Dying at 48, former Pacers photographer wants to live long enough to see NBA title
INDIANAPOLIS -- Matt Dial stepped onto the court of Gainbridge Fieldhouse, raised a camera to his face, squinted his left eye and, through the lens, saw the blue and gold glory that used to flash in front of him as he photographed the Indiana Pacers.
This night would be, without a medical miracle, the last time Dial walked into the hallowed halls of the arena he has always loved so much. His friends and an army of people came together last week to give Dial a chance to make one last, beautiful Pacers memory with his family at Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
The man they saw in the photos, taken as the Pacers clinched a spot in the NBA Finals, made them smile. And those photos made them cry, too.
Dial is 30 pounds lighter than he was just weeks ago. The nutrition he puts into his body isn't helping. Instead, it's feeding his terminal colon cancer. He has stopped chemotherapy and hospice has come into his home to make him as comfortable as they can. Much of the time, Dial is sleeping.
But somehow, some way, Dial felt well enough to make the trip from his Zionsville home to Gainbridge last week for that historic, electric Game 6.
And everyone who knows Dial, a kind, wickedly smart, self-proclaimed technology nerd, lover of the Pacers and even moreso lover of his family and friends, are hoping fiercely that Dial lives long enough to see his beloved Pacers win an NBA title for the first time in history. Even if it is from a hospital bed.
Dial, 48, has had time to come to terms with the hand he's been dealt, a diagnosis that came in February 2023 when doctors said his cancer was Stage 4 and gave him two years to live.
He's gotten two years and four months to come to terms with it. Dial has planned everything out for his family, down to making sure his youngest son, 15-year-old Aaron, knows how to mow the yard and trim the weeds after he's gone. He recruited his good friend Todd Parrish to give Aaron driving lessons. He bought a guitar so he could learn to play with his oldest son, Noah.
He traded his BMW for a Tesla -- even though he is a BMW fanatic who was president of the local club until he couldn't be anymore -- so that his wife, Shelley, wouldn't have a car payment after he's gone.
"He's been spending the last two years setting up their life," said Parrish, "knowing that eventually it's going to get him."
And so Dial is realistic, if not the eternal optimist he has always been. His friend Marc Lebryk says Dial would love to live long enough to take Shelley on one last, romantic, fabulous trip to see the Backstreet Boys in Las Vegas at The Sphere in July. He has the tickets, though no one is sure he would be able to make that trip.
If not that, Dial wants to live long enough to see the Pacers win a title.
"I was going to cry anyway (if they won it), but I would cry even more because, you know, he's been waiting for this. And he might not see another run," said Dial's son, Noah, 25. "When we get through this and we win the championship, it's going be a memory I'll always cherish."
A memory, Noah says, that may be about basketball. But it is so much more.
From the time Noah was tiny, he heard the magical stories from his dad who had a literal front row, on-court spot for the Indiana Pacers as a photographer for the Indianapolis Star.
But Dial was one of those photographers who had a hard time hiding his team loyalty, said his former boss at IndyStar, Mike Fender.
"If it was Colts or Pacers, he would drop anything to be involved with a project, and he was always rooting for the Pacers or rooting for the Colts and we're trying to be kind of neutral on the sidelines," said Fender, who calls Dial a "MacGyver" of the digital era of photography. "But being able to shoot, it got him an inside seat to a lot of big games."
Once home from those games, Dial couldn't stop talking about his teams, especially the Pacers.
"He was always shooting games and editing photos," said Noah. "He always talks about a lot of the legendary moments he's gotten to see."
Like the wonderful ones. Dial was there for Reggie Miller's retirement ceremony in April 2005 and captured an emotional photo of Miller embracing his sister, Cheryl Miller, on court.
And the awful ones (for a Pacers fan). Dial was there for Game 2 of the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals when the Pistons' Tayshaun Prince blocked Miller's shot in what has been called one of the greatest defensive moves in playoff history.
"But he found time and he got to take me to my first game," Noah said. "From that point on, we had a lot of teams that weren't always the best, but it was important to keep rooting." Rooting for the Pacers, that has always been Noah and his dad's thing.
If only his dad were really here to enjoy what is happening with the Pacers now, up 1-0 in the Finals after stealing Game 1 in Oklahoma City. Screaming and yelling at the television, wearing his favorite jersey.
It was February 2023 when doctors finally discovered the reason Dial had been losing so much weight without trying, why his appetite wasn't its usual robust self, going for Mexican food anytime he could get it. He had a cecal mass that had spread to his abdominal lymph nodes and his liver.
Noah was on a work trip at the time, and Dial and Shelley didn't want to tell him while he was away, so they waited until he got home. That was Feb. 14.
"It was kind of a rough day, of course. Valentine's Day isn't really a good day for me because of that. It's just a ... it's a hard memory," Noah said, "when I learned about it and it turned out that it was Stage 4 cancer."
That's why Game 6 "was one of the greatest nights of my life," Noah said. Parrish worked around the clock to secure tickets. Dial's current employer, IU Health, where he works in visual media, offered the entire family seats in their suite.
For Dial, it was more than he could have ever dreamed of.
When Dial was first diagnosed, he started planning trips with his family to make memories. Not fancy trips. Better than that. Trips to Tennessee to see the mountains and one to Branson, Missouri, known as "the live entertainment capital of the world," because of all those shows and theaters.
But, in the past year, the pain from the cancer and everything that treatments have done to his body, has become at times unbearable.
"He's not able to travel as much, and that's why this game was so important," said Noah. "Because I never thought I'd get that chance to go with him again."
