INDIANAPOLIS — The attorney is Scott Tarter, and he was 10 when he became addicted to ABA inside the old Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum. It was 1971 and her father, a factory worker, had splurged for seats in the nosebleed section.
He remembers the game being cloudy. People could smoke inside the arena and the fog was rising at the top. But through the haze shone Tarter’s hero, Darnell Hillman, playing for the Indiana Pacers.
“I remember thinking it was the biggest stadium, the biggest thing you could ever be in,” Tarter said. “As a kid, it was amazing. I fell in love.”
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The eye doctor is John Abrams and he used to skip Hebrew lessons after school to sneak into the Jewish community center where the ABA Pacers practiced. He picked up towels, wiped the sweat and marveled at these giants.
His last two years of high school, Abrams landed a ball boy berth for the Pacers. He rubbed shoulders with Billy Knight, Don Buse and Charlie Jordan. The players made him feel like he was one of them.
“It was the most beautiful job in the world,” Abrams said. “I loved the ABA.”
The filmmaker is Ted Green, a sports history buff. One of his first projects when he started working for WFYI was a segment about the ABA Pacers for a movie called “Indy in the 60s”.
This led to more Green films about ABA star Roger Brown and the late ABA Pacers coach Slick Leonard.
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“I’ve become close to the ABA Pacers family,” said Green, who is the husband of IndyStar athletic director Jenny Green. “It’s an amazing brotherhood.”
But nearly 10 years ago, these three men learned that this brotherhood of the ABA was suffering. Many former players lived in public housing, some homeless below decks. Others couldn’t afford to pay their medical bills or buy a pair of dentures. Others could not afford the funerals of their family members.
They were their ABA heroes, many of whom never made it to the NBA when the league merged with the ABA in 1976. Only four teams from the ABA — which had 11 teams most seasons — made it to the NBA. Many players were left with nothing. Some who arrived in the NBA did not play long enough to receive a pension.
Tarter and Abrams each contributed $2,500 to form a nonprofit called The Dropping Dimes Foundation in 2014. Their mission was to help struggling former ABA players and their families. They brought in Green, they joked, to be the third vote to sever ties in the event of a disagreement.
But things quickly got serious. They realized that Dropping Dimes wouldn’t be able to do this on their own. There was so many former players are asking for help. The foundation’s funds were limited.
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Tarter, Abrams and Green have therefore made it their No. 1 goal to get the NBA to pay the pensions of these players.
On Tuesday night, eight years into their fight, the three men sat in a warehouse with ABA memorabilia all around, drank beer and waited.
When the NBA Board of Governors voted to pay $24.5 million to 115 former ABA players in recognition payments, they breathed a sigh of relief, celebrated and wept.
“My mind went back to when we started,” Green said.
The beginnings of a wacky idea to get a multi-billion league to “do the right thing”.
“A pure coincidence and a love of ABA”
Tarter is a lifelong Indianapolis native who went to John Marshall High and was kicked out of his sophomore basketball team. This did not dampen his love of the sport.
After earning his law degree at Indiana University in Bloomington, he rose to the ranks of partner at Bose McKinney & Evans, where he is a lawyer working on half-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions. .
But in his spare time on weekends and weeknights, Tarter has poured his heart and soul into Dropping Dimes, a foundation that started out of sheer luck and love of ABA.
It was 2011 and Steve DeVoe was a Tarter’s partner at Bose McKinney. DeVoe’s two brothers, Chuck and John, were the original owners of the ABA Pacers in 1967.
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DeVoe knew of Tarter’s love for the ABA, so he introduced him to Green, who was working on a movie about Pacers Hall-of-Famer Roger Brown. Green introduced him to Abrams.
It turned out that Abrams wasn’t just a former Pacers ball boy, he was the team’s eye doctor. He knew the players. He had connections.
One of the first players Abrams introduced Tarter to was Mel Daniels, who was adamant that something needed to be done to help his former ABA league teammates.
“Mel made it very, very direct to me that the NBA doesn’t respect ABA players the way they should,” Tarter said. “A lot of ABA guys were hurting because they were being paid so little back then.”
