Year graduated
1963
Major accomplishments
Set sectional records for points in a game (40), and total points (114); Indiana All-Star; All-American in 1967 at the University of Kentucky; Academic Ail-American as a junior and senior; Indiana Basketball Hall of Famer
For someone who shot two-handed over his head through his freshman year at Southport High School in Indianapolis, Louie Dampier has had a wonderful basketball career. During the 2005-2006 season, Dampier, who is 61 and living in retirement in LaGrange, Kentucky, was still playing in a 50-and-over league on Sunday afternoons in the old Jeffersonville, Indiana, high school gym where he played as a senior at Southport.
“I love the game,” said Dampier, who played for the legendary University of Kentucky coach, Adolph Rupp. “I feel fortunate I still can run up and down. I’ve never had a knee problem or really ever sprained an ankle.’
How long does the man who holds eight all-time ABA records and is a member of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, plan to keep playing?
“I’m starting to think about it,” he said. “My wife, Judy, doesn’t listen if I come home with an ache or a pain. I still enjoy playing in pickup games Tuesday and Thursday nights over in Indiana at a little gym called Colgate.”
The other veterans never get to see Dampier’s two-handed shot over the head. “No, they get to see the long last-second shot,” he said with a laugh. And they don’t play with a red, white, and blue ball, the staple of the ABA.
“Fm mostly into assists now,” Dampier added. “I don’t want to work hard enough to get open. I didn’t like the red, white, and blue ball at first. The early ones were slick. But they started changing the way they made them, and after that I preferred the red, white, and blue ball.”
The youngest of five kids—three girls and two boys—Dampier watched his brothers-in-law play at Southport when he was young. “They would come over to the house, so that’s how I got to shooting two-handed over my head.” During the winter, Dampier would pound snow into tight mounds so that he could get closer to the rim on the basket his dad had built.
Dampier says he was fairly accurate with the two-handed shot, but that he didn’t think it would get him very far. When he began his sophomore season at Southport, his freshman coach asked him where he learned the jump shot he was shooting. Dampier said, “I don’t know. It wasn’t at a camp or anything. I just did it on my own.”
As a sophomore, Dampier played mostly jayvee ball, then would dress with the varsity and sit most of the time. When a varsity player got hurt in a sectional game, coach Blackie Braden told him to go in.
“We lost the game, our last of the season, but I hit like four shots,” he said. “I only remember taking the first shot, I was so nervous. After the game Coach Braden said something about next year, ‘Right Louie?’ I said, Okay,’ and I thought to myself, I guess I’ll get to play varsity next year.’”
The Cardinals lost in the regional final of the state tournament in Dampier’s two varsity seasons, but in the sectional tournament during his senior year, Dampier set records for points in a game (40) and total points (114). Braden used to kiddingly say that Rupp just happened to be passing through Indianapolis one wintry night that season when he decided to watch Dampier play. It wasn’t a chance happening, according to Dampier.
“Coach Rupp had a recruiter, and he came up and wanted to talk to guys like Bill Russell of Columbus and some of the other big names,” Dampier said. “When he was in Columbus, he said, Ts there anybody around here you think I can look at?’ They said, ‘Yeah, Louie Dampier at Southport.’ He came up to one of our practices and sat next to my brother, and was asking a lot of questions about me. My brother wouldn’t tell him, because he thought he might be a scout for another team. He finally got to talk to me and watched practice, and he may have come to a game. He went back and told Adolph to recruit me.”
Rupp had never heard of Dampier. He usually took the word of his recruiter on a prospect, but he wanted to see Dampier play, so he journeyed to Indianapolis for a reason.
“It was a game I think against Broad Ripple and the first half I was like 9-for-ll,” said Dampier. “Coach Rupp left at halftime, and that’s how I ended up at Kentucky.”
Growing up in Indiana, Dampier wanted to go to Indiana University. An uncle took him to visit coach Branch McCracken, who met with the uncle and not Dampier. After the meeting, McCracken told Dampier, “You have a scholarship if you want it.” Dampier felt that his uncle had talked McCracken into offering a scholarship, and he decided then to go visit Kentucky.
“Some people at Indiana University were upset with me that I didn’t go to Indiana, and even my family,” said Dampier.
Braden prepared Dampier well for his career in Lexington, Kentucky, playing for the coach known as The Baron. “Coach Braden had discipline and he was tough on the players. That’s the one thing I took with me when I went to play for Coach Rupp. He was very strict and he had his rules, and you had to abide by them. That ran some players off. They played a year or two and couldn’t take it any longer. I was kinda used to it from Blackie Braden.”
The Wildcat players couldn’t talk in practice, says Dampier. “You could ask a question or holler out there was a pick coming, but just talk among us, we couldn’t do it.” One day when the team was going over Tennessee scouting reports, Dampier tried to tell Rupp he couldn’t get through a pick, and the players needed to switch. All Dampier got out was the word “but.” Rupp barked at Dampier, who thought, “Boy, this is it.” “But after practice I went to talk to him and everything was fine.”
Like Bob Knight, now coaching at Texas Tech after winning three NCAA titles at Indiana University, Rupp was a tough taskmaster, but there was a significant difference.
“Rupp’s assistant coach, Harry Lancaster, was kind of the enforcer. Anything physical was him. Coach Rupp was verbal. The difference between Coach Rupp and Coach Knight is that Coach Rupp could be in the huddle just giving you whatever, but not one fan would know it, where Coach Knight would not try to hide anything. Everybody in the gymnasium knew he was chewing out one of his players.”
The Wildcats made the NCAA tournament in Dampier’s junior year, when they advanced to the Final Four in 1966 at Cole Fieldhouse on the University of Maryland campus. Kentucky was ranked No. 1, Duke No. 2, and Texas Western November 3. Utah, unranked, was the other entrant.
Kentucky, dubbed affectionately “Rupp’s Runts” by the Wildcat fans because no starter was taller than 6-foot-5, defeated Duke, 83-79, and Texas Western (now Texas El Paso) beat Utah, 85-78. That set up one of the most historic NCAA championship matchups in history. Kentucky was all white, and Texas Western’s top eight players were black.
The Miners ended Rupp’s quest for a fifth NCAA title, 72-65. It was a “heartbreaking” loss, says Dampier, who added that Texas Western was “a good team.” What is more disconcerting to Dampier is that there was a lot of talk about Rupp being a racist.
“Rupp wasn’t racist,” Dampier said emphatically. “I don’t understand it myself. It’s just that Texas Western started all black players and we were an all-white team. It was historic in that a black team beat a white team to win the NCAA championship, but Coach Rupp never once made a statement or anything about race going into the game.
“I’ve had a lot of people call me on the anniversary of the game and interview me, and they never put what I say in the paper, because it isn’t what they want to hear. I got so confused I started asking the players that were on my team, ‘Did I miss something? Was there something said before the game, during, halftime, or anything about the racial factor involved?,’ and they said no.”
Dampier believes it was merely a game between two good college teams. “We had already beaten a Michigan team in the region final that I think started three or four black players. It wasn’t the first time we played against black players. To me it was the championship game and just another team.
Dampier’s decision to leave Indiana for Kentucky “turned out just great,” he says. He was all-Southeastern Conference three times, and All-America in 1967. As a junior and senior he was Academic All-America.
Cincinnati of the NBA drafted Dampier, but he would have had to try out for the team, so he opted to sign with the Colonels, who offered the 6-foot guard a contract. He played nine seasons with Kentucky, winning one title in 1975 by beating the Indiana Pacers, 4-1. When the ABA and NBA merged in 1976, Dampier had all-time red, white, and blue records for games played (728), minutes played (27,770), points (13,726), field goals made (5,290), field goals attempted (12,047), three-pointers made (794), three-pointers attempted (2,217), and assists (4,044)
Before the 1976-77 season began, Dampier called Bob Leonard, coach of the Indiana Pacers, but “he needed a big guy, so he wasn’t going to take me in the dispersal draft. I would have loved to go to Indiana. Fortunately, San Antonio drafted me, another ABA team.” He played three years with the Spurs. Dampier went to the New York Nets camp in 1979, but was cut on the final day of training camp.
“I had a nice career,” he said in a major understatement. After working for a time in sales, Dampier started his own audio and videotape company, Dampier Distributing. He sold it in 1998 when he took an assistant coaching job with the Denver Nuggets.
“The four years I had with the Nuggets was enough for me,” said Dampier. “There’s a lot of stress and pressure. The only thing I miss about it is the players. They’re great.”