumbles and splits that his panting rival could not match. Humbled, Harry slunk around the sidelines and cast baleful gazes at the youngster, trying unsuccessfully to win back the crowd by spinning a basketball on his fingertips.”
The Pacers looked a little worn-out, too, as Kentucky won the series 4-1 for its first and only ABA title. And more importantly, the series loss was the swan song for Hall of Famer George McGinnis. Big Mac jumped the ABA and signed with the NBA Philadelphia 76ers. It was the beginning of the end for Dancing Harry in Indianapolis too. Harry was brought back occasionally the following season, but the Pacers were rebuilding and had multiple problems of their own.
McGinnis lined up a few gigs for Dancing Harry working 76ers games the following season. Harry also worked some games that season for the New York Nets, the final year of the ABA. He became close friends with Julius Erving and was among those tossed into the shower when the Nets won their championship. He made an appearance for the Indiana Loves in the ill-fated World Team Tennis association at the Convention Center, too, annoying Ilie Nastase to the point Nastase chased after him with a tennis racket. Dancing Harry’s wild ride came to an end in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
Dancing Harry’s last “official” visit to a Pacers game came courtesy of Spike Lee. During their 1994 Eastern Conference Finals series against Lee’s beloved New York Knicks, Reggie Miller had scored 25 points in the fourth quarter of Game 4 at Madison Square Garden while giving Spike Lee the choke sign. The win lifted the Pacers to a 3-2 series lead. With the Pacers on the verge of wrapping up the series back at MSA in Game 5, Lee paid Marvin Cooper a few hundred bucks (and expenses) to bring Dancing Harry out of retirement. After the game’s first timeout, Harry jumped out of the stands and proceeded to put the whammy on the Pacers. He was quickly ushered off the court and warned not to do it again. So he didn’t. Regardless, Dancing Harry’s whammy may well have worked against his old team. The Pacers lost that game, then lost Game 7 in New York.
Those bad habits from all those years living life in the fast lane haunted Marvin. He got hooked on crack cocaine, which ruined his life. But Cooper says now he’s been clean for over 30 years now. By the late 1980s, he was just plain old Marvin Cooper working as a skycap at the Baltimore airport. He returned to Baltimore in the mid-1980s to care for his ailing mother. As of 2003, he worked as a skycap at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Working six days a week, checking baggage often paid better than dancing as Marvin sometimes made up to $200 a day in tips. Dancing Harry was a sensation, but he wasn’t the first dance sensation to grace the Pacers sidelines.
Every Pacer fan knows that the Pacemates were the first pro basketball cheerleading group tracing their roots all the way back to the ABA Pacers first season in 1967-68. But who among you remembers Lloyd Hillman? Lloyd, son of Pacers forward Darnell Hillman, was two years old when he would sit courtside at home games and dance along with the Pacemates as they performed during timeouts. Dance might be too strong a term, but he certainly wiggled along with the cheerleaders and mimicked their arm movements to a tee. When Darnell left Lloyd home one night, Pacers GM John Weissert approached him afterward and said, “I tell you what, you bring him every game, I’ll pay him a salary.” Lloyd was paid $300 per month, most of which was spent on clothes for the pint-sized mascot to wear at home games. Oh, those were the days. Red, White and Blue basketballs, Afros as big as tumbleweeds, and wacky sideline hijinx. Come for the game, stay for the show.
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.
