Mad Ants-less

(Wrote this for my old employer, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. And, as always, I'll add a plea to support local news, because local news is important and it's being strangled to death by the hedge-fund vultures who feed without conscience on local papers these days. So, subscribe here. I promise you won't regret it.)

Ron Howard in that corridor. That’s what sticks now.

Ron Howard, Mr. Mad Ant, leaning against one wall while I leaned against the other, talking softly about expectations and winning and all the grinding work that comes with getting one to meet the other. Ron Howard, on that night in 2014 when he put a hand on a championship trophy and gave birth to a banner that would soon hang in the dim rafters of the Allen County Memorial Coliseum, a banner that would announce that the Fort Wayne Mad Ants were your G-League champions.

That was the pinnacle, Ron Howard in that corridor.  Yesterday was … something else.

Yesterday was something for which the clock started ticking eight years ago, when the Indiana Pacers bought the Mad Ants and made them their developmental team. You knew the Ants were headed out of town the moment that happened, if you were at all a thinking person. You knew the day would come when the Pacers would move their farm team a lot closer to the big city, especially when it became apparent Fort Wayne wasn’t going to pony up for a more compact arena downtown.

Noblesville, one of the moneyed communities in Indy’s orbit, did, as it turned out. Why it will only be a 3,500-seat arena is a question that remains unanswered, except that perhaps the Pacers understand their farm team isn’t going to draw much more than that.

What they’re thinking about, more likely, is that the Ants – or whatever they’ll be called now – won’t be 130 miles up the road now. They’ll be right in the backyard. Which will make the logistics of moving players back and forth a lot simpler.

And the city they’re leaving behind?

It’s a city with pro buckets in its blood, and anyone with a morsel of institutional knowledge knows it. Before the Mad Ants there was the Fury of the Continental Basketball Association, and before that there were the Fort Wayne Pistons, one of the seminal franchises of the NBA. The league, in fact, was born in Pistons owner Fred Zollner’s kitchen on Forest Park Boulevard, commissioner Maurice Podoloff presiding. Less than a decade later the Pistons fled to Detroit, as the Fort Waynes and Rochesters and Minneapolises got left behind.

Decades later came the Fury, and what a crazy-fun show that was. It was Gerald Oliver and Memor’awl Magic, Jimmy “Wild Wild West” Carruth and Jay Edwards. Damon Bailey played here, and Brook Steppe. Lloyd “Sweet Pea” Daniels, who once asked radio announcer and media relations rep Rob Brown if he needed a passport to go to Idaho. And of course former coach Mo McHone, who once caught the plastic head of a golf club in a most unfortunate anatomical place.

And the Mad Ants?

Joey Meyer coached them, once upon a time. Duane Ticknor, who taught them how to win. And Conner Henry, who wrung a 34-16 record out of them in 2014, and turned them into champions.

But the  loyal fan base remained also a tiny one, with so much else competing for the entertainment dollar. And then the Pacers came and the color scheme went from yellow-and-red to blue-and-gold, and the fierce red Mad Ant became the soft and squishy blue-and-gold Ant.

And the clock began to tick.

Pro buckets may come back to Fort Wayne someday, in some form or fashion. But for now, a city with a rich history in that arena will go dark and quiet.

Ron Howard in that corridor.

Only a memory now. A memory, and a requiem.