As long as I have been interested in sports, I gravitated towards cricket and football. I occasionally played badminton and table tennis, but not as much as cricket or football. The sports teachers at my school did try to get the kids into stuff like basketball, baseball, and hockey, but they didn’t speak to me (I couldn’t dribble the basketball or the hockey ball, and I couldn’t hit the ball with that cylindrical bat). Since I am talking about only basketball today, I’ll admit that even my cinematic knowledge of it was limited to Space Jam. That said, recently, the YouTube algorithm started throwing clips from NBA games in my direction. To be clear, I hadn’t watched anything even remotely related to basketball prior to the appearance of those videos on my timeline. But after a week of binge-watching those shorts, my knowledge about the players had graduated from Steph Curry and LeBron James to Nikola, Luka, Giannis, Harden, and Yuki Kawamura. I knew all about slam dunks, three-pointers, traveling, and more. So, I guess, there couldn’t have been a more perfect time than this for The Waiting Game to show up and make me hate every second I’ve wasted on anything related to the NBA.
Michael Husain’s The Waiting Game tells the story of the American Basketball Association (ABA) from its inception to its merger with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the current state of the players who pretty much pioneered everything that people love about American basketball. The story is largely told from the perspective of the CEO of the Dropping Dimes Foundation, Scott Tarter, who is a huge fan of everything that’s associated with the ABA. What is Dropping Dimes? It’s a non-profit organization that aims to ensure that the aging players of the ABA get the financial backing that they need and deserve in their twilight years. Why do ABA players need the Dropping Dimes to do this for them? Well, the ABA was created to rival the NBA in the ‘60s because the NBA was very stringent about who could own teams and how entertaining basketball could be. When the ABA started to eclipse the NBA, the latter decided to “merge” with the former. After a lot of pushback, the merger happened, and a lot of ABA players were left in the lurch because the ABA didn’t exist to give them the pension that they needed, and the NBA didn’t care if they lived or died. That’s where Dropping Dimes came in, because Tarter and his associates wanted the people who shaped American basketball to live and die with dignity.
I am going to be honest with you all; I didn’t know about the existence of the ABA before watching The Waiting Game. You can say that since I have no interest in basketball, I am not expected to know about the ABA. But, even before the aforementioned shorts flooded the screen of my phone, I knew about Michael Jordan and what the NBA stood for. If that’s not a short lesson on the power of capitalism and marketing, I don’t know what is. The President of the NBA Players Association, CJ McCollum, has admitted in the documentary that players who are playing in the NBA do not know its history. And by history, the documentary isn’t just talking about facts and figures; it’s talking about knowing the origins of the moves and tactics they use in the game, the rules they play by, and the culture and fashion that they flaunt on and off the court. So, if American players, born and raised in America, don’t know the foundations of modern-day NBA and ABA’s contribution to it, it’s unfair to expect the people of my country to be aware of the ABA. Yet you’ll see them wearing NBA jerseys, waxing poetic about sneakers, and ignoring the sports league’s problematic policies to celebrate alleged criminals. However, since it’s never too late to get an education, I think everyone should watch The Waiting Game to alter their perspective about what they’re idolizing.
Husain does a really good job with the tragic buildup to the day the NBA decided whether or not they were going to provide financial support to the players who were associated with the ABA. He beautifully highlights why the people over at Dropping Dimes are fighting the good fight and how they have turned their love for the game into something more. But the focus on basketball and its intricacies can make The Waiting Game seem intimidating to someone who knows absolutely nothing about basketball. Now, since the documentary’s whole point is that promoting the concept of a monopoly in any field will rob people of their basic rights, everything about it becomes universally relatable. I mean, the NBA is still an independent, privately operated body; out here we have governments canceling or reducing pensions just so that they can fill their coffers with money. Organizations that operate in such an inhumane way don’t really need money that should go to people who are way past their prime; they rob people in broad daylight just because they can. And since they are in the business of entertaining people, giving a damn about the lives that are at stake is not a priority for their target audience. Why should they? The role models of all these people are ignorant enough to not care about the very ground they’re standing on, so why should their fans act differently?
The most surprising thing (or maybe it wasn’t surprising at all) about The Waiting Game was that none of the A-listers showed up to support those without whom they would’ve been nothing. You’ll see sigma edits of all those players on YouTube shorts that applaud their machismo and skill, and you probably aspire to be like them. But these guys don’t even have the spine or the humanity to speak up for the aging basketball players of the ABA. Why idolize them? If you have to look up to anyone related to basketball, you should be idolizing the people over at Dropping Dimes. They aren’t perfect. They are not superheroes. They’ve not exactly won against the might of the NBA. However, they are doing the one thing that, in an ideal world, everyone should be doing: leading with empathy. Yes, capitalism has taught us that we shouldn’t care about the next person and dedicate our lives to earning so that we can keep consuming until the day we die, and it’s a very difficult lesson to unlearn. That said, after watching The Waiting Game, I think we can start thinking about how to use some of our privilege, influence, and wealth to help those who don’t have it. In case it’s not clear already, here’s me explicitly asking you to please watch Michael Husain’s documentary as soon as possible and recommend it to your nearest NBA fanatic so that they can raise their voice for the legends associated with the ABA.
