Spencer Haywood won a lawsuit in 1971 to pave the way for players to join the league no matter their age. A new guideline went into place in 2005, agreed on by the league and the players. Leon Bennett Getty Images
LAS VEGAS The top of his refrigerator is crowded with white bottles, neatly aligned in rows, so snug that another could not fit. They are filled with pills and powders: vitamins, herbs, proteins and minerals.
“Everybody thought I would be dead by now,” Spencer Haywood, 76, said. “When you all think I’m croaking, I’m going to be able to say I stood for something.”
In 1971, he did stand for something. As a 21-year-old, he sued the NBA for the right to join the league despite its rule that players be four years removed from high school. The case went to the Supreme Court, with Haywood arguing that the NBA’s stance violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.
He won, paving the way for a generation of talent to enter the NBA no matter their age or college standing. In 2005, the NBA and the NBA Players Association passed a rule that players must be 19 and one year removed from high school to be drafted, but the Haywood ruling allowed some of the game’s greatest young talent to pursue their dreams.
“LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony … it goes on and on,” Haywood said. “I did so much for them individually.”
Today, Haywood is digging in for one final stand: He wants the NBA to recognize his struggle by proclaiming the outcome the Spencer Haywood Rule. His fight 54 years ago helped usher in billions of dollars for the players and the league, but he says he has been left only with emotional scars.
“Even talking about it hurts me,” he said.
Usually the most jovial of characters, he turns serious and emotional when the subject turns to his two fights -- the Supreme Court case and his push to have that ruling recognized.
“My clock is ticking, and I don’t want to go out like this,” Haywood said. “The one thing I want, and I’ve been asking now for the last four years, is to have my name on the ruling: It’s the Spencer Haywood Rule.”
He added: “I want the players to know there was once somebody who cared enough to put their life and career on the line. But they don’t know.”
He says his motive behind all the vitamins and gym visits is to be spry enough to accept the honor in person, if it comes.
It may not. Even though NBA nomenclature attaches players’ names to rules -- Larry Bird rights (allowing a team to go over the salary cap to sign its own free agent), the Trent Tucker Rule (at least three-tenths of a second must remain on the clock for a player to attempt a shot), the Oscar Robertson Rule (allowing a player to become a free agent) -- an NBA representative says the league does not officially name rules after players.
Still, Haywood lobbies anyone with a sympathetic ear.
“I just thought this year was going to be the year that Adam would call me and say, ‘Hey, I declare this is your rule,’” Haywood said, referring to Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner.
On the surface, it seems like a curious fight for such an accomplished man. His fireplace mantel is as crowded as his refrigerator. There is the trophy from his 2015 enshrinement into the Basketball Hall of Fame, flanked by medals, plaques and framed jerseys from a 13-year NBA career with five teams that featured four All-Star appearances and four All-NBA selections.
At 19, he became the youngest men’s basketball player to put on an Olympic uniform for the United States. He led the U.S. team to a gold medal in the 1968 Mexico City Games. He scored 145 points in the tournament, an American record that stood for 44 years until Durant scored 156 points at the 2012 London Games.
Then with the Denver Rockets in the 1969-70 season, he led the American Basketball Association in scoring (30 points a game) and rebounding (19.5 a game, an ABA record) and was named rookie of the year, most valuable player of the All-Star Game and then league MVP. Wilt Chamberlain is the only other pro basketball player to win those three awards in the same season.
Haywood’s mantel has framed jerseys from Seattle, New York, the Los Angeles Lakers and the U.S. team. As a 6-foot-8 forward, he once soared above defenders for dunks and finger rolls, and had a shot that seemingly couldn’t miss: a turnaround jumper from the baseline.
It would be easy to fade into the twilight of his life, reflecting on his accomplishments, content that he is financially set, proud of his four daughters, who have given him four grandchildren.
But there is nothing easy about the why of his fight. His why comes from a number of places: the Mississippi cotton fields where he lived with the anger and shame of having a mixed race sister, a result of his mother being raped by a white neighbor; the dorm rooms at the 1968 Olympics where he forged a lifelong friendship with sprinter John Carlos, who awakened him to the ideas of justice, equality and taking a stand; and the Las Vegas hospital room where he lost his wife, Linda, of 36 years.
“I’ll tell you why this is important to me,” Haywood said. “Knowing history somewhat, I see that these types of things are just erased throughout history when it comes to a Black athlete or Black person. I just want my due.”
After winning Olympic gold in 1968, Haywood returned to Detroit, where he began to frequent Vaughn’s Book Store, the first Black-owned bookstore in the city. He soaked up all he could about Black history. Haywood could not get one of Carlos’ messages out of his head. Carlos spoke of the importance for everyone to make it over the wall.
