RIP Hoosier (RCA) Dome

I knew there was a reason I liked this guy.

 

See previous comment about the Haute.

 

Damon Bailey is a first-ballot Indiana White Boy Hall of Famer.

To be in the Indiana White Boy Hall of Fame, you have to be hyped beyond all recognition of your talent, so someone like, say, Larry Bird, isn't eligible.

Luke Recker was in the Indiana White Boy Hall of Fame, but got kicked out when he "screwed over" The General.

 

That's a stretch. Damon Bailey could play.

Sure, he got some calls because he was mentioned in one paragraph of A Season on the Brink.

But the kid still got BNL to the Final Four as a FRESHMAN. I can't think of a whole lot of other Indiana prep players who had the kind of March impact that he did when he was 15-years old (maybe Chris Thomas?). Only the Marion Dream Team (a contender for best Indiana high school team of al time) knocked him off that year. Then, he goes on to win a state title and become the state's all-time leading scorer. Again, I concede he got calls...and should have fouled out of the Concord game without question. But kid was a player.

And at IU, having changed positions and dealing with unparamounted expectations for a freshman in psycho man Knight's system, he did win Big 10 freshman of the year. In four years, he was a key man on Indiana teams that went to the Sweet 16 in all of those seaons. Again, kid could play.

Now, more so than the Indiana White Hall-of-Fame, there is the Indiana Black Guys Who Will Never Get the Credit They Deserve Hall-of-Fame (Glenn Robinson, Greg Oden, Zach Randolph are recent inductees).

But Bailey could play and he's borderline all-time Indiana high school team.

 

Bailey was another great moment at the Dome during that '94 draft. With the Pacers no longer pathetic, and learning their lesson from Reggie Miller over Steve Alford, the diehards weren't demanding Bailey be taken with the No. 15 pick. (That was Eric Piatkowski, one of the pieces in the deal that got Mark Jackson to Indianapolis the first time around.) But when it got to the second round, you could feel the tension in the room when it came time for the Pacers to make their first of two second-round picks.

The first one-- not Damon Bailey, but a Canadian named William Njoku. BOOOOOO!!!!!!
(Still a punchline name between myself and my best friend from high school.)

The second one -- Damon Bailey! YEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I recall, Donnie Walsh said later that he knew Bailey would probably never make the team (his knees were already shot), but they signed him anyway to a two-year deal as a fan appeaser and as a paid ambassador for Pacers basketball.

By the way, whatever happened to William Njoku? Why, he's the athletic director at Atlantic Baptist University in Moncton, New Brunswick. (I had to look up that one.)
http://www.abu.nb.ca/bluetide/ath_wel.html

 

I need to find my copy of this and read it again over the holidays.