1980s

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Jack McKinney coached the Pacers to their first winning season in the NBA, but also traded away a future pick they could have used to draft Michael Jordan.

McKinney, who died on Tuesday at age 83, replaced Bobby "Slick" Leonard in 1980 after Leonard had completed 12 seasons as the head coach. Leonard, who had led the Pacers to three championships in the American Basketball Association in the early 1970s, struggled through five consecutive losing seasons before being released by first-year owner Sam Nassi at the end of the 1979-80 season.

McKinney came to the Pacers as both an accomplished coach and sympathetic figure. A protégé of Jack Ramsay, who would coach the Pacers later in the 1980s, he had been a successful head coach at St. Joseph's College and then worked as an assistant NBA coach in Milwaukee and Portland.

His big break arrived when the Lakers hired him to become their head coach for the 1979-80 season. He inherited a dominant center in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and a rookie point guard in Magic Johnson. But after directing them to a 9-4 start, he suffered severe head injuries in a bicycle accident and was replaced by his assistant Paul Westhead.

The Lakers went on to win 60 games and the NBA championship that season, and the job was given to Westhead.

Although embittered by that experience, the 44-year-old McKinney quickly got back into the NBA. He rejected interest from Detroit and the expansion Dallas franchise to become the Pacers' head coach on June 2, 1980. He led them to their first winning record (44-38) and playoff appearance in the NBA in his first season. Although they lost both games to Philadelphia in the best-of-three first-round series, the fans were so happy with the reversal of fortune after five consecutive losing seasons that many of them gave the players a standing ovation as they left the court after the Game 2 loss at Market Square Arena.

McKinney was selected the NBA's Coach of the Year for that season, surpassing San Antonio's Stan Albeck in the voting, 27-25. His next two teams dropped to 35 and 20 wins, however, as Nassi liquidated the roster to curb financial losses. McKinney's team improved to 26 wins during the first year of ownership for Mel and Herb Simon, but he was replaced after that season by George Irvine.

Martinsville native and Purdue grad Jerry Sichting, who played all four seasons for McKinney, once said he didn't believe McKinney every fully recovered from the head injuries suffered in the bicycle accident.

"He was great in how he treated people and his knowledge of the game, but he was forgetful with names and stuff like that," Sichting said. "You couldn't do anything but feel sorry for him when those things came up. He also had trouble concentrating when it got really loud in the arena. I...learned a lot from him, but there's no question that bicycle wreck had an impact on him."

Dick Vertlieb, who had been hired as the Pacers' general manager when McKinney was brought in to coach, was let go after the 1980-81 season. That left McKinney in charge of the basketball operations that summer, and he made a fateful trade that had monstrous ramifications three years later.

Pacers center James Edwards signed an offer sheet from Cleveland for four years and $3.2 million in June of '81. Nassi, discouraged by the Pacers' poor attendance throughout their playoff season, was either unable or unwilling to match it, so McKinney replaced Edwards by trading the franchise's 1984 first-round pick to Portland for journeyman center Tom Owens.
Irvine, who McKinney had hired as an assistant coach, once said McKinney's plan was to try to gather enough talent to make the playoffs again the following season and parlay that into a head coaching position with a better-funded franchise.

It didn't work out. Owens averaged 10.5 points and five rebounds for the Pacers in 1981-82, then was traded to Detroit for a second-round draft pick. As for the pick the Pacers sent to Portland to acquire Owens, it became the second overall selection in the 1984 draft. The Blazers used it to select Sam Bowie, passing on Jordan, who went third to Chicago.

McKinney did indirectly contribute to the Pacers' future success, however. He hired Irvine, who, when he became head coach, hired Donnie Walsh as an assistant. Walsh became the Pacers' general manager in 1986 and constructed teams that reached the Eastern Conference Finals five times in a seven-year period beginning in 1994, culminating in an NBA Finals appearance in 2000.

Note: The contents of this page have not been reviewed or endorsed by the Indiana Pacers. All opinions expressed by Mark Montieth are solely his own and do not reflect the opinions of the Indiana Pacers, their partners, or sponsors.

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Remembering Jack McKinney

Wheat Hotchkiss

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The Reggie Years

David Benner

Dave Twardzik summed it up best. "If you didn't like George Irvine, something was wrong with you," said Twardzik, one of George's best friends who worked with him from 1986-89 with the Pacers. "The word great is thrown around too frequently, but in George's case, it fits. He was just a great guy."

Irvine, a former Pacers' head coach from 1984-86 and on an interim basis in 1988, passed away Monday night at the age of 69. While with the Pacers, he also served as an assistant coach and an assistant to then General Manager/President Donnie Walsh. Later in his career, Irvine would coach the Detroit Pistons.

And Walsh is well aware of George's impact on him. When Irvine was named Pacers' head coach in 1984, he hired Walsh to be an assistant. In 1986, Walsh became general manager and, as they say, the rest is history.

"George Irvine brought me to Indiana and in my mind he was the beginning of NBA basketball with the Pacers in our building process for the years to come," said Walsh. "He had a great basketball mind, which allowed him to function at a high level as a coach, administrator and purveyor of talent. George was a once-in-a-lifetime friend and one of the best men in my life."

When Irvine was head coach, his teams struggled to a .293 winning percentage. But the fact, according to another team executive at the time, was "You've got a good coach, you've got good guys, unfortunately you have a lot of young players."

One of those young players was a promising forward out of Ohio State, Clark Kellogg. When Irvine became the head coach, Clark's career was coming to an end due to a knee injury.

"I enjoyed him from the standpoint that he was knowledgeable and fun to be around," said Kellogg. "He had a good sense of humor, he was a good teacher, but I enjoyed his personality. I was young, cutting my teeth in the NBA and I never got a chance to be healthy and play for him at my best because of my knee. He was quick with a story, and he had plenty of them, and he was quick with a laugh."

Another young player was Jerry Sichting. He and George found common ground when Irvine was an assistant coach.

"George was an assistant coach when I was a rookie and he gave me a lot of insight," said Sichting. "There weren't four, five assistants like now, so he was basically the only guy. He let me know what to expect. The game was different back then and you had to make your mark as a rookie. He had gone through a lot of the same things as a player in the ABA and took the time to relate those things to me. He loved basketball, he was a very knowledgable coach. We weren't great back then, but he stayed positive. He knew we weren't going to win the NBA championship, so he tried to develop us, he looked at himself as a teacher, made it fun and kept it fun."

"I thoroughly enjoyed him," said David Craig, the Pacers' long-time trainer. "George cared about all  the people who worked with him. He really cared about his players. We struggled a lot those years from a win-loss situation but he always stayed upbeat, kept his sense of humor and had consideration for all those involved. He was a very strong influence on my life. He was just a down to earth, great guy to be around."

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Remembering George Irvine

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McGinnis Completes Pacers' Hall of Fame Frontline

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Until recently, just about everyone knew where Randy Wittman was. From 20011 to 2016, Wittman was the head coach of the Washington Wizards, guiding them to the playoffs in 2014 and 2015.

Following a 41-41 season in 2016, the Wizards decided to part ways with Wittman, but the former Pacers player isn't sitting idle in his first year away from the sidelines since becoming an assistant coach in 1992-93.

"I'm in-between jobs," said Wittman, who is still living in Washington D.C. and keeping his chin up about his future coaching prospects. "Early spring when things begin to open up, I'll take a look at what's out there and see if I want to get back in it."

Wittman recently had a couple surgeries from injuries left over from his playing days, getting a knee and a hip replacement while watching the NBA as a pure observer for the first time in decades.

"I'm going out and visiting different teams. I visited Boston and saw Doc (Rivers) and the Clippers, visited with both Doc and Brad Stevens. Going to get a chance to see Nate (McMillan) on Saturday. I've been trying to get out and see a different perspective, being an outsider looking in."

1990s Central: Visit Pacers.com/1990s For More »

Both of Wittman's children, Ryan and Lauren, are graduated and living on their own, leaving Wittman to immerse himself in a sort of basketball sabbatical.

As a player, Wittman was a member of the Pacers for four seasons, from 1988-1992. Before that, he played college basketball for Indiana University and high school ball for Indianapolis' own Ben Davis High School.

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Where Are They Now: Randy Wittman

The phone rang at 1:32 a.m. Saturday morning. Chuck Person was returning a call. From Tuesday.

Such is life for a college basketball coach immersed in preparations for a conference game the next day. Later the same day, actually. Person is the associate head coach at Auburn, which has a home game against Mississippi on Saturday, which was reason enough for him to be in his office in the wee hours, particularly when the team is coming off two losses.

Person won't be able to attend the Pacers' game against New York on Saturday, when the players from the 1980s will be honored and he will be the subject of a bobblehead given to fans. He would if he could, though, and he should if he could, because he stands as the franchise's most significant player of that decade. Reggie Miller and Rik Smits, both drafted in the 1980s, had longer and more stable careers with the franchise, but Person came before them and did more to begin the process of changing the course of a drifting battleship.

"The Pacers mean everything to me," he said. "Donnie Walsh, the Simon family … they trusted me to come in and help get things turned around.

"Hopefully they appreciated what I tried to do. We had some great times. And, some times when it was not so good. But we did jump-start that franchise."

You would have had to be there to understand the state of the franchise in 1986. The Pacers had won 26 games the previous season, 22 before that, 26 before that and 20 before that. That's 94 victories in four seasons if you're counting at home, as most fans were then because actually attending games at Market Square Arena was an exercise likely to bring first-hand frustration.

The 1985-86 season ended with 11 losses in the final 12 games, and the team's best player, Clark Kellogg, out with a knee injury that would soon end his career. But better days were coming.

Walsh was elevated from assistant coach to general manager after that season. His first personnel move was to draft Person, a 6-8 forward from Auburn, with the fourth pick in the draft. He put out word within the league that he was going to "go big" with his selection – maybe William Bedford, or Roy Tarpley. But that was a ruse to prevent another team from trading up to move ahead of him in the order and take Person.

Person was among those fooled. Sitting at the draft in New York, wearing the white suit he had worn just a few days earlier when he was married in Muscle Shoals, Ala., he expected to go to the Knicks with the fifth overall pick.

"When I went through the interview with (Knicks general manager) Scotty Stirling, he said if I'm there at five he would take me," Person said. "I didn't have any idea the Pacers would take me at four. When it came time for the Pacers to pick in New York, I saw the cameras coming my way and I said, 'Whoa, it looks like I'm going to the Pacers.'

"I was kind of hoping the Knicks would take me, but I was grateful Donnie Walsh and the Pacers chose me to help turn their franchise around."

Fans booed the selection back in Indianapolis, just as they booed Miller and other picks Walsh made to build the franchise. Red Auerbach, providing commentary for the national television coverage of the draft, questioned the pick as well. And if Person wasn't viewed favorably as a draft pick, the Pacers weren't viewed favorably as a destination.

Before the draft, Len Bias – who went second to the Celtics -- had been asked by a USA Today reporter where he wanted to go in the draft. "Anywhere but Indiana," he said.
Person, though, was undeterred.

"Unlike Len Bias, I'm happy to be here in Indiana," he said at his introductory press conference. "I'm glad Indiana drafted me. I'm excited to be a Pacer."

Those words meant something to a beleaguered fan base, and provided the first hint of the desperately-needed bravado that Person would inject into the franchise. He was nicknamed The Rifleman, appropriate on many levels. His mother had given him the middle name of Connor, after Chuck Connors, who played the lead role in the television series, The Rifleman. And he fired a lot of shots, many from long distance.

Person came off the bench the first four games of his rookie season as Kellogg attempted a comeback from his knee injury, but when Kellogg was forced into retirement, Person stepped in without blinking.

He finished with 18 points, 11 rebounds, five assists and three steals in his first start, a 130-97 victory over San Antonio. He scored in double figures in all but four games the rest of the season, and finished with averages of 18.8 points and 8.3 rebounds. He was one of the league's best 3-point threats at the time, hitting 36 percent of his attempts. He hit just 49 overall, but that seemed like a bombardment at the time. In the previous four seasons, no Pacers player had hit more than 17.

He was a legitimate post-up threat, too, and the franchise's first bona-fide clutch shooter since Roger Brown in the ABA. Person, for example, hit a game-winning 3-pointer with nine seconds left for an overtime win at Golden State on Feb. 10, 1987. He came back the following night to score 42 points in a 16-point victory at Phoenix. He hit 18-of-23 field goal attempts in that game, with just one of the 18 makes coming from beyond 12 feet, and converted all six 3-pointers.

The Pacers won 41 games that season, made the playoffs for just the second time in their 11-season NBA history, and won a playoff game for the first time. They lost their first-round matchup with Atlanta 3-1, but the season qualified as a breakthrough.
For all that he was voted the NBA's Rookie of the Year. He's still the only Pacer to receive that honor, and was the first player in franchise history to win a major individual award. He was an obvious choice, receiving 68 of the 78 votes, with Cleveland's Ron Harper getting the other 10.

"He sets the tempo for the future in the way we would like to play and that's with a certain amount of mental toughness and playing every game day-in and day-out," Walsh said at the press conference announcing the honor.

Person also stands as a cautionary tale, however. He admits today the acclaim from the award went to his head somewhat, weakening his work ethic in the off-season. He reported to training camp out of shape and struggled early the following season, when rookie Reggie Miller joined the team. Person's scoring averaged dropped to 17 points and the rest of his game declined a bit as well. The Pacers won just 38 games and missed the 1988 playoffs by one game, losing the final regular season at home by two points to the Knicks.

"I don't think I came back prepared to be one of the top players in the league," he said. "I thought I had arrived and probably had one of the worst seasons I ever had in a Pacers uniform. I regret that my conditioning wasn't where it needed to be, and it showed on the court.

"I had that sophomore experience when you think you're better than you really are. I didn't perform as a team player."

Person's peak moment with the Pacers came in his fifth season. Miller had blossomed into a star, Detlef Schrempf had become the NBA's best sixth man, and Rik Smits was a threat at center, although underutilized and underappreciated by coach Bob Hill.

The Pacers went 41-41 that season, but took Boston to a fifth game in the first round of the playoffs. Person scored 39 points in a Game 2 upset in Boston, hitting 16-of-24 shots, including 7-of-10 3-pointers, to ignite dreams of an upset. The Pacers dropped Game 3 back in Indianapolis as Person scored just six points – "I made the mistake of trying to let the game come to me," he recalls – but he was back to his old self in Game 4.

The day before the game, a Friday morning, he stuck his head in Hill's office and said, "Good morning, Coach. It's a good day in Zimbabwe."

That let Hill know Person was ready. And he was. He scored 30 points, including 12 in a row while hitting five straight shots in the second half and engaging Celtics legend Larry Bird in trash talking, to lead a 116-113 victory.

1980s CENTRAL: Learn More About the Decade at Pacers.com/1980s »

"I wasn't going to go down without a fight," he said afterward. I was going to draw first, just like the Rifleman."

If there was a singular moment when the Pacers' fan base finally galvanized around one of the franchise's NBA teams, this was it. The fans stood continuously throughout most of the game, and all of the last five minutes, creating a din never before heard in the building. Person still remembers being in a timeout huddle and not being able to hear the buzzer sound to return to the court.

"I never experienced a crowd like that before in my life," he said after that game. "Tonight, when we got down they stayed right behind us. Keep going, keep going. That was fueling my fire. I said I'm not going to let this team down, or the franchise, or the fans. I was going to do whatever I had to do to help this team win … even if it meant playing a little defense."

The Pacers lost Game 5 back in Boston, 124-121. Person scored 32 points, but it's remembered for being one of the final highlights for Bird, who retired a year later. Bird hit his head on the court after chasing a loose ball and had to leave the game, but made a dramatic return to lead the Celtics' victory and finish with 32 points.

"That's one of those moments in time you wish you had back," Person says. "What if we won Game 5? Where would the franchise be now? If we win that series we could go on to beat Cleveland in the next round, then we're in the Eastern Conference finals. I do think back on that. It's the only what-if in my life.

"We were young and didn't know what we were doing. We were brash and explosive offensively.

We just couldn't guard anybody and couldn't rebound. And that was our shortcoming."
Indeed. Person's joke after Game 4 about "even if it meant playing a little defense" was telling. The Pacers averaged 111.7 points in that 1990-91 season, but gave up 112.1. It wasn't a long-term winning formula.

They finished 40-42 in the 1991-92 season and were swept in the first round of the playoffs by Boston. With his team stuck in neutral, Walsh dealt Person to Minnesota for Sam Mitchell and Pooh Richardson after the season. That moved Schrempf into the starting small forward position Person had occupied, and allowed Miller to become the focal point of the offense – of the team, really. With Dale Davis and Smits emerging, the pieces were in place for a series of runs to the Eastern Conference finals after Larry Brown was brought in as coach and Schrempf was traded to Seattle for Derrick McKey to improve the defense.

