Louie Dampier's devastating road to Basketball Hall of Fame

The black-and-white photo bleeds sadness.

It's right there in his eyes. The darkness. It's in his tensed-up jaw. The grief.

It's in the skinny limbs that poke out from his No. 6 Indiana All-Star uniform.

When a teenage kid is heartbroken, he doesn't eat much. And Louie Dampier, 6-0, 165 pounds, was heartbroken.

The photo, half a century old, still tells a story of a teenage orphan, a basketball superstar, who by 18 had lost his mother and his father.

And it tells a story of why Dampier may be the only man to ever play the game of basketball who, deep down within his soul, secretly hoped he would never get into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame means being in the spotlight. And Dampier – who will be the first Indianapolis-born player enshrined Friday into a hallowed place every athlete dreams of – despises the spotlight.

Dampier is a self-proclaimed and well-known introvert.

"The happiest that Louie is is when he's out riding his lawnmower and doesn't have to talk to anybody," said Dan Issel, who played on the ABA's Kentucky Colonels with Dampier for five years and was his roommate when the team traveled. "He's pretty much of an introvert. Not only does he not like the spotlight, he does everything possible to stay out it."

****

It wasn't always that way.

Two years before the photo was taken, Dampier was an outgoing, 16-year-old, happy-go-lucky kid attending Southport High School. He was the hometown hero at a time when basketball stars at Indiana high schools were icons.

He loved socializing with friends, being a jokester.

Then one day, sitting in class – he doesn't remember whether it was math or English or history because everything in life suddenly became a blur – Dampier was called out.

His sister was there. She had unexpected and devastating news. His mother was dead. She had died in the hospital recovering from surgery. Dampier thinks it was a hysterectomy, though now, as a 70-year-old man, he's not exactly sure.

To be honest, he didn't need to know. His mom, a woman he was intensely close to, was gone.

"After my mom, of course, I was demoralized," Dampier said from his La Grange, Ky., home this week. "I can't explain exactly, the sadness and loss. I still can't explain it."

He can explain what those feelings did. They took him over. They altered him deep within.

"I used to be very outgoing, but it changed when my mom died," he said. "I became introverted and it changed my personality quite a bit."

On the court, it didn't show. Dampier, known as Little Louie because of his frail build, averaged 24 points a game his senior year and led Southport to both county and sectional titles. Dampier set a sectional scoring record, 40 points in one game, and a tourney record, 114 points.

"He was very humble, unassuming," said Billy Shepherd, who played at Carmel High School and Butler University before reaching the ABA for three seasons. He looked up to Dampier, his basketball career running five years behind Dampier's. "That doesn't mean he wasn't confident when he played."

But as the crowd cheered at those high school games for a player they thought had it all, Dampier looked up into the bleachers and longed to see his mom.

Basketball had been their thing.

***

Dampier and his mom were about as close as a mother and son could be. His father, a milk man, was rarely home.

"He was not really interested," Dampier said. "I don't know that he wasn't interested. He worked a lot. He had his own milk route."

His mother carried the load of raising Louie and his four older siblings. And Dampier was the baby – by a long shot. His three sisters were older than him by 11, 12 and 13 years; his brother older by 9.

"My mom had season tickets for me and her and she took me to all the home basketball games (at Southport) and some of the away games when I was little," Dampier said.

His mom went to watch the three older sisters, who were cheerleaders. Dampier was there, even at 4 or 5 years old, to watch basketball.

"That's where I started admiring players when I watched the guys play varsity," he said. "Those were my first heroes. That's what my dream was then, to play high school ball."

So years later, having made it to the high school court, being that hero to other young kids, the emptiness was overwhelming.

But at least his dad was there. After his mom died, he started coming to Dampier's games. The two became closer.

He and his dad would babysit Dampier's nieces and nephews, his dad's grandchildren, together a couple nights a week while his brother and sisters were out playing in bowling leagues.

They started connecting. Dampier was filling the void left by his mother. But it didn't last long.

When Dampier was 18, a second devastating blow came. His dad died of stomach cancer.

Any happiness or joy of carefree youth was gone for Dampier. He turned inward and never came back out.

***

Don't be mistaken. Dampier isn't rude or aloof.

He's humble, modest and shy. And sweet. He sheepishly apologizes, in his acquired Kentucky drawl, for not returning phone calls from the media, admitting it's just not his cup of tea.

People who knew him back in Southport, teammates who played with him at the University of Kentucky and with the Colonels say Dampier would give anyone the shirt off his back.

