Heartland's 'The Waiting Game' and my role as sportswriter in 8-year battle with the NBA

INDIANAPOLIS -- When I met the man who would launch what would become a heart wrenching, contentious, yearslong battle with the multibillion-dollar NBA, he was a towering 6-8 guy, a behemoth now hunched over, using a walker, fighting dementia. Charlie Jordan was a shell of the man he once had been.

He was 61 years old, struggling financially and fighting health issues. He was a former American Basketball Association player for the Indiana Pacers who had been a superstar at Shortridge High.

I'd never heard of Jordan when the call came in August 2015, telling me of his sad circumstances. All he wanted was a suit so he could go to church, and he couldn't afford it. I tried, at first, to push Jordan aside. I tried to forget about the tragedy of what he faced as I stared down a long list of other stories to write.

Deep down, my gut said this was something I should cover. My brain fought back: "Will anyone care?" My heart won out.

Maybe no one would care, but I did. And so did my editor, Nat Newell. And so did John Abrams, Scott Tarter and Ted Green. They were persistent. They were the three men who, along with former Pacers star Mel Daniels, had just launched the Dropping Dimes Foundation, an Indianapolis nonprofit whose mission is to help the players and families of the defunct ABA.

Those three men urged me. Just come out to the suit shop and meet Jordan, they told me. If I didn't think it was worth a story after, they would understand. But they knew. Those guys knew that once I saw Jordan, once I heard him talk, once I heard him tell his story, they wouldn't need to push me again.

On a hot summer evening in 2015, I walked into the Style Store for Big & Tall on East 62nd St. where Jordan stood leaning on a walker, trying to give a smile as he grimaced through the pain. I'm sure he wasn't thrilled a reporter was there at what wasn't a shining moment for him. Still, he was gracious, he talked to us, and he allowed photojournalist Kelly Wilkinson and me to document his journey.

Charlie Jordan woke up Friday morning plagued by dementia, riddled with arthritis, and, because of his severe diabetes, not allowed to eat his favorite breakfast, one filled with sweets. On this day, none of that mattered to Jordan. Today, he would get a new suit.

As Jordan shopped and was fitted with a size 48 jacket, two pairs of pants, shirts, ties, socks, boxers and three pairs of size 15 shoes, bought by Dropping Dimes, I learned more about him. He lived with his sister Dorothy Jordan-Brown on the westside of Indy. He had coached briefly in Spain at a university. He had been married and divorced twice, had suffered a stroke and heart attack, recently had treatment for colon cancer and was getting ready to be tested for Alzheimer's disease.

Jordan-Brown remembers her young brother sneaking out of the house to IPS School 44 to play basketball on the outside courts. She remembers him dominating, having such a promising future. Jordan played just one year for the Pacers, the 1975-76 season. And after that, hard times came hard. It's not a rarity in the league and it's exactly why Dropping Dimes was formed.

"He's had everything ripped away from him that he had," Jordan-Brown said.

I learned from Daniels that evening in the suit shop that Jordan wasn't the only one. Many former ABA players had fallen on tough times. There were some players living under bridges and homeless, others who were unable to afford medical care or money for rent or even a few bucks to buy groceries.

I left that suit shop and I wrote Jordan's story. I had no idea then but he was just the beginning. I would spend eight more years following the lives and deaths of ABA players and the heroic mission of Dropping Dimes.

More: NBA will pay former ABA players $25 million: 'This will be life changing for them'

'He was just trying to make it through life'

What Jordan started will play out in the documentary " The Waiting Game ," which makes its world premiere at the Heartland International Film Festival on Friday. The 90-minute film, written and directed by Michael Husain, follows Dropping Dimes and former struggling ABA players as they fight -- and wait -- for pensions from the NBA.

"The Waiting Game's" cast features big names in basketball, including Julius "Dr. J" Erving, the best-known player of the ABA, legendary sportscaster Bob Costas, Hall-of-Famer Spencer Haywood, Dr. Harry Edwards, a sociologist and civil rights activist, the NBA's CJ McCollum and the men of Dropping Dimes.

I appear in the film, too, interviewed as the sportswriter who for eight years followed the lives of these ABA players, writing countless stories, which were all equally or more devastating to what Jordan, who died last year , went through.

In January 2021, I wrote about the tragic ending to ABA superstar George Carter's life . He had died with nothing, no one to even claim his body. He was going to be buried in a pauper's grave.

More: The tragic ending to ABA superstar George Carter's life: 'He mattered; his life mattered'

George Carter was a limo driver in Las Vegas. He enjoyed a beer after a long day of work, and it was even better if there was a game on at the bar. On the good days, he was funny and easygoing. The things that annoyed other people, Carter let roll right off his back. Carter was 75 and, on the bad days, he was hardened and tough. He had throat cancer. He was being evicted by his landlord, unable to afford the new rent, medical bills piling up. Not able to drive his limo because of chemotherapy.

Carter had once been a brilliant athlete. When he graduated from St. Bonaventure University in 1967 — with 1,322 points and averaging 19.4 points per game in three seasons — he was picked 81st overall by the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Draft.

He was also drafted by the NFL's Buffalo Bills and the MLB's New York Mets. He chose to play for the ABA's Washington Capitals where he was an all-star in 1970. He went on to the Virginia Squires, playing alongside Erving; then to the Pittsburgh Condors, Carolina Cougars and New York Nets.

Because Carter chose the ABA, the course of his life was forever changed. There would be no big money to make in that league and no health insurance or pensions to follow.

The end to Carter's life was heart-wrenching. When he died, there was no family, no means to have a funeral. His remains were to be cremated and he would be buried in a grave with no marker. No one would know that here lay a man who at one time lived a life of greatness, a man of remarkable athletic prowess, a sports hero.

Dropping Dimes stepped in and rallied to give Carter a proper burial with true meaning, a permanent stone to mark his legacy.

His cremated remains are being brought this week to Buffalo, where he will be buried at St. Bonaventure in the spring. Carter never got to know he would be laid to rest near the campus where he was a basketball star. Where he would be buried was the least of his worries. "He was just trying to make it through life, to live."

More: The tragic ending to ABA superstar George Carter's life: 'He mattered; his life mattered'

'The NBA is waiting for us to die off'

As more and more players died and as those living reached out to Dropping Dimes for help, its mission began to burgeon into a monstrous task -- trying to get the NBA to pay retirement funds to the players of the ABA who were the trailblazers of today's modern game with 3-pointers, slam dunk contests and fast-paced, flashy offense.

When the two leagues merged in 1976, just four ABA teams were absorbed by the NBA. Players of the other teams were left to fend for themselves, no further pay, no health insurance, no retirement. Though they thought they had been promised a pension, the NBA balked at that concept and more than 40 years later, those players had nothing.

"With 'The Waiting Game,'Husain captures the lunacy of it all. As player after player struggled to survive post-retirement, the NBA kept tossing the ball down the court in hopes, it would appear, that these players would simply die off and everything would become a non-issue," Richard Propes, with The Independent Critic, writes. "The small but mighty Dropping Dimes Foundation refused to let that happen."

In February 2021, working with Dropping Dimes, I wrote a story which revealed that nearly 80% of the players the organization helps are Black . Eighteen men on Dropping Dimes' pension list had died in the past two years; 13 of them were Black.

"The pawns in this whole thing are the Black players who were lured in to the ABA," Tarter said at the time. "Then they've just been forgotten about."

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, 'ghetto ball' is what the NBA called its ABA competitor "with a not-at-all hidden racial subtext for a league that was overwhelmingly Black," writes Christopher Lloyd in his review of "The Waiting Game ," "while their own still featured plenty of white guys with crewcuts."

When I talked to ABA player Frank Card in 2021, he said he had tried not to make race an issue when it came to the NBA not paying pensions, but he couldn't help but believe it played a part.

Frank Card considers himself one of the lucky ones. And yet, he lives in a rented apartment, not a posh house. He is a retired public bus driver. As he puts it, he and his wife Charlotte aren't raking it in "but we're not homeless either." In his heyday, playing for the ABA's Denver Rockets, Card lived a different life.

"I'm not asking for some kind of hand out or something I didn't work for or deserve," he said. "I don't know why these guys don't step up and say, 'Why shouldn't we take care of them like they took care of us?' As far as this pension thing, the NBA is waiting for us to die off."

The NBA had not responded to my questions on the issue of race playing a role in giving ABA players pensions. But after that story published, the NBA did talk to me for the first time. I had reached out to the league multiple times in the past years, with no response.

