Most people will say “Reggie Miller,” without hesitation, if asked who the greatest player in Indiana Pacers history is. That’s fine: Reggie put this team on the national map, and I personally never would have cared much about the franchise if he didn’t light up the Knicks on my television set throughout the 1990s.
But to the older generation, Mel Daniels is just as deserving for that honor.
He was a two-time ABA MVP and led the Pacers to three championships. Even more impressive, Indiana appeared in five ABA Finals in a seven-years stretch, a run of dominance that led Terry Pluto, in his seminal oral history of the American Basketball Association, Loose Balls, to deem the Pacers “The Boston Celtics of the ABA.