J-Speaks: The Passing of ABA Star

Before the National Basketball Association, the most popular professional league was the American Basketball Association (ABA) and it was full of stars like Julius “Dr. J.” Erving. There was another big star during that time and he was just as great, if not greater. His trademark intensity on the hardwood made him a multiple Most Valuable Player Award Winner and multiple time All-Star selection. Above all else, he started a long line of greats to come out of unknown high school back then that is very well known now. Last month, this great person as well as a great basketball player passed on.

Hall of Fame forward Mel Daniels, who blossomed in the ABA with the Indiana Pacers passed away on Oct. 30^th from complications following heart surgery. He was 71 years old. He is survived by his wife CeCe Daniels, their son Mel Daniels, Jr., two granddaughters and two sisters.

In eight ABA seasons, six of them with the Indiana Pacers, Daniels was a two-time ABA MVP (1969, 1971); seven time ABA All-Star (1968-74); four-time All-ABA First Team selection (1968-71); named to the ABA All-Time Team and he along with Roger Brown, current NBA on TNT/NBATV analyst Reggie Miller and George McGinnis are the only retired players to have their jersey retired by the Pacers.

“Words cannot express the depth of my sadness today. Mel Daniels was a father figure, brother, consigliere, but most of all MY UNCLE MEL,” Miller said of the passing of Daniels.

“He helped raise me into the man I am. I hope I made him proud in everything I tried to do on, but more importantly off the basketball court. My heart goes out CeCe and the Daniels family.

Daniels journey to basketball immortality began and Pershing High School in Detroit, MI, which also produced fellow Hall of Famer Spencer Haywood, Ralph Simpson and future NBA champions like forward Kevin Willis and current NBATV/NBA on TNT analyst Steve Smith, who said over the weekend that Daniels had a huge impact on him getting into the pros.

What Smith really respected about the pro career of Daniels is how he played and how right from the start of the game how he would set the tone when he and the Pacers took the hardwood.

Smith got a chance to meet Daniels once and gave the former Miami Heat, Atlanta Hawk, Portland Trail Blazer, the then New Orleans Hornet and then Charlotte Bobcat said that he was grateful for his words of encouragement and how he embraced a lot of young basketball players especially one that won it all in the NBA and attended the same high school he did.

“Sad to see him go. Just thinking about his family and hoping everything is well with them,” Smith said during NBATV’s “Gametime.”

The next leg of Daniels basketball journey took him to Burlington Community College and then to the University of New Mexico from 1964-67. He averaged 20 points per contest and for the Lobos and was named a Consensus Second-Team All-American in 1967. Daniels was also a two-time First-team All- Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in 1966 and 1967

Daniels was selected No. 9 overall in the 1967 NBA draft by the Cincinnati Royals of the NBA and he was also drafted by the Minnesota Muskies of the ABA.

He chose to play in the ABA and in his first season was named the 1967-68 ABA Rookie of the Year and the 1968 ABA All-Rookie First Team.

Daniels was traded to the Pacers, who were part of the ABA back then and now are a part of the ABA. It was here where Daniels made a name for himself in the league winning the MVP in 1969 and 1971. He also elevated the Pacers into one of the elite franchise in the ABA as they captured three ABA championships in 1970, 1972 and 1973.

“Mel was the hero. He was a guy who you could count on. I think the consistency of his performance made the Pacers the ABA’s most successful franchise in its history,” Erving once said about Daniels.

Daniels was one of the best rebounders in the ABA leading the league in that category for three seasons. He was the league’s leader in total boards with 9,494 and career rebounding average at 15.1 per contest.

That great ability to garner carom after carom game in and game out came from an unbelievable ability to control the paint came from a trademark intensity. That great emotion also helped Daniels grab 1,608 career rebounds in the postseason.

In 1997, Daniels was selected by a panel of ABA sports media, referees and executives to be a member of the ABA All-Time Team.

Erving remembers back then that whenever Daniels would grab a rebound or blocked a shot, he would growl.

“He was the main guy. He was the mainstay that anchored the three championships for the Indiana Pacers,” former ABA head coach and current NBA analyst for ESPN Hubie Brown said of Daniels.

Daniels had a brief period in the NBA with the New York Nets back in the 1976-77 season, where his basketball playing career would conclude.

He would then shift his focus to coaching as he joined the coaching staff of his college coach at New Mexico Bob King at Indiana State University where he coached future Hall of Famer, three-time NBA champion and current President of Basketball Operations for the Pacers Larry Bird.

“I grew up a Pacer fan by watching Mel Daniels,” Bird said. “So that really was my first look at professional basketball.”

Daniels joined the front office of the Pacers in 1986 and up until October 2009 served as the team’s Director of Player Personnel.

On Sept. 7, 2012 Daniels was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA and formally joined former ABA greats like Connie Hawkins (1992), Dan Issel (1993), David Thompson (1996) and Artis Gilmore (2011) in the Hall.

As mentioned earlier, Daniels was a great player on the court, where he averaged 18.4 points and 14.9 rebounds per game, he was a wonderful person off the court.

Former NBA head coach and current color analyst for NBA on TNT and television analyst on NBATV Mike Fratello said that Daniels is “one of the nicest men that I’ve me along the way in the NBA.

“He had a tremendous love for the game of basketball. Every game he was at, he’d walk about and want to talk about it and you could tell how much he loved basketball. What it had done for his life.”

Daniels, according to Fratello would greet people by shaking their hand so much so that he would clench it and try to turn it to dust because he had huge hands.

There are a lot of guys in the Hall of Fame that had great careers on the hardwood. There are a lot of players that played professional basketball that were great to talk to and enjoyed being with and around their fans. Mel Daniels had both in spades. He was incredible on the hardwood and a wonderful ambassador for the ABA off of the court. He was a Hall of Famer on the court and a Hall of Fame person off of it.

Information, quotes and statistics are courtesy of 10/31/15 3 a.m. edition of NBATV’s “Gametime” with Rick Kamla, Steve Smith and Mike Fratello, report from Kristen Ledlow; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Daniels.