Part III

“Muhammad Ali was fighting for the right to fight. Curt Flood, for free agency in baseball, was going on. Oscar Robertson had just fought the NBA to solidify an NBA union. So here I am in 1970 — well, I’m the next guy.” —Haywood

Born in 1949, Haywood was the eighth of 10 siblings with a single mother in Silver City, Miss., a tiny town where the racial lines were starkly drawn and a future beyond the cotton fields was hard to imagine.

“The biggest thing that came through our town— and we didn’t have a town, we had to go through Belzoni (Miss.) to shop and get food, seven miles away — was when they had the students, John Lewis and all of them, voter registration, the Selma bus,” Haywood said.“ These Freedom Riders came through on (U.S. Route 49) and I saw all of these people on this bus, and I was a kid looking at this bus saying, ‘Oh my God, I want to be like them.’

“My brothers and my sisters, we would go sit along the highway and watch cars, look at people traveling up and down the highway. That was the biggest thing that ever happened to me. ‘Black people on a bus?! With white people?! Oh my God, what is going on?’”

The country was undergoing radical changes, and Haywood didn’t want to watch from the sidelines anymore.

After his record rookie season in the ABA, he signed a six-year contract with the Rockets that was publicized as being worth $1.9 million. But Haywood, with the help of local attorney Al Ross, looked closer and found he would only be getting about $400,000 up front. The rest would be stashed in an annuity that he wouldn’t be able to tap until age 50.

“I was very hurt by that,” Haywood said. “I went through all of that, and then they give me a fraudulent contract.”

Haywood backed out of the deal and in December 1970, he agreed to a six-year, $1.5 million contract with the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics, ignoring the league’s eligibility rule that required players to be four years removed from high school.

“I broke the rule in the ABA, so why would I sit out in the NBA?” said Haywood.

The NBA sued him, and the Sonics. Haywood claimed the NBA violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.

As the legal battles were waged in court, and as Haywood was forced to miss a number of games to attend hearings, the list of players, fans and owners who opposed his tug of war with the league would only grow longer. And the emotional toll on Haywood would only grow heavier.

In Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee — where ever the Sonics traveled in 1970-71 — drama ensued. Crowds would burst into cheers after the P.A. announcer would say, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have an illegal player on the floor and the game cannot proceed with this illegal player on the floor!” Sometimes he would be booed off the floor. Sometimes opposing players would refuse to shake his hand. Sometimes fans would throw things, forcing Haywood’s team to leave the court.

And yet, in the 33 games he played, Haywood averaged 20.6 points and 12.0 rebounds.

Haywood v. National Basketball Association went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Haywood’s favor in 1971. The sides settled out of court, allowing Haywood to stay with Seattle, and the NBA implemented an exception to its rule for players who could prove financial hardship.

As a 21-year-old NBA rookie, Haywood had been ridiculed, degraded and sued. He had also changed the face of pro and college ball, paving the way for many like him to use the sport as a way out of poverty.

Welcome to the NBA, kid.

“Remember, I’m from Silver City, Miss.,” Haywood said. “If I hadn’t seen it there, I wasn’t going to see it in life. God had prepared me since I was a kid.”