"It couldn't happen to a better human being," said Darel Carrier, of Dampier's Hall of Fame induction. Carrier played with Dampier on the Colonels.

And it couldn't happen to a better basketball player.

Dampier was one of the greatest to play in the ABA. He was one of only a handful of men to play all nine years of the league's existence. He spent his entire ABA career with the Colonels, finishing as the league's all-time leader in points (13,726), assists (4,044), games (728), 3-pointers (794) and minutes (27,770).

"One hundred percent, he is the ABA player that comes to mind when you think of the Hall of Fame," said Scott Tarter, a co-founder of Dropping Dimes Foundation, an Indianapolis-based non-profit that helps struggling former ABA players. "He also is one that comes to mind when you think of ABA players that should have gone in the Hall of Fame a long time ago."

Dampier, who capped his career playing three years for the NBA's San Antonio Spurs after the ABA dissolved, said he's heard that from people time and again.

He never cared to push the matter.

"It's something you might start thinking about because other people started talking to me about it, saying, 'It's your turn. You should be in,' " he said. "Not that I always agreed with them. But it sure is an honor."

And now, Dampier is about to take the good – that Hall of Fame honor – with the bad. All that attention.

***

The flurry of a Hall of Fame enshrinement in Springfield, Mass., this weekend includes three days of fanfare beginning Thursday, sprinkled with photo opportunities, scheduled appearances, required time with the media and a speech.

A speech from Dampier. Surely, he's dreading that.

"It's not so much that," he said. "It's everything else we have to do. We're committed to doing so many other things, press conferences, interviews. Giving a short speech might be some relief."

Relief because Dampier is in control of that. The 11 inductees get five minutes to talk. The woman running the ceremony asked everybody to send a copy of their speeches to her, Dampier said.

"Except me," he said, laughing, "because she knew mine wouldn't be too long."

He estimates his speech, which he's had written for months, will last about three minutes. Issel isn't buying that.

"I'm sure he will take a minute and a half," Issel said. "And that will be it."

Issel may be right. After all, he knows Dampier better than anyone, except Dampier's wife of 32 years, Judy; his two children, Danielle and Nick; and stepson, Rob, who will all be at the enshrinement.

Dampier picked Issel to be his Hall of Fame presenter.

"Let me tell you something, I consider Louie the best friend I have," he said. "And sometimes he doesn't call me back."

That doesn't hurt Issel's feelings. He knows exactly who Dampier is. The two met when Dampier was a senior, Issel a freshman, at the University of Kentucky playing for Adolph Rupp.

Under Rupp, Dampier, Tommy Kron and Pat Riley led the Wildcats to the 1966 NCAA championship game, where they lost to Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso). The game is famous: Texas Western was the first team with an all-black starting lineup to win an NCAA title.

When he graduated from Kentucky in 1967, Dampier had scored 1,575 points, the third-most in school history at the time.

Issel said Dampier was one of the few seniors who would give a freshman, not allowed in those days to play, the time of day. That meant something to Issel – and paved the way for a ready-made friendship when they played for the Colonels.

As roommates traveling with the team, though, there was no rowdiness or socializing. Dampier didn't like to go out. So, the two became addicted to the soap opera "Days of Our Lives."

They would sit in the hotel room, watch the show and order food in, usually cheeseburgers and fries.

"We were the kings of room service," Issel said. "We very seldom went out. We would stay in our rooms and watch TV. We weren't very social."

***

Dampier was lucky to play basketball when he did. He came before the days of nightly telecasts. The ABA wasn't on TV. Most fans listened to games on the radio.

He came before the days when players had media swarming the locker rooms asking them questions.

He came before the days of social media and a 24-hour news cycle.

If all that had existed in Dampier's heyday, he would have been accosted. He was a superstar.

He had a lightning-fast release on his shot.

"Dampier would kill you with that shot," Carrier said. "Both of us could hit the 3-pointer from anywhere on the court once we crossed the midcourt line."

Together, Dampier and Carrier formed what has been called the most explosive backcourt duo ever to play in the ABA. They each averaged at least 20 points per game.

"We really complemented each other," Carrier said, "because you could try to guard him and then leave me open or you could try and guard me and leave him open. People were amazed by us."

***

A basketball superstar. That's what Dampier always wanted to be, ever since those days as a little boy watching the Southport High School team with his mom.

And he became one.

He did it by battling through grief that most people watching him on the court never knew.

And as he takes the stage to be inducted this weekend, the photos may show him smiling.

But that doesn't mean Dampier has forgotten, that he won't be thinking of his mom, and why he made it to the Hall of Fame.

Follow Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow.