George McGinnis remembered at Gainbridge for making others feel like family

INDIANAPOLIS -- Nancy Leonard finished her prepared comments on the passing of George McGinnis and had begun walking from the dais at Gainbridge Fieldhouse with the assistance of radio play-by-play man Mark Boyle with piano music playing.

But before she got to the stairs, the matriarch of the Indiana Pacers turned around; there was something else she needed to say before she left. So she turned away from Boyle, pointed her notecards at the direction of the lectern and walked back.

"George really was a part of our family," she said. "I was really sad, like a lot of his really close friends who saw him in the hospital and fighting for his life and so on. Somebody in the Pacers office decided I needed a cheer-up. I should have brought this picture. They made a poster of reasonable size. It had at least eight faces of George on it like when he made the Hall-of-Fame and the IU Hall of Fame and basketball shots and so on. I brought it home and when I went into the family room, I laid it on the sofa. Our son Tommy walked into the home and he walked straight over to that picture, and he picked it up and he said, 'Mom, this belongs on the family shelf.' And he moved all the family pictures aside and that great big picture is looking at me every day. That's how our family felt, and I wanted you to know that. Thank you."

That was one of the central themes of the the Celebration of Life for McGinnis, the former Washington High School and IU star who helped the Pacers to two ABA championships and was named MVP of the league in 1974-75 before leaving for the NBA, where he was named an All-Star three times. McGinnis died on Dec. 14 from complications after suffering cardiac arrest.

At 6-8, 235 pounds, McGinnis was one of the most physically dominant players of his era with a combination of power, skill and athleticism that was seldom seen in those days. But as intimidating of a presence as he had on the floor, he was easy to get to know because of his warm personality and he made so many around him feel like they were one of his closest friends, or even family.

"Big George made you feel good," said Clark Kellogg, the former Pacers star and longtime college basketball color analyst who became a close friend with McGinnis despite being 11 years his junior and idolizing him as a young man. "He made you not only feel good, but he often had a way of making you feel special because of how he cared. He did it in kind of a quiet way. I always marveled that he could really elevate the light on you while deflecting it from him."

Jim Arnold, a teammate of McGinnis' on the Washington High School team that claimed the 1969 state basketball championship with a 31-0 record, said McGinnis had that sort of personality even from a young age. They were close from an early age, he said, and each family took the other boy in like one of their own. Arnold remembered eating McGinnis' mom's collard greens and okra, and he said McGinnis loved his mother's beef stew.

Arnold told a series of seemingly disconnected stories about their high school days together and various adventures and misadventures. He remembered when McGinnis got his driver's license and took the breather off and the engine of his father's 1959 Chevrolet and the car backfired and started melting the hood. He remembered how he and others on the team taught McGinnis to water ski and ride horses. He also told a story about how McGinnis, Arnold and another teammate pooled their money together to buy a spider monkey and took turns taking care of him. That was until it got out of his cage when McGinnis was watching him and McGinnis never took that responsibility again.

"He was just such a great person and we just had great times," Arnold said. "I think these friendships and all of us on the team together, they brought us so close together the rest of our lives. We all stayed in contact with each other. And we all went different ways, but these were just great memories of George and our teammates."

McGinnis built similar bonds with his Pacers teammates in the early stage of his professional career. Ted Green, a former Indianapolis Star sports editor turned filmmaker who made documentaries on Nancy's husband and former Pacers coach Bob "Slick" Leonard and former Pacer Roger Brown, spoke about McGinnis and what he meant to those men. In Green's documentary about Brown, McGinnis recounted how he and teammate Mel Daniels and others drove Brown from his apartment to a friend's house, where he eventually passed away of liver cancer in 1997. McGinnis said in the documentary that Brown looked out the car window at the stars and said, "I wonder if this will be the last time I ever see the sky," and it was.

"George's love for his teammate and friend was breathtaking," Green said. "To this day I hear about that scene from viewers all around the country about how close that team must have been."

Green also told the story of how important that team was to its city. The first time he interviewed McGinnis was for his documentary entitled "From Naptown To Super City" in which he chronicled how Indianapolis went from being a "humble Midwestern town that turned the lights off at 5:30 in the 1950s and 60s" as Green said, to hosting the Super Bowl.

He said the more time he spent hanging out at events for the ABA-era Pacers that "it all started with the Indiana Pacers." Green noted that while other ABA teams folded, the Pacers outgrew their home at the state fairgrounds and then Mayor Richard Lugar opted to build Market Square Arena downtown rather than look for another arena option away from downtown. Bringing a popular team downtown ultimately helped attract the Colts, which in turn led to Indianapolis to become a destination city for major sporting events including the Final Four, the NBA All-Star Game and that Super Bowl.

"Downtown Indianapolis as we enjoy it today, would it all have happened, at least as well as it did?" Green asked. "Rare is the sports team that can lift its city for a sustained period of time. Rarely still is one that can fundamentally transform it."

And as Green noted, when the Pacers moved downtown in 1974, McGinnis was the central attraction. He averaged 29.8 points, 14.3 rebounds and 6.3 assists to earn MVP honors in the ABA in 1974-75. He had left for Philadelphia by 1977 when Nancy staged a telethon to save the Pacers because they'd run into financial trouble due to the entry fee they'd have to pay to reach the NBA, but McGinnis' years as a Pacer helped create the bond with the fans that donated the money to keep it.

Green noted a highlight clip of McGinnis grabbing a loose ball and taking it coast to coast for a dunk that he finds symbolic of the Pacers' track at the time.

"All the sudden this baby-faced Hercules is heading up court full steam and taking it all the way to the bucket and slamming it home," Green said. "I swear you can almost see George carrying the city's hopes, its dreams, its new-found joy on those massive, squared-up shoulders."

But as bigger than life as he could sometimes seem, he never made those around him feel like he was too big to be approached. His much smaller teammate Billy Keller put that in to words in a letter read at the Celebration of Life by Boyle.

"It was like he had never met a stranger," Keller wrote, according to Boyle. "He would always take time to answer questions of anyone and he always had a way of making them feel as though they were his best friend. He was always approachable and kind to everyone and anyone that he met. He simply just loved people. That's who George McGinnis was."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: George McGinnis remembered for making others feel like family