Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

INDIANAPOLIS — It will rain money soon, more than a billion dollars heading toward NBA players during the 2016 free agency period that begins Friday at 12:01 a.m.

The genesis of this deluge of dollars, earmarked for Kevin Durant and Eric Gordon and Mike Conley and scores more, can be traced to 1970 and to a man from Indianapolis, a man whose role in the liberation of the NBA free agent is not widely known.

His name is Oscar Robertson.

Robertson, who led Crispus Attucks to state championships in 1955 and ’56, never did and never will get the money that the NBA’s best free agents — even the NBA’s worst free agents — will get over the next several weeks. He came to grips with that long ago. Robertson used that business degree he earned from Cincinnati in 1960 to start several companies after his playing days ended. Those companies did fine. Oscar Robertson doesn’t need anyone’s money, thank you very much.

Here’s what he’d like, and it’s such a small thing. He’d like one of the NBA’s millionaires today, just one of them, to say this:

Thank you.

* * *

Back in Oscar Robertson’s day, a player made what his team’s NBA owner said he would make.

Along came the upstart American Basketball Association in 1967, bidding against the NBA for top free agents — giving players leverage in contract negotiations — and the NBA decided this could not be. It approached the ABA about a merger. The ABA was listening.

Oscar Robertson was saying: No.

This was 1970. Robertson wasn’t the player he’d been earlier, averaging a triple-double for the 1961-62 season and winning MVP in 1964, but he was still formidable. He was one year removed from being All-Star Game MVP in 1969. He was one year away from winning the 1971 NBA title with Lew Alcindor and the Milwaukee Bucks.

In 1970 Robertson averaged 25.3 ppg, but now he was doing some of his best work off the court. He was president of the NBA players’ union, a role he’d held since 1965, one year after leading a boycott of the 1964 All-Star Game. Players wanted a pension, medical benefits and pay for preseason exhibition games. The game started 10 minutes late, but only after Robertson and Co. won those concessions.

So, about 1970. The NBA and ABA were trying to merge.

Oscar Robertson sued the NBA.

He was backed by the union, but on a public island against 22 franchises in both leagues — 14 in the NBA, eight in the ABA, including the Indiana Pacers — and eventually against Congress, which unsuccessfully tried to settle the antitrust suit Robertson vs. National Basketball Association.

The lawsuit continued, as did both leagues. Robertson made his final All-Star game in 1972 and averaged 12.7 points, 4.0 rebounds and 6.4 assists in 1974 before retiring.

The lawsuit continued.

In 1976 the NBA absorbed six ABA teams and settled Robertson’s lawsuit. Free agency was born.

Forty years later, Oscar Robertson is pretty sure he was blackballed from the league.

* * *

Robertson was at Bankers Life Fieldhouse a few weeks ago.

It was the Indiana-Kentucky All-Star game, Robertson was a guest of the IndyStar Indiana All-Stars, and we were talking about the money NBA free agents were about to get. Oscar was sitting with a friend from the 1950s, former Crispus Attucks player Ronald Crowe. I tell them the average NBA salary this past season was close to $4 million.

Crowe looked at Robertson.

“You didn’t make a million in a year,” Crowe said.

“I didn’t make a million in 14 years,” Oscar replied.

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I tell Robertson that I’ve asked various players if they know who opened the door to NBA free agency. None had any idea.

“I don’t know if anybody today knows,” Oscar said.

Has a player ever thanked you?

“Some older guys have,” he said. “Rick Barry, Bill Walton, maybe a couple other guys, but those two more than any other. I really don’t think a lot of the guys today, black or white, know about the history.”

LeBron James, I tell Oscar, often invokes his appreciation for the history of the game, and he seems …

Robertson cuts me off.

“LeBron doesn’t know anything about that,” he says of the 1970 lawsuit. “He might, but I doubt he does. If he does, he’s never said anything to me about it.”

Now we’re in territory that rubs Robertson the wrong way. He believes he sacrificed so much for the union. Despite his acumen and desire to coach or work in an NBA front office, no team has hired him. His first plan after retirement was to be a TV analyst, but hasn’t worked in an NBA booth since the 1976 settlement of a lawsuit that eliminated the reserve clause and is referenced today as the “Oscar Robertson rule.”

You could believe all of that is a coincidence — all-time great player stands up to league, retires, doesn’t work again in the NBA — but Robertson does not.

“There’s no doubt about it,” he’s saying.

I think to myself: When MLB free agency pioneer Curt Flood died decades ago, not one active MLB player attended his funeral. And so I say to Robertson: Not one current NBA player has ever acknowledged your role in free agency?

“Not to me,” he says. “Guys that come from nothing and make $20 million, they didn’t grow up like that. They didn’t read anything about it. They’ll get a $2 million house and put one of those — what are those little games?”

Video games?

“Video games, right,” he says.

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He’s salty, Oscar Robertson. Earlier this season he blamed the Stephen Curry-led 3-point explosion on poor coaching and indifferent defense, a “get off my lawn” moment mocked around the NBA. Perhaps his feelings on today’s players not knowing the history of free agency will be seen the same way.

Perhaps nobody in the NBA owes him a debt of gratitude.

Even if a “thank you” is free.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel.