Doyel: Purdue reunion? With Rick Mount, it's complicated

Purdue wants Rick Mount back in the family, but it’s complicated. He’s complicated. I have a personal story about that to share in a minute, but for now the story is this:

Purdue is pursuing Mount, trying harder than ever to embrace its all-time leading scorer, its prodigal son.

But Rick Mount doesn’t reach back. It’s not his way. He’s unbelievable with strangers, so kind and giving that it melts your heart — examples are coming — but he’s not always so magnetic with the larger forces in his basketball life.

Mount isn’t on the best of terms with a handful of folks within the athletic department at Lebanon High School, where he scored 2,595 points from 1962-66. Mount is estranged from Purdue, where he scored 2,323 points. And his strained relationship with former Indiana Pacers ABA coach Slick Leonard — the NBA team’s longtime radio broadcaster — has created a crevice between Mount and that team as well.

Who’s to blame? Not for me to say. But those are facts, and when I asked Mount on Wednesday why he hasn’t been back to Purdue in years — neither he nor Purdue would tell me exactly how many years it has been — he avoided the issue.

“I’m more of a participant than a watcher,” is all he said about his estrangement from Purdue.

Purdue is now bribing him — in the best possible way — with a Rick Mount bobblehead night. Purdue senior associate athletics director Tom Schott told me Thursday the school plans the giveaway for an undetermined game this season.

Purdue has given away bobbleheads for at least three other school basketball legends — Joe Barry Carroll and Glenn Robinson two years ago; John Wooden last season — but never for Mount, the most enduring basketball player in the history of one heck of a basketball school. And he’s the fourth Boilermaker to get a bobblehead? Tells you something.

So does this:

It’s the response I got from Schott, after asking him in an email to describe the “prickly” relationship between Purdue and its all-time scoring leader:

“Rick Mount wrote a huge chapter in our storied history, and we would like nothing more than to have him back in Mackey Arena to recognize his contributions to the program. We have reached out to him and his family on multiple occasions and will continue to do so, in hopes of finding a date for what will prove to be one of the longest and loudest ovations ever in Mackey Arena.”

You catch all that? Purdue has been trying for years to get back in Mount’s good graces, trying the front door (Mount) and even some side doors (family). For naught.

But the final line is my favorite:

One of the longest and loudest ovations ever in Mackey Arena.

That’s what Schott predicts would happen the next time Rick Mount graces the floor of Mackey Arena, where he averaged 35.4 points per game as a senior. And he’s right. It will be — well, let’s just say it “would” be. The verb “will” assumes it will happen, and Rick Mount defies assumptions.

Take my story. Literally, the one I wrote on July 8, after spending weeks visiting Mount’s old Lebanon shooting haunts — hoping for a glimpse of one of the greatest shooters in basketball history. On my third trip to Lebanon I finally walked up his driveway and was confronted by Mount in the flesh, coming out a door, wondering who the hell I was and what the hell I wanted.

“I just want to watch you shoot,” I said.

And he softened. Smiled. Said he’d shoot with me, give me pointers. Here’s my number, he said; call back in a few weeks. I did. Called a few days ago. Called twice, in fact.

The first call went OK. Mount’s wife said Rick wasn’t there, and could she take a message?

Here’s my name, I said, and I’m calling about …

“Oh, I know what it’s about,” Donna Mount told me. “You’ve been famous around here.”

I say: Is that good or bad?

“No, it’s good,” she said, laughing. “Everyone asks me about you: Has he come back to your house yet to shoot?”

I shout happily: That’s what I’m calling to set up!

She tells me to call back in two days, and this time Rick answers. I tell him no rush, but I’m ready to shoot when he has the time.

“No,” Rick Mount tells me, “I don’t think we’ll do that.”

And listen — it’s fine. I didn’t argue with him. What am I going to say? I thanked him for being so gracious with me a few weeks earlier on his driveway. He suggested we talk in May so I could promote his shooting camp. Sounds good, I said, but in May I’d like to ask about some other things as well.

“What other things?” he said.

Well, I told him, you seem to have issues with lots of places in your past. Lebanon High, Purdue, Slick Leonard and the Pacers. I’m not saying that’s your fault. But it’s there, and I’d like to talk about that as well as your camps.

“No,” Rick Mount said, “we don’t need to get into all that.”

And I said: But what’s with the separation between you and Purdue?

“I’m more of a participant than a watcher,” he said.

And then he said, “OK, bye.”

And again, it’s fine. This is not napalm you’re reading. (The Tom Brady column earlier this week was.) This is an explanation for all the readers who have emailed to ask when Mount was going to shoot with me.

And the answer: He’s not. Which is fine, truly. Near as I can tell, Mount is at his best with strangers. Read the story I wrote one day after I went “searching for Rick Mount.” Reader after reader — stranger after stranger, as far as Mount is concerned — told the same version of different stories: Chance meetings with Mount. The graciousness shown by Mount. The time he gave them. Over and over.

That’s who Rick Mount is, giving and gracious. His fractured relations with some teams from his past? That’s also who he is. Like I say, he’s complicated.

Purdue is trying to fix it. Whatever’s wrong, whoever’s fault, doesn’t matter. Come home, Rick. That’s what Purdue is saying with the bobblehead they’re giving away this season in his honor.

Come home, Rocket.

But when I imagine Rick Mount’s response, I hear him telling Purdue what he told me:

“No, I don’t think we’ll do that.”

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel