Year graduated
1965
Major accomplishments
Named Mr. Basketball; Indiana Basketball Hall of Famer
Believe it or not, I was born in Bloomington, Indiana,” says Billy rsi Keller, who broke his late uncle’s heart when he chose to attend Purdue University over Indiana University after leading Indianapolis Washington to the 1965 state high school championship—a victory that helped earn the 5-foot-lO guard a spot on the Indiana All-Star team as Mr. Basketball.
“Dad worked at Allison’s and drove from Bloomington to the west side of Indianapolis. I was about 17 months old when we moved to Indianapolis. Purdue recruited me from my junior year at Washington High. My uncle wanted me to attend IU, but Indiana didn’t need additional small guards at that point. It kind of surprises people that I was born in Bloomington and ended up going to Purdue, but it worked out well for me.”
Keller, who can be seen driving through Indiana in his red, white, and blue (for the ABA) Billy Keller Basketball Camp van designed by wife Joyce, has been surprising people all of his athletic life. He was advised by his freshman coach at Washington not to go to Purdue because he was too small for the West Lafayette school.
“He wasn’t trying to be negative toward Purdue, he was trying to be positive toward me,” said Keller. “The more I talked to people, and the more I watched, I felt I could go to Purdue and play, and that I wouldn’t get lost.”
Keller not only didn’t get lost, he helped the Boilermakers win the Big Ten title in 1969 and finish runner-up to UCLA and Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) in the NCAA tournament. Keller was named the first recipient that year of the James Naismith Award as the nation’s most outstanding player under six feet.
A few months later, some of the Indiana Pacers wondered whether Keller would be able to earn a roster spot after being chosen in the eighth round of the 1969 ABA draft. In his seven seasons with the Pacers, Keller earned three championship rings (1970, ‘72 and ‘73), averaged 11.8 points for his pro career, and led the team in free-throw percentage, in addition to leading in three-point percentage for four seasons.
Keller, who went into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992, is one of the most popular players ever to wear a Pacers uniform. That popularity became evident in the early 1970s when Norm Wilkens came up with the idea for the song, “The Ballad of Billy Keller.” Wilkens had the American Dairy Association account for the Carlson & Co. ad agency. Keller was under contract to the dairy association. Wilkens took his idea to Craig Deitschmann, a producer in Nashville, Tennessee. Deitschmann wrote about 90 percent of the lyrics and the music for the 45 record that was played often on Indianapolis radio station WIBC.
“We sold about 20,000 copies at a dollar apiece,” said Wilkens. “That just about covered expenses.”
The song had several verses, one of which Wilkens remembers saying, “He stands 5-foot-5 when he starts to drive, but when he takes it in he’s like 6-foot-5, that’s Bill, Bill Keller, home-grown Hoosier with the red-hot hand.”
Wilkens recalls that not only was Keller extremely popular, he also was “kinda shy, but when he made personal appearances at schools around the state for the dairy association, he really turned people on. After he finished, he would stand at mid-court and take a shot at the basket. I don’t think in two years he missed more than two shots, and we made 12 to 15 personal appearances each year.”
Of his ballad, Keller says, laughing, “I’m sure it wasn’t in Casey Kasem’s top 40. But I have one at home if anybody would like to hear it. Hey, it’s really quite an honor to have your own record.”
As Keller’s Pacers popularity increased, he was invited to conduct the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. “I remember standing on the conductor’s stand,” he said. “I tapped the stand with my baton to get the musicians’ attention, then gave the count and we were off and running.” A portion of the ballad was played during a recent Pacers game at Conseco Fieldhouse on a night that honored Keller and some other ABA stars.
Keller also has become a Pacers trivia question. Not long ago, the team’s TV announcers, Al Albert and Clark Kellogg, were asking who was second to Reggie Miller in career three-pointers. “It came about that I was second,” said Keller with a chuckle. “AI was making light of the fact that Reggie was only about 2,000 ahead of me.” Actually the difference is 2,054. Reggie made 2,560, Keller 506. “Reggie had 18 years and I had seven,” Keller countered.
Keller’s journey to stardom began early. When he was seven, Keller’s older brother Bernie would ride Keller’s bike to School 67, and make the kid dribble the basketball behind him the mile to the school. Keller was only able to watch the older ones play, but he gained enough knowledge that when he did get to play against his peers, he felt he had an edge.