For the first time Tuesday night, the NBA spoke publicly to IndyStar about these players' plights, acknowledging it is looking to possibly help them. "We are in discussions with the Dropping Dimes Foundation on this issue," said Tim Frank, senior vice president, league operations communications for the NBA.

Tarter said he hopes the NBA steps up.

"There is absolutely no question that predominantly African-American players came into the ABA and changed the style of play, made it more entertaining," said Tarter. "And now the guys who freaking made it work can't pay basic medical bills or buy dentures. It's absurd."

Another 17 months would pass before the NBA would make the move Dropping Dimes had been pleading eight long years to see, agreeing to pay pensions to ABA players.

By that time, Card had died waiting, and so had many other men.

More: Former ABA players struggling and running out of time: 'The NBA's waiting for us to die off'

'I'd do anything to get the NBA to help these guys'

"It was, some would say, the death of former ABA player Sam Smith in 2022, graphically captured by IndyStar reporter Dana Hunsinger Benbow , that would finally bring shame upon both the NBA (Players Association) and the NBA and would set the stage for wrongs to finally be righted," writes Propes in his review of "The Waiting Game."

Smith's death was definitely when everything changed. I remember crying as I wrote his story.

When Sam Smith died in his modest home on the east side of Indianapolis, he died a man who not long before had swallowed his pride and made a phone call to ask for gas money. He died a man who had to make a call to ask for help with funeral expenses for his daughter. He died a man who was an American Basketball Association player, a pioneer who blazed the trail for what the NBA is today.

But basketball ended for Smith. After winning an ABA championship with the Utah Stars, he got a job as a security supervisor at the Ford assembly plant in Indianapolis. Years passed. Times got harder. More years passed.

Weeks before Smith died at the age of 79 on May 18, 2022, lying in a hospital bed next to an ABA basketball, a chilling photo was taken. It was a photo Smith wanted people to see.

"He grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to him," said Tarter, who took the photo. "And he said, 'I would do anything to get the NBA to help these guys.'"

That photo blew up on social media and the NBA saw it. In the documentary, NBA Players Association president CJ McCollum says it was my stories that caught his attention. The league told me again they were working with Dropping Dimes to get pensions finalized for ABA players. But this time, they said it was close.

Weeks later, the NBA reached out to me again. The pensions were virtually a done deal, and they were giving me the opportunity to break the news because I had been the only reporter who followed the story so closely for so many years. The league gave me details of the ABA retirement payouts on embargo with permission to publish the story as soon as the NBA Board of Governor's gave its final stamp of approval.

As I sat at my desk July 12, 2022, waiting for a text from inside the board of governors meeting that they had voted yes on the deal, I texted Tarter, Green and Abrams who were back at the Dropping Dimes headquarters waiting to hear that their eight years of fighting would end in victory.

I think it's going to happen soon, I told them. After what seemed like forever, it did happen, And I cried again as I wrote these words.

The NBA board of governors voted Tuesday to pay $24.5 million to former American Basketball Association players, many of whom are struggling to pay rent, medical bills and buy the basic necessities to live. The agreement reached by the NBA and its players association ends a years-long battle launched by the Indianapolis-based Dropping Dimes Foundation .

“It’s an incredible day for former ABA players," said Tarter, "one that we and the players have been hoping for and working so hard toward for many years."

That night, my mind went back to Charlie Jordan and his new suit. It went back to Carter and Card and Smith and all those players who had died waiting on the money they needed to survive. It made me sad they were not there to get what they were owed. But it also made me thankful for their fellow ABA players they left behind.

I was thankful that Dropping Dimes and its founders had been so persistent. Thankful that I had an editor who believed the story was worth continuing to cover -- for eight years. And thankful I had said yes to my heart all those years ago when I went to a suit shop and met Jordan.

The men of the ABA and Dropping Dimes taught me what it means to keep fighting for what is right, even when it seems a giant is staring you down. And they showed me how glorious it is when the underdog wins.

Info and tickets to "The Waiting Game" Showings are Friday 6:30 p.m. at The Tobias Theater at Newfields and Saturday 12:15 p.m. at Living Room Theaters, Theater 3.

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow . Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com .

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Heartland's 'The Waiting Game' and my role as sportswriter in 8-year battle with the NBA