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NBA Darnell Hillman won two ABA titles with the Indiana Pacers and Jimmy Jones was named to the ABA All-Time Team in 1997. Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic: Photos: John D. Hanlon, Lane Stewart / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images Jimmy Jones is 81 years old and still takes people around Las Vegas as an Uber driver. He still does work for Amway, the health and beauty products marketing company your Aunt Susan and/or granddad got involved with back in the day. Jones doesn’t like when people call Amway a pyramid scheme. (The company, of course, agrees with his perspective. ) You just have to let people see how good the products are, he still believes, and they’ll buy them. Advertisement In another life, Jones was one of the ABA’s best guards in the 1960s and early ’70s. He was a six-time All-Star, playing for the New Orleans Buccaneers, Memphis Pros and Utah Stars, and an All-ABA First Team selection three times. In 1997, he was one of 30 players selected for the ABA’s All-Time Team. After the ABA-NBA merger, he played parts of three seasons in the 1970s with the then-Washington Bullets as one of the league’s top sixth men. Today, he’s on a different roster. Jones is one of 23 surviving former ABA players still hoping to receive financial compensation from the NBA. Four years ago, the league committed to pay $24. 5 million to 99 other former ABA players who played in the NBA after the merger, many of whom were struggling to make basic ends meet. Those 99 received what the NBA called “recognition payments” — rather than using the word “pension” — of $3, 828 for each year played in the NBA, with a three-year minimum required. But the league determined at the same time that Jones and 23 other former ABA players, including Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famers Julius Erving, Rick Barry and Artis Gilmore, didn’t meet the criteria for the payments because they already receive pensions from the NBA, having all played at least three NBA seasons. Between Amway, Uber and the small NBA check he gets through the Legends of Basketball, the marketing company that represents many retired NBA, ABA and WNBA players, Jones is doing OK. But a little extra from the NBA would help. “I don’t hold any ill will toward the league, ” he said. “At some point, you have to move on. ” The list initially totaled 24 players, but George Mc Ginnis, a great player for the ABA’s Indiana Pacers who joined the Philadelphia 76ers in 1975 and teamed with Erving following the 1976 merger between the two leagues, died in 2023. The remaining players, all at least in their 70s, are part of a dwindling actuarial group. The financial outlay by the NBA to cover them would not last very long. Advertisement “It’s not like we’re going to live for the next 40 years, ” said Darnell Hillman, 76, another of the surviving 23 former ABA players. But the league has no plans to revisit the issue or issue any payments to the remaining 23 players. The NBA’s position, affirmed by a league source with knowledge of the years-long negotiations between the NBA and the players, is that the league shouldn’t have to provide recognition payments to more players who primarily played in the ABA, yet who also get NBA pensions. The 2022 agreement covered players who either had three or more years’ service time in the ABA, or who’d played at least three combined years in the ABA and NBA but didn’t get a vested pension from the NBA. The league, the source said, believes that the 2022 agreement sufficiently addresses the issue of giving financial assistance to players who, in the NBA’s view, got most of their recognition from playing in the rival ABA. The NBA, while appreciative of the ABA’s impact on its own league — most notably, of course, the 3-point shot — and understanding that great basketball and great players everywhere benefit the game, doesn’t think it has to do more financially for ABA-centric players such as Hillman and Jones. The push comes as the ABA, 50 years since the 1976 merger between the two rival leagues ended a decade of fighting for players, is enjoying a renaissance in interest. The docuseries “Soul Power: The Legend of the American Basketball Association” is currently running on Amazon Prime. A documentary about Dropping Dimes’ efforts to get the recognition payments to the original 99 ABA players, “The Waiting Game, ” was released last year and is getting showings on college campuses and in other venues, as the foundation continues to advocate for the remaining 23 players. The ABA’s iconic red, white and blue ball is again in demand, now by people who never saw an ABA game live. Advertisement With his trademark big Afro, Hillman made a name for himself as one of the ABA’s top dunkers, while winning two titles with the Pacers. Hillman won a 1977 dunk contest held after the merger. He played in 287 games in the NBA over parts of four seasons. “I don’t want it to sound like we’re bitter or angry at the NBA, ” Hillman said. “We’d just like a better understanding. A few (dollars) more wouldn’t hurt us to be able to raise our heads up with a little honor and dignity and respect. But in our hearts, we know what we’ve done. ” The 2022 agreement came after years of negotiations between the league and the Dropping Dimes Foundation, an Indianapolis-based organization that spent years finding and advocating for the surviving ABA players and telling their stories to whatever media outlets would amplify them. The late Mel Daniels, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame center who helped Indiana win three ABA titles in four years, would come back shaken from visits with former teammates and other ABA players, after seeing the dire straits some were in financially. “Mel is the one who grabbed me at an event honoring the old Pacers, ” said Scott Tarter, Dropping Dimes’ chief attorney. “He wanted to go picket at the NBA offices in New York. That’s what got us started on this path. ” The foundation — begun in 2014 by Tarter; co-founder John Abrams, the team ophthalmologist for the Pacers and other Indiana teams; and filmmaker Ted Green — spent years going back and forth with the league, researching ABA players, those who’d played only in the ABA and those who played in both leagues. Initially, Dropping Dimes’ research found 140 living former ABA players it should be covered. Ultimately, the two sides agreed on the deal for the recognition payments to players with three years of service time, either all with the ABA or with both leagues, but who did not have NBA pensions. The NBA and the National Basketball Players’ Association each contributed half of the $24. 5 million for the recognition payments for the ABA players. Advertisement “Our legends and our players who have come before us have done so much for our game, ” said Atlanta Hawks guard C. J. Mc Collum, then the president of the players’ union, who advocated for the union to adopt the plan, along with former NBPA executive director Tamika Tremaglio. “They’re the foundation, ” Mc Collum said. “Unfortunately, they haven’t been reaping the benefits. Obviously, the salaries have changed. The treatment has changed. Viewership has changed. There’s so many changes that have occurred within our game that they weren’t able to reap the benefits of. “Figuring out ways to help improve some of their lives and just make things a little bit easier, based on the wear and tear on their bodies and the sacrifices they made for our game, it was a simple conversation. The players were on board with it, and Tamika was on board with it. ” Tarter estimates that it would cost the NBA, based on the actuarial tables of the remaining 23 players, something around an additional $6 million to cover those players. But the NBA wouldn’t go for it. The league argued that paying all of them would reduce the money each could receive individually. Dropping Dimes sought more per month for the players than the NBA ultimately agreed to fund. The NBA’s position was that its system compensated NBA players and had done so, for example, for players in the league before the establishment of the NBPA in 1964, or players who retired before the establishment of pensions for NBA players in 1965. (Left unsaid by the league is that those players had to fight the league tooth and nail to receive those pre-’65 benefits. ) While the ultimate decision to pay the 99 ABA players wasn’t arbitrary, and recognized the impact of the ABA on the NBA, the league didn’t think it owed every ABA player something. “That’s when the 24 missed out, ” Tarter said. “Because the NBA came back, and I’m sure this was on advice of counsel, and said ‘Well, we can’t give anybody a recognition benefit for the ABA if they already qualified for an NBA pension. We can’t include any of the guys like Julius Erving, Rick Barry, Artis Gilmore, none of the guys who got a pension. ’ If you think about it, if you think about what’s fair and moral, you can even sit in a room, maybe, and play God a little bit, and say maybe Julius Erving doesn’t need a recognition benefit, if he got a maximum NBA pension. Advertisement “But that shows the lack of humanity. Our point was yes, he does. He was the face of the league for a number of years, and he remains a face of the league today. If you’re going to give out a recognition benefit for what that league brought, how do you cut out Julius Erving and Artis Gilmore and David Thompson and Rick Barry? ” While Erving and Barry and many of the other 23 are doing okay, Tarter estimates that more than half of the remaining players still need financial assistance. And they are proud men. Mc Collum empathizes with all of the former ABA players. “One day, we’re going to be on the other side, ” he said. “You play this game, and then you’re on the other side of the game. ” Hillman has spent much of his post-playing life with the Pacers. Since 1999, he’s worked for them in various capacities, including now, as the team’s director of alumni relations. The Pacers, and the ABA, have been one of the centerpieces of his life. And he hopes that his time in the ABA, and the time of his contemporaries, isn’t forgotten, as that league further fades into history. To him, it’s not really about the money. It’s what the money would represent: recognition that Hillman and all of the ABA’s players, no matter how famous or obscure, or how rich or poor they are now, were a central factor in the NBA’s growth. “The NBA is now on every continent on the planet, ” he says. “I think we had a lot to do with that. If you look at the style of play, especially when you look at the different players, go back 25, 30 years; based on your size and height, that determined what position you got to play. Now, it’s based on what your skill set is. Looking at that, I’m very pleased to see how we changed the game. “These guys who they’ve chosen not to give the payment, based on what the NBA’s rules were … That’s really the disappointment. The money is not going to break the NBA. I don’t fault them for it; I understand they’ve got rules and such. But I’ve seen rules be broken, changed. … I would see it as a big feather in their cap, taking care of all the guys. ” When people go to screenings of “The Waiting Game, ” Tarter said, the question-and-answer sessions afterwards are similar. Isn’t this a rounding error for the NBA? People are angry. Tarter is not angry — at least, not as angry as he used to be. He is thankful that the NBA did something when it didn’t have to. Most of the people he stood up for got some level of relief and are doing better. The foundation remains in place to do what it can for the rest. “If the NBA had done the right thing, ” Tarter said, “Dropping Dimes would happily go out of business. ” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle David Aldridge is a senior columnist for The Athletic. He has worked for nearly 30 years covering the NBA and other sports for Turner, ESPN, and the Washington Post. In 2016, he received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Legacy Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. He lives in Washington, D. C. Follow David on Twitter @davidaldridgedc