Vernon McCarty was Keller’s coach in junior high school. “He was a very good coach, not only of fundamentals, but of the game itself,” said Keller. “He was the guy who gave me my start. Then it was on to Washington and coach Jerry Oliver. He was the same kind of coach—very enthusiastic, and very knowledgeable. And he installed in us to work hard, nothing comes free.”
Washington was 29-2 in 1964-65. The Continentals, Princeton, Gary Roosevelt, and Fort Wayne North made up the final four at the state tournament in Butler Fieldhouse (now Hinkle Fieldhouse). Washington, with Keller getting 22 points, defeated Princeton, 88-76, and North beat Roosevelt, 74-65, in afternoon games. Washington downed North, 64-57, as Keller scored 25 points in the championship game.
“When I think about the experience I had at Washington, Ralph Taylor was a big part of that, and so was Eddie Bopp, who was the ‘65 Trester Award winner,” said Keller. “Ralph and I played on the Indiana All-Star team, then went to Purdue together.”
Keller says that being named Mr. Basketball was not something he thought much about. “What I thought most about as a kid was two things. I wanted to play on a state championship team, and I wanted to play on the Indiana All-Star team, because at that time there really was only one all-star game. The Indiana-Kentucky All-Star series was, if you will, the grandfather of all all-star games that have ever been played. It wasn’t class basketball. It was one class. And because I was shooting for these two dreams—a state title and All-Star game—Mr. Basketball just kind of fell into place.”
Keller heard from Indiana, UCLA, Western Kentucky, The Citadel, Butler, Ball State, and Indiana State, but “my heart was with Purdue and [Boilermaker recruiter] Bob King,” he said. “I guess to start with, I went for Bob King more than Purdue, because Purdue University to me was Bob King. He was like a father away from home.”
Losing to UCLA, 92-72, in the 1969 NCAA championship game was “at the time, probably the most disappointing loss I think I had ever encountered,” said Keller. “I think we averaged like 97 points a game with Rick Mount, Herman Gilliam, and George King as our coach. I think had we not had some injuries late in the season, especially with Chuck Bavis not being able to play in the Final Four because of a separated shoulder, and Gilliam just coming back from a leg injury, we would have done much better if we had had all of our parts. I never saw Rick off very often, but he did not shoot well in that final game. He hit his first two, then missed several. You don’t know if it’s a bad night or you credit the defense. Rick didn’t have many bad nights. He really could shoot it.”
Some 10 years ago George Faerber, a starting forward on that Purdue team, held a Bee Window grand opening in Lafayette, and with it, a reunion of his teammates. “To that point Herman had never gotten past the fact that we lost to UCLA and they beat us pretty good,” said Keller. “I sat down with him and said, yeah, we didn’t win, but look what we, and you, accomplished. He’d played eight years in the NBA, had a wonderful career, and won a title with Portland in 1977. Hopefully I was able, while he was alive, [Gilliam died in 2005], to at least get him thinking about the fact that this was a positive experience rather than ending up being a negative one.”
Keller was chosen by the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA draft, and had he made the team he could have played with Abdul-Jabbar, but he thought it would be better to stay at home with the Pacers.
“When you look at that team, you look at the leadership role of coach Bobby Leonard. Slick was very enthusiastic and he loved to have fun, but he loved to win. And he assembled good players. The first one that comes to mind is Roger Brown, then Mel Daniels, Freddie Lewis, Darnell Hillman, Bob Netolicky, and George McGinnis, and guys right on down the line. Nobody cared who scored the points or got the accolades. I think what people cared about is that we won. I think even today in Indianapolis people still remember the old ABA and the championships we won. That’s the foundation of the Indiana Pacers today.”
Keller started his camps in 1974 when he played with the Pacers. They were sports camps, but the venture evolved into the Billy Keller Basketball Camp, Inc. He also has a video called “The Lost Art of Shooting,” and does individual instruction in addition to conducting mini-shooting schools. He also did some coaching, one year with the Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School girls’ team, one year as an assistant at Purdue, and seven years with the University of Indianapolis men’s team.
Keller and his wife, Joyce, have two grown daughters, four grandchildren, and “three granddogs.” And the man who inspired a ballad doesn’t think being 5-10 held him back in any way.
“I don’t feel like the players today are any better at their game than we were at our game,” he said. “Sometimes people want to say our [Pacers] team back in the ‘70s, how could you compete? Well, you can’t compare that. But I feel we were as good, and at this point we accomplished more in our game then than the teams today have accomplished.”