Indianapolis

Lore & Background

The Pacers arrived in Indianapolis in 1970 as the New Orleans Buccaneers, and within a single season they captured the ABA title—a lightning bolt of success that gave the city its first real basketball identity. When the ABA-NBA merger folded the league in 1976, the Pacers carried that Hoosier pride into the NBA, and the old Convention Center became a cramped, smoky cathedral where fans pressed against the glass to watch the team try to make the Finals a regular occurrence. The 1999 opening of the new Fieldhouse was a coming-of-age moment. The building was bigger, louder, and more modern, and it gave the fan base a sense of permanence. That era belonged to Reggie Miller—five consecutive All-Star selections, the 8-in-9-seconds miracle against New York in the 1994 playoffs, the five three-pointers in a single playoff game in 1995. The red seats, the hardwood, the echo of the crowd surging on every fast break—these became the sensory signature of Pacers basketball. The rivalry with the New York Knicks, the deep respect for the Chicago Bulls, the shared Midwestern grit with the Detroit Pistons—these threads wove the Fieldhouse into the broader NBA tapestry. But locally, it is something simpler and more sacred: the place where a kid from Carmel or a grandmother from Fort Wayne can stand in the upper deck, chest out, and say with absolute conviction, 'This is our building, and we will not be quiet.'

In Their Own Story

The arena is still humming. You can feel it in the soles of your shoes, a low vibration from the PA system cycling through the pre-game montage. The smell is specific—warm hardwood polish, the faint sweetness of concession-stand popcorn drifting up from the lower bowl, and underneath it all, the clean metallic tang of the court being wiped down for the fourth time that evening. A ball boy in a red warmup jacket bounces a game ball near the baseline, the thud-thud-thud echoing off the upper deck where a few hundred fans are already in their seats, clapping in unison to no particular rhythm, just to feel the sound fill the space. On the court, the Pacers' logo is a red and white target, and the hardwood gleams under the lights like it's been lacquered a second time. Somewhere in row 23, a kid in a size-too-big Miller jersey is pressing his face against the glass, watching the players do their pre-game stretches, and his mother is filming it on her phone, narrating to the camera like it's the most important thing she's ever recorded. The arena breathes. The city breathes with it. And in a few minutes, the lights will dim, the crowd will rise, and the Pace will start again.

Reader's Guide

You can smell it before you see it. That mix of fresh hardwood varnish and the faint, sweet ghost of a thousand games' worth of sweat and popcorn. The moment you step through the glass doors on the west side, the floor is already humming under your shoes—low, steady, like a held breath. I remember my first game here, 1999, the opening season. The seats were still too clean, the paint on the railings barely dry. I was nineteen, standing in the lower bowl, and when the first tip-off echoed off the rafters, the sound just *bounced* back at you, bigger than you expected. That's the thing about this building. It doesn't absorb. It gives it back. Every snap of the ball, every squeak of a shoe on the paint, every roar when a three drops—it all comes back to you, layered, almost orchestral. The red seats are not decorative. They are a statement. You sit in them and you are part of the color, part of the block. I've felt it in my chest. You don't watch a Pacers game from the Fieldhouse. You are *in* it. The air gets thick, the PA announcer's voice cracks on the player introductions, and the smell of the court—warm, resinous, almost like a gym in a small-town high school, but scaled to a cathedral—grounds you in the fact that this is where we play. This is where we've always played, in this city, in this building, in these seats. And nobody gets to tell us otherwise.

Did You Know?

• The Pacers won the ABA championship in 1970, their first season in Indianapolis after relocating from New Orleans, giving the city an instant basketball identity before the ABA-NBA merger.
• Reggie Miller's 8 points in 9 seconds against the New York Knicks in the 1994 playoffs is one of the most iconic clutch performances in NBA history and remains a defining memory for every Pacers fan who was in the buildi
• The arena has carried at least three different corporate names—Conseco Fieldhouse, Bankers Life Fieldhouse, and Gainbridge Fieldhouse—yet longtime fans in Indianapolis still simply call it 'the Fieldhouse.'