Mark Montieth: Trade demands in Indianapolis have way of working themselves out

Colts running back Jonathan Taylor has filed for a divorce from the Colts. He wants to sign an extension of his rookie contract, they want to wait for him to play out the upcoming season, and he’s sitting out of training camp. He might be injured; he might not be injured. He’s asked for a trade, but owner Jim Irsay isn’t interested.

It might seem like a bond has been broken, that things will never be the same between the formerly beloved running back and the fan base. Not necessarily.

Taylor could always swallow his pride and return to the team when he can no longer ignore his best interests, but even if he somehow manages to force a trade, it doesn’t have to wind up ugly. History has shown, at least around these parts, that these conflicts tend to work out for all parties in the long run. Bygones indeed have a way of becoming bygones.

Here’s a look at the most prominent trade demands in the city’s history and their aftermaths:

Rick Mount

Mount seemed the perfect addition to the Pacers following their first ABA championship in 1970. They had an opening at shooting guard, and he was a local legend, having been named Mr. Basketball in 1966 and a three-time All-American at Purdue.

What seemed an ideal marriage was troubled from the start, however. Pacers coach Slick Leonard didn’t want him in the first place, and the two never meshed in their two seasons together. Mount averaged 14.3 points and started 50 games in his second season but still didn’t feel wanted. He privately asked for a trade during the regular season, then went public with his desire on May 14, 1972, when the Pacers were three games deep into the championship round of the playoffs.

“I think I signed too early,” Mount told Tony Kornheiser of Newsday. “I should have waited for the NBA draft. If I hadn’t signed right away, I’d probably have gone with the NBA. I really like the NBA.”

The situation played out to the liking of all concerned. Mount started the game after his request went public, the Pacers went on to win the championship, and he was traded over the summer to the Kentucky Colonels. He also played for Utah and Memphis. He had his best season in Memphis, leading the ABA in 3-point percentage, but two injuries cut short his season. The Pacers, meanwhile, won the 1973 championship as well, defeating the Colonels in seven games, and were back in the finals in 1975.

Although he didn’t win a championship after leaving the Pacers, Mount still has no regrets about wanting out.

“I was done with them,” he said earlier this week. “[Leonard] wasn’t ever going to give me a chance.”

Bob Netolicky

Netolicky issued his demand just four days after Mount, his road-trip roommate. It seems surreal for two established players to publicly demand a trade when the team was in the process of winning a league championship, but that was the case.

While the Newsday article was picked up in the Indianapolis papers, Netolicky’s conversation with a Des Moines Register reporter was not.

Much of Netolicky’s frustration related to playing time. He had been an ABA all-star each of the league’s first four years, but by the end of the 1971-1972 season had lost his starting forward spot to rookie George McGinnis. Netolicky’s role diminished to the point that he played just five minutes in two of the games against New York in the finals.

“This has been a dismal year,” he told the Register, which had covered his college career at Drake. “The team is poorly managed, and I’m not the only Pacer who is dissatisfied.”

Today, Netolicky says his trade “demand”—his word for it in the Register article—applied only to his desire to play the following season in Kentucky, where former Pacers General Manager Mike Storen had taken over the basketball operations. He wasn’t as fortunate as Mount, however. He was traded instead to Dallas over the summer.

He was gratefully traded back to the Pacers early in the 1973-1974 season, however, and finished his career with them early in the 1975-1976 season.

Eric Dickerson

Dickerson’s departure from the Colts in 1992 was ugly, but nobody should have been surprised. That’s how they got him in the first place.

A contract dispute with the Los Angeles Rams had made the elite running back available, and the Colts snapped him up as part of a three-way trade. He arrived in Indianapolis amid trumpet-blaring fanfare in 1987 and proceeded to light up the city. For a while. He ran for more than 1,011 yards in nine games that year and followed with a league-leading 1,659 yards in 1988 and then 1,311.

Injuries, contract disputes and suspensions followed, however. By 1992, Dickerson was working on his exit strategy. He insulted his offensive line, comparing running behind it to “taking a revolver and putting a bullet in it and spinning it around and sticking it to my head.” He added he would rather retire than continue taking a pounding every week and, for good measure, called General Manager Jim Irsay “Daffy Duck.”

Dickerson finally got his wish with a trade to the Raiders in April 1992. The Colts didn’t get much in return for the future Hall of Famer—just a fourth- and eighth-round draft pick—but then he didn’t have much left. He played one decent season with the Raiders, then was traded to Atlanta, where he played four games in the 1993 season before he was traded to Green Bay, where he failed his physical and had to retire.

Eventually, all the vitriol spewed during Dickerson’s final days with the Colts evaporated. Irsay put him into the team’s Ring of Honor in 2013. When he called Dickerson to tell him of the recognition, he jokingly identified himself as “Daffy Duck.” Dickerson accepted the honor graciously and was cheered loudly by fans at the ceremony.

“We had some good teams there, some really good teams, some great guys,” he said. “This is an honor for me, it really is.”

Travis Best

Best had several big moments for the Pacers as a backup point guard during their playoff runs up to and including their NBA Finals appearance in 2000. When that team was broken up, and he was allowed a bigger role, he followed with his best season yet under first-year coach Isiah Thomas, averaging 11.9 points and 6.4 assists.

Best played most of the season off the bench, but Thomas threw him into the starting lineup for the first-round playoff series with Philadelphia.

The real trouble began the following season when Thomas gave the starting position to rookie Jamaal Tinsley from the first day of training camp. Best tried to swallow the “horse pill”—his words—of going from starting in the playoffs to backing up a rookie despite believing he had outplayed Tinsley, but he couldn’t contain himself for long.

“I felt [Thomas] was doing things purposely [to hold me back],” Best says now. “Throwing me in the game in the last minute of a half, odd things that you don’t do with your best players.”

Best aired his frustration in a few conversations with team President Donnie Walsh, during which he issued a private and polite trade request. It didn’t get out publicly until midway through the season, shortly before his wish was granted in February 2002, when he was part of a blockbuster seven-player deal with Chicago. He played for four other teams through the 2004-2005 season, then played three more seasons in Russia and Italy before retiring in 2008.

He’s still unhappy over how it ended with the Pacers.

“I wanted to be there my entire career,” he says. “Had Isiah not gotten that job, that’s what would have happened. I would have run through a brick wall for Indiana. That’s where I was drafted; I had a home there. I wanted to stay there for my career.”

His brother still lives in Indy. He gets back often and is warmly received by fans whenever he attends a Pacers game.

Ron Artest

Artest (known legally now as Metta Sandiford-Artest) was one of the players acquired by the Pacers in the trade with Chicago that included Best, and he blossomed in Indy. He earned Defensive Player of the Year honors and an All-Star Game selection during the 2003-2004 season.

Then he earned national enmity for his role in helping to instigate the brawl at the Palace of Auburn Hills in November 2004. He was suspended for the remainder of the season—72 games—perhaps costing the Pacers a run at a championship.

He was reinstated for the 2005-2006 season, but frustrations were mounting. He had been heavily criticized in some circles of the local media, was uncomfortable with coach Rick Carlisle’s deliberate offensive system, did not believe players were being treated equally and was nursing an injury. It all came together one Saturday morning, Dec. 9, 2005, when he blurted out an unsolicited trade request to Indianapolis Star reporter Mike Wells following a game-day shootaround.

He didn’t speak angrily. He merely pointed out that “my past haunts me here,” said the team would be better off without him and expressed a desire for a fresh start. All valid points. Given all that had happened to that point, Walsh and Larry Bird, working in tandem in the front office, had little choice but to comply. They were patient, however, waiting until reasonable compensation could become available in the form of Sacramento forward Peja Stojakovic in January.

Artest played 11 more NBA seasons after that, retiring at age 37. After stops in Sacramento and Houston, he joined the Lakers, for whom he was a starter on the 2010 championship team. He went on to receive the NBA’s citizenship award in 2011 after auctioning off his championship ring to raise money for mental health and finished his career in LA as a veteran mentor at age 37. He has issued several apologies for his behavior while a Pacer, often sought out Walsh and Bird to say hello when playing in Indianapolis and became a vocal supporter of Carlisle.

He’s popular again with the majority of the Pacers’ fan base, something nobody would have imagined 17 years ago.

Paul George

George has not yet evolved Artest-like into the good graces of Pacers fans, but don’t be surprised if it happens if he continues to say the right things.

He became an elite player in his seven seasons in Indianapolis, a four-time all-star whose career was interrupted by a broken leg suffered during a scrimmage while playing for USA Basketball. That career-threatening injury brought sympathy and heightened popularity.

He made a complete comeback, regaining his all-star status in 2016 and ’17, but then trashed all the goodwill by making—via his agent—a trade request in the summer of ’17. Kevin Pritchard, the Pacers’ president of basketball operations, called it a “gut punch.”

George was unhappy with the direction of the team, which was going through a rebuild after reaching the conference finals in 2013 and ’14. He also wanted to play in Los Angeles, near where he had grown up, a desire he had stated privately with friends for a few years.

It all worked out. The Pacers made a favorable trade, sending George to Oklahoma City for future all-stars Victor Oladipo and Domas Sabonis. George, meanwhile, eventually got back to Los Angeles to play for the Clippers, where he’s now a 13-season veteran and eight-time all-star who’s likely destined for the Naismith Hall of Fame.

Although still booed on his return trips to Indianapolis, the fans’ vitriol has softened, and George has expressed no hard feelings. He recently spoke of his time with the Pacers and the city on his podcast: “I’ll always be grateful for the time that I was there.”

Jonathan Taylor should take note. No matter what he’s feeling now, time has a way of making things turn out as they should.•

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Montieth, an Indianapolis native, is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer. He is the author of three books: “Passion Play: Coach Gene Keady and the Purdue Boilermakers,” “Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis,” and “Extra Innings: My Life in Baseball,” with former Indianapolis Indians President Max Schumacher.