When the ABA disbanded in 1976, merging with the NBA, four of its seven remaining teams were absorbed into the NBA – the Pacers, Nuggets, New York Nets and San Antonio Spurs. Many players found themselves without a pension, wages were cut and health insurance disappeared.
When the idea emerged to create a non-profit organization to fight for these players, Tarter approached Daniels with a name idea: “Fans Giving Back Foundation”.
“And Mel, 6-foot-10, Mel with his super deep voice looked at me and said, ‘Scott, I don’t like the name,'” Tarter said. “He said, ‘The fans don’t owe us anything. We played for the fans. We played for the love of the game and I don’t want a name that implies the fans owe us anything.
Shortly after, Tarter and Abrams were in a rental car driving to Springfield, Massachusetts after attending Slick Leonard’s induction into the Naismith Hall of Fame.
“And I said, ‘I get it. Dropping Dimes Foundation,” Tarter said. “Because when you’re playing basketball and you give an assist, it’s ‘you’ve lost a penny’.”
Abrams started googling the term while Tarter was driving and realized it was a perfect fit.
“We will provide financial support,” Abrams said. “We’re going to give those struggling basketball players an assist.”
“It was kind of a labor of love”
Dropping Dimes did just that. During his eight years, as the players called him, the foundation helped with little things – money for gas, a new suit for the church, a rehabilitation session.
And it helped with big things – funeral expenses, big medical bills, rent.
And now Dropping Dimes has helped those players get what they needed most.
“This, these pensions, has been our great mission since day one,” Tarter said. “That, what’s happening now, giving these guys what they deserve.”
None of this has been easy. All three men had full-time jobs. But they also had a passion.
“Sometimes I didn’t balance it out. Sometimes I had to put practicing law on the back burner a bit and focus on pensions and Dropping Dimes,” Tarter said. Neither he, Abrams, nor Green made any money from their work at Dropping Dimes.
They had a lot of help. Dropping Dimes has an advisory board supported by big names in sports, media and basketball. Among them are Bob Costas, Reggie Miller, George McGinnis, Julius Erving, Myles Turner, Peter Vecsey and Bob Netolicky.
“They all came together,” Tarter said. “It was kind of a labor of love.”
And on Tuesday night, the big weight was lifted, getting the NBA silver.
“To us, that meant everything,” Tarter said. “From the beginning, when you look at the contributions these ABA players have made to today’s NBA, the quick games, the 3-pointers, the slam dunk contest. When you look at all these guys today being done Recognition, finally, for their contributions is overwhelming.”
Green said Herb Simon and the Pacers were strong defenders. But Tarter deserves a lot of the credit.
“The NBA needed persuasion, like 18 months of persuasion, and in the meantime a lot of guys died,” Green said. “The negotiations on our side fell to Scott as an attorney and I’m so proud of Scott for seeing it through. We’re talking about one attorney on our side, a dozen with the NBA. I I took heart and guts and advised.”
And in a way, what the NBA is doing is helping Dropping Dimes.
“It will take a big burden off us,” Abrams said. “But that won’t end the fight.”
“It’s quite humiliating”
The NBA deal pays players an average of $3,828 per year for each year they were in the league. For example, a player with the three-season minimum will receive $11,484 per year. A player with the most years of service, such as Freddie Lewis who has nine, will receive $35,452 per year.
“It’s a lot of money. It’s going to be life changing for a lot of guys,” Abrams said. “There are still a lot of guys who will need help.”
Break it down into monthly installments and a 3 year old will get $957 per month. “It’s not going to pay rent, pay utility bills, pay health bills for some of these guys,” Tarter said.
So Dropping Dimes will continue to help former ABA players as it always has.
“I remember so many days at Roger’s (Brown) wife Jeannie’s house with Mel Daniels, George McGinnis, Slick and Nancy (Leonard), Neto (Bob Netolicky), and how passionate they all were – especially Mel — to help their former ABA brothers in need,” Green said. “It inspired us endlessly.”
And that inspiration prompted three guys who loved the ABA to help their heroes.
“When you think about the fact that a busy eye surgeon, a busy M&A lawyer, and a busy documentarian did it all on their own,” Abrams said. “It’s quite humiliating.”
Follow IndyStar sportswriter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Contact her by email: [email protected].