McGinnis would eventually sprout to 6 feet 8 inches, be nicknamed Hercules for his size and physique and play for Indiana University and then the Indiana Pacers of the A.B.A. But as a 13-year-old, he waited in the crowd.
Douglass was one of a handful of recreational centers where Indianapolis's top talent congregated: the best high school ballers, the area's college players and the local legends who became Pacers and brought their teammates with them to play.
McGinnis said he could not remember how the tradition started, how the top players in the area coordinated where they played each night, rotating to one another's neighborhoods, spreading the word.
"It was just a way of life," he said of simpler times, before the popularization of Amateur Athletic Union teams. "It was what every basketball player did, especially in the summertime."
It was what Mike Woodson did, too, as a high school standout in Indianapolis. Nearly a decade younger than McGinnis, he likewise showed up at Douglass as he moved into his teenage years. Now the coach of the Knicks and back in Indianapolis on Tuesday for a game against the Pacers, he was asked what he remembered about those days.
"That's where I grew up," he said. "Great basketball is all I can tell you."
"In my early days, my freshman and sophomore year, I had to wait because I wasn't physically fit to play at that level," he added. "But by the time I became a junior and senior, I was on the floor playing. So that I think helped really develop my game at an early age."
McGinnis said he learned at Douglass by watching two former New Mexico Lobos — Richard Ellis, who was called Boo, and Mel Daniels, who won two A.B.A. M.V.P. awards with the Pacers before McGinnis joined the team. He savored the few times Oscar Robertson, who also grew up in Indianapolis, came to watch.
Standing in the crowd, McGinnis knew that one unwritten, meritocratic rule gave him hope: when he was old enough, if he was good enough, he would play.
It was not until four years later that McGinnis arrived. Each summer ended with the Dust Bowl citywide tournament, held for anyone who had graduated from high school and named after the dirt court near Lockefield Gardens, the city's first public housing complex, where the tournament was held.
Rich in history, the court had since been paved, and rumor had it that Robertson would play on the blacktop until the Lockefield residents ran him off at 1 a.m.
After his senior year at Washington High School, where he was the state's Mr. Basketball, McGinnis was playing in his first Dust Bowl — a round-robin, two-day tournament in August — when he went up against Ellis, who was known for his physical play.
"He wouldn't be opposed to giving a little elbow here and there, just to see what you were made of," McGinnis said of Ellis. "He hit me a couple of times, and I backed off because I didn't know how to deal with it."
Someone told McGinnis: "He plays dirty with everybody. Don't play mad, just get good."
And in the rematch, McGinnis dictated the matchup.
By the 1970s, when he went back to the Douglass gym as a Pacer but before he shared the 1974-75 M.V.P. award with Erving, McGinnis had become a city legend.
As tradition went, when McGinnis and Daniels showed up — and brought their Pacers teammates — they had the court first. The Pacers would split up and fill out the teams with other players in the gym. After that, other players would assemble their teams in impromptu fashion.
"There was always someone who would be out there challenging you, especially if you were a headline guy," McGinnis said. "When the Pacers were playing, they got the most heck because guys wanted to get a good reputation off of playing well against you."
Wayne Radford, who in 1973 led the city in scoring while in high school and still had to watch from the sideline at Douglass, said the easygoing McGinnis played for fun until someone fouled him too hard. Then he became upset. "Once he got mad, he realized everyone else was like a fly — there was nothing you could do," Radford said.
Some challengers picked their friends but usually lost. Some picked the loudest trash talkers, who could not always back up their words. Some would come and not play all night.
Waiting in the crowd, watching McGinnis and devising a plan, were Woodson and his Broad Ripple High School teammate Jerry Cox.
"What you do is, when a guy has next and is getting ready to pick his five, you mob him: 'Hey, man, pick me! Pick me!' You had to sell yourself," Cox said. "And once you got a chance, you had to play to sell yourself. And if you didn't perform, you didn't get another shot at it."
By Woodson's sophomore year, at 16, he had a reputation. They called him Stick Man, for his physique, but the Pacers players in the gym respected his team-oriented game. Woodson was not the best one-on-one player, but his jump shot was smooth and his play unselfish.
Word spread. The pickup games had attracted such talent that reputations could be built or tarnished in a single night. The games offered the chance to become basketball royalty, or at least to witness it.
Woodson's high school teammate Jess Stump, a self-described average player, barely was picked on those summer nights. But in one instance, his best friend called, inviting him to an exclusive pickup game. His friend's brother, who played at Butler, was a good friend of McGinnis. And he knew McGinnis would be playing.
Stump had just had a front tooth knocked out in gym class, but he did not think twice.
"I go over there and, sure enough, I get an elbow and knock my tooth out again," Stump said. "I went in the bathroom, implanted it myself, and no one knew the difference. I wasn't going to miss the chance to play with McGinnis."
Howard Beck contributed reporting from Indianapolis.
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