RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesDear Uncle Mel,
My mom told me that you are in the hospital. I hope you feel better. I will be coming to Indy in a couple of weeks. I hope I see you so I can give you a big hug. If you feel better, I can come to see your horses. I'm starting basketball back up. I hope you get to see me play someday.
Love Hudson
• • •
On a stage full of basketball royalty, 8-year-old Hudson Mayes stood behind a podium and began to speak.
With hundreds of fans, family and well-wishers staring back at him from the seats in a basketball arena in downtown Indianapolis, the young man in a gray suit read a letter he had written a few weeks earlier when he was told “Uncle Mel” had fallen ill.
On this day — Nov. 5, 2015 — the arena that serves as home to the NBA’s Indiana Pacers was the site of a memorial service for Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Mel Daniels, the gentle giant of a man who, after becoming an All-American forward with the University of New Mexico Lobos in the 1960s, helped lead the Pacers to three American Basketball Association championships.
“I asked (Hudson) to read that letter he had written when Mel got sick,” said Cecilia “CeCe” Daniels, the wife of Mel Daniels and a UNM graduate herself. “He was a little kid, but he was very poised.”
Mel Daniels was a dear friend and former Pacers teammate with the boy’s grandfather, Roger Brown. Both men are in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, have had their jerseys retired by the Pacers and are considered among the best players of their era, if not any era.
Brown died in 1997 at the age of 54, long before Mayes was born. Daniels stayed close with his friend’s family, including the grandson Brown never knew.
CeCe Daniels felt her husband’s memorial just wouldn’t be right without someone from Brown’s family being a part of it.
“Gayle (Hudson’s mom) was a nervous wreck, I remember,” CeCe Daniels said with a light chuckle. “But he did really well.”
Just last week, CeCe Daniels learned that Mayes — that poised 8-year-old boy — is now a Lobo basketball player himself, about to play in the same iconic arena where her husband played — in fact, Mel Daniels played in the first-ever game in the Pit 60 years ago this December.
“Oh my God, it’s perfect,” said the 80-year-old CeCe Daniels. “Really, I think this is just so perfect.”
A ‘hot mess’ together
Mel Daniels is, to many, the greatest Lobo. But to the basketball world beyond the Land of Enchantment, his legend grew once he and Roger Brown teamed up to lead the ABA’s Indiana Pacers in 1968.
The two hit it off as friends immediately.
“Oh those two were a hot mess together,” laughed Jeannie Brown, Roger’s wife and Mayes’ grandmother. “One of my favorite things was when the Pacers would be 20 points ahead, and they’d take Roger and Mel out and put them on the bench. Those two would have to cover their faces with towels when they were laughing and talking.”
As chronicled in the 2013 documentary “Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story,” Daniels’ new teammate wasn’t just a good player — he was one of the greatest ever.
As a freshman at the University of Dayton in 1960 — before the NCAA allowed freshmen to play on the varsity team — Brown and fellow New York high school star Connie Hawkins were banned from playing in college and the NBA when it was said they were associated with a known gambler back in New York, though neither was accused of gambling (the NBA later acknowledged neither should have been banned).
It wasn’t until 1967 — after working years at General Motors and playing for nonprofessional regional teams — that Brown got a chance to play in the ABA. The following year, he met and teamed up with Daniels.
“The Pacers were the class of the league. And Roger was the class of the class,” Julius Erving said about Roger Brown in the documentary.
Looking over them
After Brown died in 1997, the families remained close.
Gayle, Roger’s daughter, recalled having a discussion with her then-fiancé Derrick Mayes ahead of their wedding.
“When we were getting married, Derrick and I talked about it a while, and then it was just so natural,” she said. “Uncle Mel will walk me down the aisle.”
And he did.
Years later, young Hudson came along and got to know and love Uncle Mel.
But that wasn’t what brought him to UNM.
UNM men’s basketball coach Eric Olen, then coaching UC San Diego, tried recruiting the 6-foot-5 Mayes out of high school in Los Angeles.
“Our ideal recruiting class for that season — what we were really hoping to do was have Uriah (Tenette), Jake (Hall) and Hudson,” Olen said.
Instead, Mayes committed to Central Michigan before a coaching change there led him back to UC San Diego. But by then, Olen had accepted the UNM job and Tenette and Hall followed and were star freshmen last season for the Lobos.
After a strong freshman season at UCSD, Mayes decided to transfer.
He took a recruiting visit to UNM — one that went so well that Mayes and his parents told Olen on the spot that he wanted to be a Lobo.
And then something happened.
“We walked out from the office where Huddy (had just committed) and I looked up and I kind of said, ‘Oh my God, Uncle Mel went here,’” Gayle Brown-Mayes recalls.
In the lobby just outside the men’s basketball offices is a large mural of Lobo greats — Daniels included.
“That was the first time it hit me. I just felt at that moment, I was like, ah, he’s looking down,” she said.
Carrying a legacy
While the connections — be it coincidence or fate — that drove Hudson Mayes to UNM certainly make for an interesting story, Gayle Brown-Mayes doesn’t want them to become a burden on the young man who has already spent a lifetime knowing he is the grandson of a basketball Hall of Famer.
“I know he carries that weight of legacy,” she said. “But it did not come from us. Derrick and I were always very purposeful and mindful that he is the driver of his own destiny.”
Hudson says he is embracing the opportunity this year to honor his grandfather, who never g...
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