Two years later, when the NBA tried to prevent him from suiting up for the Seattle SuperSonics because of his age and college standing, Haywood recognized he had encountered his own wall. He would take on the fight, and not just for himself. Everyone would get over the wall.
“I just knew I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.
Maybe so, but nothing during that first NBA year in 1970-71 felt right.
After one year in the ABA, he had a contract dispute, and in December 1970 he was signed by SuperSonics owner Sam Schulman despite the NBA’s rule that players must be four years removed from high school. Even though Haywood had played a year of pro ball in Denver -- the ABA adopted a hardship rule that allowed college players to enter early with financial troubles -- the NBA ruled him ineligible because he had only two years of college.
Instead of returning to the ABA or going overseas, Haywood took the league to court.
NBA players gave him the cold shoulder. If he won the suit, it meant an influx of young talent would fill the league, potentially nudging some of the current players out of a job. And Haywood said he believed the league feared, if the rule passed, that fans would not accept rosters that would become filled with Black players.
At road games, fans hurled insults as the loudspeaker announced he was an ineligible player. It was not until January that Haywood received an injunction that allowed him to play while the court process played out. For some, the idea that a player -- a Black player at that -- would not adhere to the league rules was an egregious example of entitlement.
All the while, Haywood captivated Seattle. He hosted a weekly jazz show on the radio. He hosted Miles Davis and his band at his condominium. And he was on billboards.
“He became this immediate cultural icon,” said Rick Welts, who today is the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks but in 1970 was the SuperSonics’ ball boy. “It was the age and circumstances surrounding his arrival and his defiance of the NBA and the rules at the time. He automatically became a lightning rod of reaction within the city.”
Welts was four years younger than Haywood, and on a Sonics team mostly filled with veterans, Haywood gravitated toward Welts more than toward his teammates. Welts said Haywood never let on that he was hurt or affected by the turmoil around his case.
“He was never one to be overly emotional about what was going on,” Welts said. “But you could see the strength of his character.”
Suing the league was a bold move for a 21-year-old at the height of his game. Still, Haywood persisted.
“That’s why I wish players today knew that there was somebody who went to battle for them, risked their career for them,” Haywood said.
Welts said: “He really was a barrier breaker, and I don’t think he gets the recognition for that. I’m not sure today’s players have that sense of history or his role, which is a shame. He’s a very historic figure in the history of our game, and I don’t think history has really celebrated his role probably the way he deserves to have it celebrated.”
Haywood’s wife, Linda, died in 2022 at age 62 from an autoimmune blood disorder. She was largely his voice. She championed his fight to have the NBA name the ruling after him. She helped him write letters to the league.
“Oh, she was into it,” Haywood said. “Her world was me getting my recognition.”
Keeping his fight alive gives him comfort, a reminder of their combined effort.
For years, he has been seeking help to understand why his mind seems so entangled with frustration, anger and recognition. He sees a therapist regularly.
“A lot of this stuff we’re talking about, I’ve never talked about,” he said. “It’s been down in there so long.”
He traces his three-year addiction to crack cocaine, which led to his dismissal from the Los Angeles Lakers in 1980, to his anger about his mother’s rape, which happened before he was born. He harbored confusion and embarrassment of not being able to say anything about having a mixed sister.
He still wrestles with his identity, in one breath calling himself “just a cotton picker” and in the next breath saying, “I think my significance is far greater than anybody’s in NBA history.”
He still talks with Carlos, who displayed the Black Power salute on the Olympic podium with his fellow sprinter Tommie Smith in 1968. Those conversations with Carlos reinforce that his fight is worth it, that he is worth it.
“Fighters,” Carlos said, “are the ones who really make the change.”
The NBA says it understands and appreciates Haywood’s journey, and it wants to celebrate him, which is reflected in the more than 100 events the league has asked him to attend as an ambassador. Haywood has appeared at so many events, he said, that he considers Kathy Behrens, the NBA’s president of social responsibility and player programs, a friend.
“His story is certainly one we want players to understand,” Behrens said. “The decisions he made and the success he had in the courts changed the trajectory of a lot of players’ own journeys. It’s almost hard to understand some of the things he fought for and was successful at just given the changes that have happened, but it’s still an important part of our history.”
When it comes to the league naming the ruling after Haywood, a representative for the league essentially threw his hands in the air and said it has never been the NBA’s practice to attach players’ names to rules. Haywood counters by pointing to the league’s decision in 2022 to name end-of-season awards after some former NBA players.
“I have peace, but I don’t have my athletic peace,” Haywood said. “What I stood for … Tommie and John got theirs; I’m the only one who hasn’t.
“It’s right around the corner.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright 2025