The Game I'll Never Forget: Bob Netolicky - former Indiana Pacers basketball player

Basketball Digest, Summer, 2001 by Chuck O'Donnell

"Broadway Bob"--A Hall-of-Farmer at Having Fun

BOB NETOLICKY, A POWER FORWARD FOR the ABA's Indiana Pacers, Dallas Chaparrals, and San Antonio Spurs for nine seasons, was a very good basketball player. But he was a Hall-of-Famer at having fun.

"Neto" was a laid-back guy whose easygoing, mod demeanor off the court earned him the nickname "The Joe Namath of the ABA." He never took himself or much else seriously--except when it came to playing basketball and having fun. He simply loved life.

Netolicky loved animals. In fact, he had a lion, an ocelot, and a boa constrictor during his playing days. He also had a wildcat that once got out of the house and roamed the neighborhood.

His idea of a good time was a couple of beers and some good music. He even opened his own nightclub, Neto's, a couple of blocks away from the Pacers' home court, Fairgrounds Coliseum. It became a great place for Bob to, ahem, mingle with the female customers.

Neto also loved cars. In fact, as part of his first contract with the Pacers, Netolicky talked the team into leasing him a Corvette for a year. "I bet they had a stroke when they got the bill for the insurance on that thing," he says.

He still loves cars, now working for Adesa Corporation, the second largest auto auction company in the U.S. "I've always liked cars," he says. "I had a car dealership when I got out of playing basketball. I was involved in wholesaling cars for awhile, and now I'm in the auto auction business."

Basketball was Netolicky's first love. He was an All-American at Drake and was drafted in the second round by the NBA's San Diego Rockets, but Netolicky decided to stay home to play for the Pacers. It turned out to be a great decision.

Neto spent parts of eight seasons with the Pacers in two tours of duty, helping them win ABA titles in 1970 and 1972 and earning berths in four ABA All-Star Games. He was a consistent scorer, a strong rebounder, a good defender, and a tireless worker.

Netolicky's best campaign was 1969-70, when he averaged a career-high 20.6 points and 10.7 rebounds per contest. Neto retired after playing only four games in the 1975-76 season, which was also the ABAs last season. That gave him the distinction of being one of a small handful of players to play in the ABA from its first season in 1967-68 to its final season. And Netolicky is the only one of those to spend his entire career solely in the ABA.

Netolicky isn't shocked that the ABA has taken on a nostalgic life of its own with fans all these years later. "It was real basketball," he says. "It wasn't a lot of put-on crap. It was good basketball.

"More people know about it now than back then. Let's face it, if we had head-to-head games [vs. the NBA] on ESPN back then, there would probably still be an ABA. There would probably have been one big merger. There would probably be a red, white, and blue ball instead of a brown one. There would be a lot of different things."

Netolicky lives in Indiana with his wife, Elaine. They've been married for more than 20 years, and they have two daughters.