Dial's love of the Pacers comes honestly. He grew up in Indianapolis an avid sports fan, so any team that belonged to Indiana was his team, too. But Dial wasn't your typical jock. He was brilliant.
Sam Riche was watching Game 1 of the Finals on Thursday when an analyst called the Pacers the "ultimate problem solvers." Riche, who is Dial's boss at IU Health, immediately thought of him.
"He is the most Incredible problem solver I think I've met. If you put a problem before him, he can solve it," Riche said. "And he is relentless in pursuit of solving it."
The first live stream for Gannett, which owns newspapers across the country, was on IndyStar.com because of Dial. Riche, who worked for IndyStar at the time, was on his way to Bloomington to film and photograph IU basketball coach Kelvin Sampson getting fired at a press conference.
"And on my way, Matt called me and says, 'Hey, I think I figured out how to live stream this. Let's see if we can make it work,'" said Riche. "And we did."
Dial's best childhood friend, Dave Galante, has witnessed the genius of Dial for decades.
As a student at Fulton Junior High, Dial signed up for a Latin class. No one took Latin unless they wanted to be in misery. That's where Galante first met Dial. They bonded over their love of technology and tennis and then headed off to Ben Davis together.
In high school in the early 1990s, Dial became a bit obsessed with hip hop and rap. He was always at Karma Records buying up the latest cassette decks to jam in his car. He was especially enamored with the duo Kid n' Play and, one day, Dial decided he wanted hair like band member Christopher Reid.
"He wanted like a cube, kind of like frizzy hair look, and so he got a perm," Galante said, laughing at the memory.
Galante, Dial and their friend group, which included Kyle Jones, Jeremy Klinger and Peter Chen, were always hanging out. Galante didn't know much about basketball until he met Dial, who was deep into the Miller era of the Pacers, their 1990s runs to the playoffs and their hatred of the New York Knicks.
Jones happened to have a basketball court in his backyard, and Dial was always trying to dunk. One day, much to the elation and shock of his friends, he did. He actually, truly dunked on what Galante is pretty sure was a regulation goal.
Through the years, that group of friends remained close and kept a group chat going. Not long before Dial's diagnosis, when they were all hitting birthday No. 45, they started talking about getting their colonoscopies.
"That's what you do when you're 45," Galante said. "And we were just all saying, 'We're really busy and we don't want to do this, but we kind of have to.'"
Dial chimed in. He was going to get his colonoscopy soon, he told them, but hadn't been feeling well. He was having digestive issues.
"And, unfortunately, the colon cancer actually started to take root," said Galante, "before he was even able to get a screening."
In true Dial fashion, the problem solver extraordinaire, he dove into the subject of Stage 4 colon cancer. It was not a subject he wanted to be a part of, but he was. He reached out to oncologists around the country, connecting them with his IU Health doctors.
Shelley and he started documenting his journey on a CaringBridge page, simply titled "Stage IV at 46." The posts are raw and real. But they are also full of hope. And the Dials had a lot of hope, until recently.
"Matt tried to have chemo again, but his body is just too weak to handle it. He has what is called cancer cachexia, which is a kind of wasting away that happens when the cancer takes over your metabolism," Shelley wrote on May 25. "He has lost weight very rapidly and has no appetite. From what the oncologist has told us, it doesn't matter if he eats; he is not nourishing his body, just feeding the cancer.
"He feels there is a very short time left."
Parrish immediately knew what he had to do. He had to get Dial inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse to see his Pacers one more time.
On May 26, Parrish put a callout for help in a Facebook message to Dial's friends and former coworkers at IndyStar. "Matt Dial is in the last throes of his battle with cancer. He's literally on days, maybe weeks of life," Parrish wrote. "I am reaching out as I have been trying to get him to a Pacers game in a suite. Matt is an enormous Pacers fan and had been going to the games until he could no more. I want to give my good friend and his wife a great, last memory."
Parrish, who worked for years with Dial at IndyStar and IU Health, could tell he was going downhill. Then one night, not long ago, Dial told him, "There's not much time left."
"It really had a huge impact because we had been going along for about two years, and we could see the changes in him but, at the same time, it was one of those, 'Maybe we got a couple of months, maybe we can stretch it out a year,'" said Parrish. "But that night, he made it well known. And that really upset us a ton. I couldn't get it out of my head."
How it all came to be that Dial was sitting in an IU Health suite for Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals on May 31, watching the Pacers secure a spot for the first time in 25 years to the NBA Finals, was a series of twists, turns, dozens of good-hearted people and a bit of good fortune.
"We all think the world of Matt," IU Health's Monique Haboush told Parrish, "and this has been a labor of love."
With the help of Parrish, friends, IU Health and the Pacers, the Dial family was picked up and driven to the fieldhouse so they could access the VIP entrance directly to the suites.
The family was taken down to the floor tp watch warm ups. They saw Miller, Shaquille O'Neal and Ernie Johnson from TNT, who came over and introduced himself. Matt Kryger, the Pacers photographer, had Obi Toppin come over for a photo with Dial, who had been given a signed Toppin jersey to wear for the game.
It was a magical night.
After Game 6, for the next two days, Dial slept. He was tired, Shelley said, and he was sore. "But the memories," she wrote, "are worth it."
"Matt is such a good guy, and he deserves all the attention he can get. He's put up a huge fight for this thing," said Fender. "I think we all were hopeful that, and we still are, we're hopeful for a miracle."
But if not for that miracle, they're hopeful that the Pacers can win their first championship ring, sooner rather than later.
With Dial watching.
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