Boom baby requiem

 The bone-deep cultures, they're never defined by one place or time or individual. So you can't say Robert "Slick" Leonard was Indiana and basketball, on the occasion of his passing yesterday at 88.

But you can't meaningfully discuss that particular bone-deep culture without him.

The man came out of a high school hoops institution, Terre Haute Gerstmeyer, and he played for Indiana University's bedecked college program, and then he wound up coaching Indiana's pro basketball team, the Pacers. He even played a major role in saving them in the late 1970s, when he and his wife Nancy organized a telethon to keep them from disappearing.

So you won't get very far with Indiana and basketball without his name coming up.

As a coach he was as wild-west as his fledgling league and his team, whose players used to actually dress up like cowboys (complete with firearms!) when the mood struck them. He was a rebel coach in a rebel league  -- A red, white and blue basketball? A "three-point basket"? What was THAT? -- and he acted the part to perfection. 

Harass officials?

He did that with the best of them.

Chase his players around the locker room when they played like goofs?

He did that, too.

And his players loved him unreservedly, because they were rebels, too. They were Mel Daniels and Roger Brown and Freddie Lewis and Billy Keller; George McGinnis and Bob Netolicky and Warren Jabali and Rick Mount. And together they took that red, white and blue basketball and shoved it down the rest of the league's throat.

Under Slick, the Pacers were the Boston Celtics of the ABA, winning three championships and appearing in five ABA finals. Their nemeses were the Utah Stars with Zelmo Beaty and Willie Wise, and the Kentucky Colonels with Artis Gilmore and Dan Issel and Louie Dampier.

And even when all that was done, it was never really done, because Slick hung around, the most loyal of the loyal. As the Pacers color man he turned "Boom, baby!" into a cultural catchphrase, making it synonymous with Reggie Miller and Miller's love affair with the three-point line -- a line Slick's ABA first made chic.

So the lineage is as multi-faceted as its roots are deep. And because it is, the most righteous way to honor that lineage should be obvious this morning to every son or daughter of Indiana.

Go grab a red, white and blue basketball.

Head to the park.

Stand behind the three-point line.

Let 'er fly.

Boom. Baby.