The rest of Jonny Mac's favorite story

Doing my last post, and thinking about Jonny Mac's background as an Indiana basketball player, I was thinking about this anecdote Jonny Mac always brings up on Bucks telecasts whenever the name "Rick Mount" is mentioned. It has to do with a gymnasium encounter Jonny Mac had with Mount, I'm guessing sometime in the 1960's. I've heard him tell it many times, but now I think I know the rest of the story.

Rick Mount was one of these walking cliches, a glorified Indiana schoolboy whose legend far exceeded his skills. He was a great shooter, apparently, but slow and otherwise one-dimensional. Probably like the "picket fence" kid (remember Jimmy Chitwood?) in the movie Hoosiers. One of those high school guys who got his picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated before he ever really did anything. A contemporary equivalent would be Damon Bailey. And like Bailey, Mount had a celebrated college career at Purdue, but never really amounted to much in the pros, having an inglorious stint in the ABA which was cut short by injuries.

Anyway, here's how the story goes, as told by Jonny Mac. Mount called Jonny Mac up one day and asked him if he wanted "to work out" with him at some Indiana gym. Then, when Jonny Mac showed up expecting an informal shoot-around, he found the gym was packed with reporters. Upon his arrival, Mount summarily challenged Mr. Bucks to a game of 'one-on-one' in front of the reporters. Jonny Mac never really says what happened after that, he just always says with a slight hint of animosity that, "Well, we really went at it that day."

I never could figure out why he seemed a little bitter about the whole thing. Not knowing much else except that the two were both Indiana boys, I assumed they were contemporaries. You know, two guys of about the same age and stature coming up, challenging each other's skills as comtemporaries might do. Now I think I know why Jonny Mac has such an edge when he tells the story.

Doing a bit of research on Wikipedia, it turns out the two weren't contemporaries at all. Mount was a high school phenom on the cover of SI in 1966. He didn't begin his college career until 1967. Jonny Mac was in the pros at that time, having been drafted by the old Cincinnati Royals in 1965. Knowing that, the whole tenor of the encounter changes. What seems to have happened is, this young punk was laying for our boy. He wanted to take down established NBAer Jonny Mac in front of an audience of reporters. In other words, he completely sandbagged him. He obviously was looking to enhance the Rick Mount legend by adding a pro's name to his collection of pelts.

And I'll bet Mount asked him to workout with a sort of "Gee, Jon, it would be great if I could shoot around with a pro like you" approach (his SI cover picture makes him look like that kind of a smarmy little mf'er). And, I'll further bet that when Jonny Mac saw the gym full of reporters his first thought was "You overhyped little piece of shit! You set me up! My window of opportunity (nod to 'crkone') to crush you is wide open."

Think about it. They were both similar players with very similar backgrounds, but Jonny Mac was a pro whose skills (one has to assume from the record) were always superior to Mount's. Yet Mount was this icon of Indiana basketball whereas Jonny Mac was grinding it out anonymously against the big boys of the NBA. So Jonny Mac must have been predisposed to dislike this kid. And being of Scotch-Irish blood, Jonny Mac must have absolutely went for the kill when he saw the way the kid had set him up.

I'll bet he took Mount apart limb by limb that day. Just destroyed him, and probably administered a little NBA style hurtin to him in the process. After all, Jonny Mac was clearly the better, older, more experienced player, and, anyway, why else would he repeat the tale so often and with such alacrity? Yes sir, it was Jonny Mac who got the pelt for his wall that day.

Moral of the story: You don't mess with Mr. Milwaukee Bucks.