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Fascinating Article on NBA Old Timers and Pensions

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by Jeff, Apr 17, 2002.

  1. Jeff

    Jeff Clutch Crew

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    From <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/">Mother Jones</a>...

    <i>Pension Extension for NBA Elders?
    David Davis
    April 12, 2002

    "They're waiting for us to die," says Bill Tosheff. "But as long as I'm still standing, I'm gonna keep pushing them."

    As co-founder and president of the Pre-1965 National Basketball Association Players Association, the 75-year-old Tosheff continues his fight for the rights of dozens of former professional players who were arbitrarily excluded from the league's pension plan -- and he's recently scored a few notable victories.

    Last December, Tosheff won 80-year-old Bud Palmer, who played for the New York Knicks from 1946 to 1949, a one-time lump payment of $138,000. Palmer also will receive $1,100 every month.

    "For years the NBA stone-walled me," says Palmer, who became a sports radio broadcaster after his playing career was over. "Without Bill doing all the research, I never would have gotten a dime."

    Tosheff is currently working on two other cases similar to Palmer's. Over the past 14 years, he has helped nine long-since-retired players gain an estimated $2 million. (For his work, Tosheff takes 15 percent of the after-tax gross.)

    When the league's original pension plan was established in 1965, it covered athletes who played a minimum of three years starting from that year. In 1988, the plan was amended to include pre-1965 players, but only those old-timers who had played a minimum of five years.

    The five-year-minimum rule, however, leaves what Tosheff estimates at 46 three- and four-year pre-1965 players out in the cold. Tosheff wants the NBA to bring them in. At stake: $200 per month, multiplied by the number of years played -- a tidy sum for retired senior citizens.

    Many of the old players could use the help, says Tosheff. Unlike today's multi-million dollar hoopsters, pro basketball players in the early days of the league earned an average of only about $4,500 a year.

    "It's a double standard," says Tosheff, a three-year NBA player with the now-defunct Indianapolis Olympians and the Milwaukee Hawk who was once co-Rookie of the Year. "Pioneer-era players were and are discriminated [against] by their exclusion."

    Tosheff estimates that it would take a one-time payout of less than $5 million to restore, retroactively, pensions for the surviving players.

    "That's peanuts for the NBA," says Tosheff. "The league is a billion-dollar, money-making machine."

    The league rules governing player pensions were established by collective bargaining agreements between the NBA and the NBA Players Association, the union representing players. Dan Wasserman, a spokesman for the player's association, says the union has raised the pension issue and would like to see an agreement in place. He says the league has refused. League officials did not respond to repeated requests for a comment.

    Tosheff says he isn't about to wait for the league and union to agree on a solution.

    "Why the hell am I the guy who's finding these players?" he barks by phone from his San Diego home. "Well, I'll tell you: the league sure as well won't do it. We players have to take care of our fellow players."</i>
     

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