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Monday, December 1, 2008
Where Are They Now
Central Indiana, IN
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By: Bill Benner
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Photo(s) By: Bobby “Slick” Leonard
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You don’t have to look far to know where Bobby “Slick” Leonard is now.
At least 41 nights a year, he can be found at the mid-level of Conseco Fieldhouse, seated next to play-by-play man Mark
Boyle, serving as color analyst on Indiana Pacers radio broadcasts.
Coincidentally, suspended from the fieldhouse rafters above Leonard’s head, is the banner that bears his name, along with the figure 529. This signifies the number of ABA and NBA victories he coached in his career with the Pacers.
Of course, there are also another 41 nights when the venerable 76-year-old Indiana basketball icon is on the road in NBA venues from coast to coast, adding his keen insights and distinctive “boom baby!” call to the Pacers’ broadcasts.
Given his 24 years doing radio and his 13 years on the bench – during which he guided the team to three ABA championships – he is Mr. Indiana Pacer.
But before that, he was an outstanding player for the old Minneapolis Lakers in the NBA. And before that, he was an all-American guard who led Indiana University to the 1953 NCAA championship under coach Branch McCracken.
Long before that, he was a standout at Terre Haute Gerstmeyer High School, playing for coach Howard Sharpe, who would become the second-winningest coach in Indiana high school history.
“Those were wonderful days at Gerstmeyer,” Leonard recalled. “My freshman year, I was only 5-foot-3 and weighed 103 pounds and playing on the B-team. My sophomore year, I grew to 5-10, but I was still on the B-team.
“But my junior year, I grew to 6-3, and then it was a totally different ballgame. I had progressed to the point where I now had the size but also had my ball-handling skills. And I had a great coach in Howard Sharpe, who was a protégé of
Glenn Curtis, who had coached Johnny Wooden at Martinsville.
“I learned things from Sharpe, the fundamentals, the psychology of the game, which stayed with me for the rest of my career.”
Leonard grew up in a hardscrabble neighborhood – “it was the ‘no-money’ part of town,” he laughed – with a home life that was less than ideal.
But others recognized his potential.
“I was raised in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood and after the war, guys from the neighborhood came back from being in the Marine Corps and in a backyard just up the alley, they welded a basketball goal and put it up for me,” Leonard said. “They even put a light up in a tree so I could shoot at night time. We’d have pickup games with all those guys, and they’d knock the hell out of me. But they followed me all the way through high school, IU and even into the pro game. They took me under their wing.
“It’s funny how it all gets started and where it leads.”
Leonard says that high school basketball in his day was defined not by one, but two tournaments. The first was the Wabash Valley Tournament. It drew dozens of teams from schools big and small in west central Indiana.
Then, of course, there was the state basketball tournament. In Leonard’s senior year, the Gerstmeyer Black Cats won their sectional in an overtime thriller against the Fountainette Beantowners. But the following week, they lost the regional final to Ellettsville on a last-second shot.
“When the tournament started, on Saturdays the barber shop closed early,” he said. “It was a wonderful thing. And the question that was always asked was not did you win the state, but how did you do in your sectional?”
But Leonard did make it to the state finals in Indianapolis. At Sharpe’s request, four seniors took Leonard, then a freshman, along with them to Butler Fieldhouse. But following the afternoon games, “the seniors ditched me.”
Unfazed, Leonard walked all the way downtown, spent the only 30 cents he had on chili and a Coke at a place on Monument
Circle, then walked all the way back to Butler for the championship game.
Unflappable then. Unflappable now. •
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