Nancy Leonard is back where she belongs ... at the Pacers' game

Indianapolis Star

25-05-2025

CARMEL — The woman who saved the Pacers in Indianapolis hasn't been able to be where she wants to be for the magical playoff run her team is making.
Nancy Leonard is 93 now. For years, all the way through last season, she was there every time the Pacers played at home, but concerns about her health have kept her away from Gainbridge Fieldhouse this season.
Until now.
Nancy is back where she belongs for Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Sunday night, returning to Gainbridge Fieldhouse to see her Pacers try to take a 3-0 advantage over the Knicks.
The thought of being back in the stands brought tears to her eyes earlier this week.
'It means the world to me,' Leonard said. 'It's the thing that's kept me positive.'
Despite not being able to go to Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Nancy Leonard has still been glued to every game. There's a massive TV on the wall in her room, roughly 65 inches of screen enveloping a space that's only a few steps away from where the NBA's first female general manager sits.
'It's like I'm sitting in my seat,' she said. 'If this wall was any bigger, my sons would have gotten one bigger than this one, and this is big enough. … I look forward to every game. I haven't missed a game.'
Not when the Pacers were in Paris. Not when they're on the West Coast and the game tips off at 10:30 p.m.
It's the team Nancy has loved for so long. Her husband, the legendary Bobby 'Slick' Leonard, took over the Pacers in 1968, won three ABA titles and ushered the franchise into the NBA when the league absorbed the ABA in 1976.
Before that season began, the Pacers were searching for a general manager, and after Leonard told the team's owners that the person who filled the role had to both come from a basketball background and be able to handle ticket sales, marketing and the finances while Slick focused on basketball, the team decided to install her as the team's assistant general manager, a role she held for five seasons.
The next offseason, Nancy Leonard's idea saved the Pacers in Indianapolis. Forced into dire financial trouble by the terms placed on the Pacers to join the NBA, the franchise needed to sell 8,000 season tickets to have enough money to keep playing.
She came up with the idea of the telethon that saved the NBA in Indianapolis.
Without her, the Pacers might not be here, and it's fair to wonder what that would mean for the rest of the professional sports culture in the city. Not only does Nancy watch the Pacers, but she watches every Fever game and every Colts contest.
The run the Pacers have made this postseason has her beaming with pride and joy.
Even if Indiana's had a tendency to make things a little too interesting at the end of games, pulling off three impossible comebacks in the first three rounds, the latest coming in a Game 1 win over the Knicks that saw the Pacers erase a 14-point deficit with 3:14 left in the game, then beat New York in overtime.
'They're killing me, because it's not only them, it's the Fever,' Leonard said. 'I tell you, when I saw (Pacers point guard Tyrese) Haliburton (make the choke gesture), and the best part is Reggie (Miller) was at the game. In New York, of all things!'
Leonard hasn't been able to be there this season.
But she still knows this team better than almost anybody. When Aaron Nesmith scored 20 points in the fourth quarter of the team's Game 1 win over the Knicks, Leonard was thinking about what she'd told his mother last year.
She could see the potential in Nesmith, saw how crucial he'd become to the team.
Nancy knew Nesmith's moment would come.
'I guess I could say I'm just really, really happy for them,' she said. 'They're just a great bunch of guys. They hang together. They're family. They have an outstanding coach. Absolutely outstanding.'
This Pacers team has her convinced that Indiana can reach a level it's been only once before.
Now that the NBA playoffs are down to just four teams, she's been watching the Western Conference Finals almost as closely as she watches the Pacers.
Leonard's busy scouting the Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves.
'To see who we're going to play,' she said. 'Because we're gonna get there.'
Nancy Leonard still knows the sport better than most.
The more she watches this Pacers team, the more she thinks the franchise can finally reach the ultimate goal, the trophy it's been chasing since it joined the NBA in 1976 with her in the front office.
'I think that's what we're going to do, if everything holds out the way that it has, if we can keep our guys up for every game at the start,' she said, her basketball mind churning through the possibility of finally seeing the Pacers win an NBA title, then giving way to emotion. 'I just wish Bob could be here to see it.'
Nancy has been hoping she'd get to see it.
Even when she was dealing with health issues earlier this year, she wanted to be able to be at Gainbridge. Her family likes to say that nobody's been to more Pacers home games than her; it'd be hard to disagree, given how long she's been part of the team.
Staying away has been excruciating.
'Because I feel good,' Nancy said. 'Everything I've been through is hard stuff, but I still feel good. … It's been really hard.'
Leonard is back now.
Back where she belongs.