When the Indiana Pacers host the Oklahoma City Thunder June 11 in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, with the series tied, the Pacers will be continuing their quest to capture the franchise’s first NBA championship.
While it is true the Pacers have never possessed the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy — awarded to the team that wins the NBA Finals — three special banners hanging from the rafters at the Pacers’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse reveal that the franchise already knows more than a little something about winning titles.
Those banners celebrate American Basketball Association (ABA) championships won by the Pacers in 1970, 1972 and 1973 before the ABA merged with the NBA in 1976. And a driving force on the court for each of those teams was the late, great Mel Daniels, a Detroit native and the pride of Pershing High School, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. in 2012 and died in 2015.
Fueled by a work ethic that he demonstrated at Detroit’s Pershing High School during the early 1960s, Mel Daniels worked with his teammates to make the Indiana Pacers a powerhouse team in the American Basketball Association during the early 1970s. It is a legacy that current Pacers team is building on today in the NBA Finals.
“Mel Daniels was the ABA’s Bill Russell — a great team player,” said former Detroit Pistons player and head coach Ray Scott, who was able to compare Daniels to the great Boston Celtics center because Scott played against Russell during Scott’s NBA career and later against Daniels, when Scott ended his career as a player in the ABA as a member of the Virginia Squires from 1970-1972. “Those Indiana teams really were loaded with great players like (2013 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee) Roger Brown and Freddie Lewis, and then later with (2017 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee) George McGinnis, who looked like Charles Atlas in a basketball uniform playing alongside Mel to go with all the shooting they had.
“Those teams were exceptional because they looked like an NBA team and Mel gave them that certified big man during a big man’s era. If they had all the other players with a 6-6 or 6-7 guy in the middle, they wouldn’t have been the same team, but Mel excelled at the center position and there’s no doubt that the Pacers could have contended for an NBA championship if the franchise had entered the NBA a few years earlier.”
Daniels’ excellence in the ABA covered eight seasons, beginning with the 1967-68 season. At six-foot-nine-inches tall, Daniels, known as a relentless rebounder and an efficient scorer, was a seven-time ABA All Star and was named to the All-ABA First Team four consecutive times beginning in 1968. Daniels often saved some of his best performances for the biggest games, which included being the ABA’s postseason leader in rebounds during two of the Pacers’ three championship runs.
The early basketball apprenticeship for Mel Daniels (standing, second from right among the players in uniform) in Detroit included playing for a team sponsored by WCHB-AM radio.
However, a trip back in time to trace Daniels’ early basketball journey in Detroit, reveals that he was anything but an overnight sensation in the sport. For example, in the March 10, 1963 Detroit Free Press, Daniels, as a senior who played a partial season for the Pershing Doughboys due to being a January graduate, does not appear on the first, second or third team All-Detroit basketball squads. The same was true in 1962 when Daniels was able to play his entire junior season, with the only difference being that he was an honorable mention selection that year. Nonetheless, from humble beginnings, Daniels would begin to make a name for himself at a destination more that 1,500 miles away from Detroit on the campus of the University of New Mexico, where he had a standout collegiate career from 1964 through 1967, which set the stage for his entry into professional basketball.
“Mel Daniels’ picture could be in the dictionary next to the word improvement,” said Scott, who upon arriving in Detroit in 1961 as the Pistons fourth overall pick in NBA Draft discovered a highly competitive basketball scene at all levels that rivaled what he was accustomed to in his hometown of Philadelphia. “He was the type of person that you want to hold up as an example because he worked and worked and worked to become one of the best players in the game.”
Basketball lessons that Mel Daniels learned in Detroit began to come to fruition during his time at the University of New Mexico, which set the stage for the Detroiter’s successful professional basketball career with the Indiana Pacers.
On the afternoon of June 10, Ann Connally, the president of the Pershing High School Alumni Association and a friend of Daniels’ younger sister, Wanda Daniels, provided insight that helped to explain how Mel Daniels transformed himself into a star basketball player. And Connally’s analysis had nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with school and neighborhood pride.
“There is a pride and a belief in the Doughboy mystique that started a long time ago,” said Connally, a 1969 Pershing graduate who also worked in the school office for 30 years and continues to pore over the school’s history with help from materials left behind by two Pershing legends — coach Will Robinson, who spent extra time molding Daniels while coaching the Pershing basketball team, and historian Orlin Jones. “Conant Gardens was one of the first areas in the city where Black people were able to buy and build homes and that was passed down from generation to generation, which let people know that where they lived was hallowed ground. People knew that if you put in the work, you can be successful, and not just our athletes, because we have successful people representing all walks of life.”
Pershing High School’s Alumni Picnic is a source of pride for graduates across generations, where the school’s rich heritage is celebrated, as shown by a group of 1969 graduates at the 2024 picnic. The 2025 Pershing High School Alumni Picnic will be held Sunday, July 27 at Belle Isle on the Cricket Field.
Connally says the Doughboy pride and mystique she spoke of will be represented across generations in a few weeks at the 2025 Pershing High School Alumni Picnic, which is scheduled for July 27 at Belle Isle. Stories about the many successful people that have come out of the historic high school at 18875 Ryan Road, off 7 Mile, will no doubt fill the air, but Connally revealed that there is also a now world famous greeting that will be heard often because Doughboys think of it as their own.
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“There is a rumor, and I think it’s true, that the term “Whatupdoe!” was started at Pershing,” explained Connally, with a tone of authority in her voice that could not be denied. “‘What Up Dough’ is something our athletes — our football players — used to say to each other and then the term got shortened over time. It’s definitely something we have fun talking about among ourselves when we get together. Last year, we had a young man from the Class of 1996 come all the way from Dubai for the picnic. No matter what our graduates go on to do in life, they love to come home and come together.”
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Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and a lifelong lover of Detroit culture in its diverse forms. In his second tour with the Free Press, which he grew up reading as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its various communities. Contact him at stalley@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott’s stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/. Please help us grow great community-focused journalism by becoming a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mel Daniels’ hard work contributed to a winning Indiana Pacers legacy