20 Second Timeout

NBA Belatedly Provides Limited Benefits to Retired ABA Players

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) jointly announced that the two organizations will partner to fund payments to approximately 115 retired ABA players who are not currently receiving any pension payments from the NBA. The program will provide an annual payment of  approximately $3828 for each year of service; for example, a player who played five ABA seasons would receive $19,140 per year. The payments are designated as "recognition payments" and not as pensions, no doubt for legal reasons as the NBA does not want to connect these payments in any way with their pension plan.

The Dropping Dimes Foundation deserves credit for pressuring the NBA until the league felt so ashamed about neglecting its legal and moral obligation to retired ABA players that it had to do something. Scott Tarter, the CEO and founder of Dropping Dimes, said after the announcement, "It's an incredible day for former ABA players, one that we and the players have been hoping for and working so hard toward for many years." Hall of Famer Mel Daniels, who passed away in 2015, was a major supporter of Dropping Dimes. Tarter noted, "Too bad Mel is not here to see this in person. This was his idea all along, saying, 'We've got to do something for these guys.'"

I am happy that the retired ABA players will--belatedly--at least receive something from the NBA other than excuses and neglect, and I acknowledge that even this relatively small amount of money may indeed be life-changing (as some have described it) for retired players who are in dire financial straits, but it must be emphasized that the ABA-NBA merger took place in 1976, so this payment plan is 46 years overdue and contains no provisions for makeup payments. Further, many retired ABA players have passed away, and their family members will not receive a penny, even though those players should have been receiving pension money (or "recognition payments") for many years, if not decades.

Also, let's place the "recognition payments" in context. The plan will cost the NBA and NBPA $24.5 million, but the NBA is a multi-billion dollar per year business, which means that $24.5 million is the NBA equivalent of spare change found in between couch cushions. The value of NBA franchises has soared since the ABA-NBA merger thanks not only to the brilliance of great players including but not limited to Julius Erving, Moses Malone, George Gervin, Artis Gilmore, David Thompson, Dan Issel, and Bobby Jones, but also because of the adoption of ideas either created by and/or popularized by the ABA, including the three point shot rule and the Slam Dunk Contest. 

The ABA's impact is not acknowledged and recognized by the NBA and its media partners, as I noted in The Legacy of the ABA:

The ABA developed and nurtured many of the players who became the NBA's marquee stars in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Hall of Famers Julius Erving, Moses Malone, George Gervin, David Thompson and Dan Issel. The scintillating Erving had an excellent NBA career but those who saw him in his ABA days got a special treat. Mike Gale, a two-time ABA All-Defensive Team guard who played with Erving on the 1974 ABA champion New York Nets and later played against him in both leagues, says, "Doc was an awesome player. Because of the way the ABA was at that time (not having a national TV contract), most of America did not get to see him in what we would call his prime. Some of the moves that he made, you will never see again. It was amazing to see his work ethic. After practice, we'd be out there playing and shooting. He just loved the game. He'd try to think of things that were out of the ordinary and not done the regular way. It was a sight to see. We sat back (as teammates) and would say, 'How'd he do that?'"

The ABA changed the way that basketball is played and the way that it is packaged and presented. The ABA did not introduce the three point shot--it had been previously used in the ABL and some college teams had experimented with it decades earlier--but the ABA popularized it. The rivalry between the leagues was so bitter that the NBA could not bring itself to start using the three point shot until four years after the merger. College basketball began using the three point shot a few years later. It is impossible to imagine basketball at any level today without the three point line. March Madness would not be the same without the possibility of an underdog team getting hot from three point range and knocking off a blue chip school.

The ABA wrapped a concert and a Slam Dunk contest around the 1976 ABA All-Star Game, essentially creating the concept that has morphed into what is now known as All-Star Weekend. The NBA scoffed at that idea for years before finally embracing it in 1984. The ABA's influence can even be felt in the box score. Steals, blocked shots, turnovers (the ABA called them "errors") and offensive rebounds are statistics that were first tracked by ABA scorekeepers before the NBA decided to make them part of the game's official numerical language. Ironically, while the NBA adopted these categories for its own use it stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the statistics compiled by ABA players. The NFL recognizes that the AFL’s Joe Namath was the first pro quarterback to pass for 4000 yards in a season but the NBA acts as if the 11,662 ABA points scored by Namath's New York contemporary Julius Erving do not exist. The careers of great ABA players like Roger Brown and Mel Daniels exist in a statistical netherworld; sometimes, they are mentioned in articles or on TV but often their accomplishments are completely disregarded.

The NBA's stubborn refusal to officially count ABA statistics is as foolish as it is petty. The NFL had a fierce rivalry with the AFL, but after the AFL-NFL merger the NFL as a league as well as the NFL's individual teams included AFL statistics in the sport's official records. Contrast the NFL's sensible approach to this issue with the NBA pretending that most of Julius Erving's 40 point games never happened or that Kyrie Irving holds the Nets' single game scoring record that actually is still held by Julius Erving. The NBA wants you to believe that Erving is the 74th leading scorer all-time with 18,364 NBA regular season points instead of accepting the reality that Erving is the eighth leading scorer in pro basketball history with 30,026 regular season points. Younger fans who think that they know who is the greatest forward of all-time may be surprised to know that Erving is the first non-center in pro basketball history who scored at least 30,000 career points, and that he retired as the third leading scorer in pro basketball history behind only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain.

Despite the ABA's immense cultural and historical impact, the "recognition payments" for ABA players pale in comparison to what is received by retired NBA players via the NBA's pension plan. The NBA's pension plan for players who retired post-1965 currently pays out more than $800 per month for each year of service. A 62 year old retired NBA player who played at least 10 seasons receives an NBA-funded pension of $215,000 per year, and the minimum that a 62 year old retired NBA player who played just three seasons receives is an NBA-funded pension of $56,988 per year. As mentioned above, the NBA's belated "recognition" of retired ABA players is coming in the form and amount of money that the NBA found in between couch cushions.

The "recognition payments" are a small first step, but if the NBA is serious about acknowledging its debts--financial and historical--to retired ABA players then the NBA will increase those payments to place them on par with the payments from the NBA's pension plan, and the NBA will remove ABA statistics from the "memory hole" and place those numbers in the official records.

Labels: ABA, Artis Gilmore, David Thompson, George Gervin, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, NBA

posted by David Friedman @ 8:18 PM

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