The night 34-year-old Pacers president John DeVoe died courtside during a game

INDIANAPOLIS — Bob Netolicky was heading to the locker room at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum after a 112-103 Pacers victory over the Houston Mavericks.

But for some reason it didn't feel like victory. For some reason, it felt like tragedy.

Why, Netolicky wondered, were a dozen people gathered around an area of front row seats, bending over, seemingly frantic.

He had no idea on the night of Dec. 14, 1968, inside that huddle were doctors and a fire emergency crew working feverishly over a man. He had no idea that man was Pacers team president and co-founder John DeVoe.

Other players knew. They had seen what happened as the game neared its final seconds. They had seen DeVoe slump over in his courtside seat.

Nancy Leonard watched it unfold from where she sat underneath the basket.

"All of a sudden, I just see him on the floor," said Leonard, wife of then-Pacers coach Bobby "Slick" Leonard. "I had no idea what had happened."

Inside the locker room, the atmosphere didn't reflect the Pacers' win, but their loss, according to an Indianapolis Star article the next morning.

"The players saw their boss laying stricken as they finished the game and went to the locker room," the article said. "The dressing quarters were quieter than after any defeat. There was none of the laughter and cutting up that usually accompanies a victory. There were only a few quiet words spoken man to man."

What had happened to their president, who was more like a friend to them than a franchise executive? The guy who invited them over for dinners and parties at his home. Who played tennis with them on weekend afternoons.

What had happened to 34-year-old John DeVoe?

'Laughing, kidding before the game'

No one could have expected what happened that blustery winter night more than 50 years ago. The players remember DeVoe standing near the bench before the game, laughing and teasing them.

But with two minutes left in the game, the Pacers ready to beat Houston for a third straight win, DeVoe fell from his seat. He had suffered a massive heart attack.

"Who would have ever thought," Nancy Leonard said, "that he would be dead."

DeVoe was a healthy athlete, a husband to Jane and father to three children. He had just played tennis that afternoon. He was a vibrant, sports-loving up and comer, one of the loudest voices in the city fighting to bring a professional basketball team to Indianapolis. 

He was an insurance executive with Gregory & Appel. He was a co-founder of the American Basketball Association, the Pacers' league. He was excited about the talent the team had in its second season, the likes of Netolicky and Mel Daniels, the rookie of the year the season before.

"We've got staying power now," DeVoe had said just months before his death

There was no way what happened courtside during that Pacers game could be anything that bad. 

"John DeVoe for all appearances a healthy vital man...a man who was laughing and kidding before the game was dead," the Pacers game story read the next day. "It didn’t seem possible."

By the time the ambulance arrived, DeVoe was already gone. He was taken to Marion County General Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The following Monday, two days after his death, DeVoe was laid to rest.

Curt DeVoe was 8 years old when his uncle died. He remembers so many Pacers at DeVoe's funeral.

"They were my heroes," Curt DeVoe said.

The players affixed black patches to the left shoulders of their jerseys for the rest of the 1968-69 season. DeVoe's row of courtside seats was permanently removed. A foundation was formed in his honor. DeVoe's brother, Chuck, a member of the board of directors, became team president.

Indianapolis Star sports editor Bob Collins wrote a column in DeVoe's honor.

"It was too swift. Even now the mind and emotions have difficulty grasping the inexorable fact. There is an almost overpowering tendency to hope that somehow there has been a terrible mistake, that any second he will lope into the room with that little boy smile, slide into a chair and begin discussing his grand schemes and big dreams."

It seemed there couldn't be enough done to pay tribute to this giant of the Pacers.

DeVoe, who had fought so hard to get professional basketball to Indianapolis would never get to see just how far this franchise he helped create would go.

'That young man is going someplace'

The season had started out rocky. The team lost seven of its first eight games.

It was so bad that general manager Mike Storen ousted coach Larry Staverman. Staverman was replaced by Slick Leonard.

Heading into that December night, though, things were looking up. The Pacers had won their past two games, bringing their record to 8-16.

DeVoe liked this team he had put together, including Netolicky.

DeVoe had courted Netolicky at an Indianapolis steakhouse. He was sitting in the restaurant when Netolicky walked in with Storen. This would be Netolicky's first meeting with the young Pacers president.

By the end of the dinner, DeVoe offered a contract to Netolicky, who was so impressed by DeVoe, he said yes.

"Then I got to know him," Netolicky said. "We played tennis together. We went to his house. It was almost like a club back then. The president wasn't off somewhere in an office. He was right there with us."

That was DeVoe's style. Hands on and thoughtful. Netolicky was impressed that someone so young had been a force in getting a professional basketball team in Indianapolis. 

"Without John, none of this would have gotten going," Netolicky said. "Without the likes of the DeVoes and (owner) Dick Tinkham, we wouldn't be talking about the Pacers today. I had a lot of respect for him as a person."

Respect was something DeVoe earned just by being who he was, Collins wrote after his death.

"John was the epitome of the all-American boy. Handsome, clean-living, talented and possessing an appealing combination of modesty and self-confidence. He was the type about whom older men would say 'That young man is going someplace.' But John already was there. He’d made it. The only question was how far would he go."

'John was a believer and a doer'

DeVoe was young but he earned respect in the sports world. Some of that came from his charm and charisma. Some from his smarts.

But much of it came because, before DeVoe was a Pacers leader, he had been a standout athlete himself.

DeVoe was known as a prolific basketball scorer in high school. In December 1951, after playing just five games for his Park School High team (now known as Park Tudor), DeVoe had racked up 130 points, averaging 26 per game.

In a 1952 game against Ohio Military Academy in Cincinnati, DeVoe scored 73 points, making 33 of 67 shots and hitting seven free throws.  

DeVoe went on to play at Princeton University, where he became captain and helped lead the team to the Ivy League championship. When he graduated, he was offered a job as the freshman basketball coach.

He declined the offer. He wanted to come back to Indianapolis.

DeVoe began his career in insurance and, coming from a tennis-loving family, helped found and became the first president of the Indianapolis Racquet Club.

"John was a believer and a doer," sports columnist Wayne Fuson wrote in the Indianapolis Star after DeVoe's death. "At a time when people were talking about the feasibility of big league sports in Indianapolis and forming committees, John quietly was working to turn those thoughts into realities."

Bringing professional basketball to his city became DeVoe's mission.

"He devoted much of his considerable energy and time he could better have spent making a living to get the backing for the Pacers franchise," Fuson wrote. "Then, since he had involved his friends in one of the most uncertain of all business investments, a professional athletic team, he assumed the personal obligation of guiding the ship through the uncharted waters of the American Basketball Association."

Many now, said Leonard, have no idea who John DeVoe was. How important he was to the city's basketball history. 

"There is a gaping hole in the Indianapolis sports picture today," Fuson wrote. "He was one of the new breed of young men here who didn’t believe that things had to remain as they were just because that was the way they had always been."

DeVoe loved the team. "He anguished with the Pacers and their fans at losses and jumped with joy at victories."  

He never got to see the team's victory that December night of 1968. He didn't get to see them finish the season 44–34 or take first place in the Eastern Division or watch them as they made it to the ABA Finals.

"To write that any man died before his time would be reverting to a senseless euphemism in which we often find solace," wrote Collins. "It is better to say that many of us were not ready for John DeVoe to go. He touched a lot of people, a lot of worlds."

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.