Every NBA team’s best iteration ever

Indiana Pacers: 1969-70

The Pacers have yet to win a title in the NBA, but they were the most successful franchise in the ABA’s brief history, winning more championships than any other team with three, all of which were won in a  four-year span from 1970 to 1973. Their first title winning team, from 1970, was likely their best, going 59-25 and 12-3 in the Playoffs. That year’s team featured four All-Stars – Roger Brown, Mel Daniels, Freddie Lewis, and Bob Netolicky — two of whom, Brown and Daniels, were eventually inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Daniels was, at that time, the best center in the ABA while Roger Brown was one of the league’s best shooters and most reliable scorers. Brown had blackballed from the NBA due to the same point shaving scandal that kept Connie Hawkins out of the league, but the ABA gave both Hawkins and Brown a chance and they absolutely made the most of it. Throughout his time with the Pacers, Brown showed himself to be one of the ABA’s most dynamic scorers, becoming a vital part of all three of the team’s championships.

The exploits of these four All Stars are largely forgotten because only two of them ever played in the NBA, and even then, they only played 75 combined games there. Even though the ABA featured several of the best basketball players in the world throughout its brief existence, its history is unfortunately not as well known and many of its greatest players — such as Daniels, Brown, Lewis, and Netolicky — and teams like this Pacers club, are forgotten. Even in spite of the team’s later successes with Reggie Miller and Paul George over the past few decades, the early 1970s were truly the Pacers’ glory years and this 1970 team was perhaps the best of them all. It was then that they were, according to Terry Pluto’s Loose Balls, “the Boston Celtics of the ABA.”