"Did I want to leave Indiana? Of course not," Person says. "But Detlef had become a really good player and wanted to start and was starting to play small forward and Dale Davis was coming into his own and was the power forward of the future and the organization felt it had to make a change.

"I don't say it was a bad decision. We had other guys who could do things I could do. They made a choice. It didn't work out as well as they thought it would. But something had to be done. I never felt any less for Donnie. In fact I loved him even more because he told me he was thinking about doing it and asked what I thought of it. I said, if it's good for the Pacers he should do it. I wouldn't trade that man for anybody. He was always honest with me. He gave me the keys to the franchise for six years. Sometimes I didn't drive very straight, but I did the best I could."

Person finished his career in Minnesota, San Antonio, Charlotte and Seattle, playing 13 seasons in all not counting the one he sat out with an injury. He's since coached in Cleveland, with the Pacers – as Rick Carlisle's defensive coordinator, believe it or not – and with Sacramento and the Lakers. He very nearly became Chicago's head coach, finishing a close second to Vinny Del Negro, and interviewed for the head coaching jobs with Sacramento, Golden State and the Lakers.

He's 52 now, and the dream is to become a college head coach.
"At the end of the day my goal is to be a head coach," he said. "I think the NBA has passed me by. I've had the opportunity to go back (as an assistant) but I like being in college."

He's interviewed for the lead position at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and is patiently trying to prove his worth and sincerity by grinding out the assistant chores at his alma mater, even in the wee hours the morning of a game.

"We all have to have that first job to get that experience," he said. "I'm hoping one day it will happen for me. If it doesn't I'll be good, but I'd like to have a chance to do it.

"College coaching entails a lot of things -- academics, many, many speaking engagements; coaching is about 20 percent of it. Those 33 games go by very quickly You're always on the phone. You're always calling recruits. We have 50 recruits on board, and there's about six people to talk to for each one. That's a lot of people. But I love it. It's a matter of time before someone sees I put in my time."

Person isn't looking back. But he does keep in touch with a few people from his time with the Pacers, including Walsh. And he does have one request.

"Tell Larry Bird I want one more game of H-O-R-S-E," he said.

Have a question for Mark? Want it to be on Pacers.com? Email him at askmontieth@gmail.com and you could be featured in his next mailbag.

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Chuck Person's Star Burned Bright as the Pacers' Go-To Player

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1980s Pacers Meet Current Team

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After thousands of votes from Pacers fans around the world, the final results are in. For the 1980s starting lineup, fans used PacersVote.com to select Chuck Person, Reggie Miller, Detlef Schrempf, Wayman Tisdale, and Clark Kellogg.

Person, who is being honored with his very own bobblehead on Saturday night, is the only Pacers player to ever win the Rookie of the Year award. During his rookie season in 1986-87, Person helped the Pacers grab their first-ever win in the NBA postseason.

Miller, whose Pacers career stretches from 1987-88 to 2004-05, is the franchise's all-time leading scorer. During the 1989-90 season, Miller averaged a career-best 24.6 points per game while sinking 40 percent of his 3-point shots.

Tisdale was the Pacers' first-round draft choice in 1985, picked with the second overall pick. In his four seasons with the team, Tisdale averaged 15.2 points and 7.2 rebounds. After basketball, Tisdale released a number of jazz albums. He passed away after a long battle with cancer in May of 2009.

Detlef Schrempf was traded to the Pacers from the Dallas Mavericks in 1989, quickly becoming a do-everything player for Indiana. In his five seasons with the team, Schrempf averaged 17 points, 8.6 rebounds, and 4.1 assists per game. Over the course of four seasons, Schrempf suited up for 15 Pacers playoff games.

Kellogg, while not winning Rookie of the Year, put up season that still stands as the high-water mark for Pacers rookies. In 1982-83, after being drafted out of Ohio State, Kellogg finished the year averaging 20.1 points and 10.6 rebounds per game. Unfortunately, chronic knee injuries shortened Kellogg's career. The power forward finished his career in 1986-87 having played in 260 NBA games.

Voting for the starting five of the 1990s is now open. Make sure to make your voice heard on PacersVote.com »