By Romey Norton - November 25, 2024
From writer/director Michael Husain comes the powerful documentary The Waiting Game. The intense documentary displays the facts surrounding the American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association's merger. This documentary has enough drama and drive to compel even the biggest non-sports fan through its top-tier interviews and linear storytelling. It’s a documentary film about corporate greed, business models, selling products, and the power of words.
The film opens with Bruce Springsteen's powerful quote, "Once I made you rich enough, rich enough to forget my name". Letting audiences know this documentary will be about money, its power, persuasion, the ability to deceive, and its effects on everyone and everything in the ABA/NBA.
The Waiting Game is filled with footage, interviews, old game clips, advertisements, and fashion. There are first-class interviews with ex-NBA players, ex-ABA players, All-Star players, Basketball hall-of-fame players, friends, family, lawyers, journalists, and more. Some speak publicly about their involvement for the first time, while others have never stopped fighting for justice. There are a lot of personal, relatable stories, that are emotional and thought-provoking.
We briefly see the history and development of the sport, from adding mascots and dancers, to entertainment, one team even once had a live bear come out during half-time and wrestle the players. This helps the audience understand how their wealth was created and how the greed grows.
The ABA players were led to believe they would get a pension, but the legalities were not explained to them by anyone. So, when looked into, the wording and phrasing are cruel and clever. With the empty promises of getting a pension, approximately 115 former ABA players did not qualify for the NBA players’ pension plan - leaving them without any financial help. There’s an example where one player took a job as a limo driver to help pay his medical costs. With so much wealth and riches, this is quite an embarrassing display of a lack of human decency.
This documentary looks at the real-time cost of lawyers - at one point everyone was suing everyone. It’s hard to keep up with who is winning and who is losing. The NBA had the best lawyers in New York that money could buy - some would argue an unfair advantage. One lawyer who worked on the ‘merger’ says there were no mergers, it was simply teams coming over to the NBA. The power in this word used lightly, is explored with what it means in legal, and business terms and it’s fascinating.
There is some light at the end of a dark, bleak tunnel. The non-profit organization helping ABA players, founded in 2014, finally saw their hard effort reap the rewards when the NBA announced it would pay the ABA players what they deserve. This section toward the end is very emotional and adds my favourite statement from the documentary: “People should do the right thing without lawyers”. But this good news doesn’t come without a final slap in the face.
Ultimately the series focuses on how the players of the ABA were treated during and after the ‘merger’. It comes down to respect; this is about human decency vs corporate greed. The documentary questions how we treat people, especially when money comes first. The Waiting Game is an informative and entertaining documentary, with a deep look into the ‘failings’ of a sport universally adored.
The Waiting Game had its world premiere at the 2024 Heartland Film Festival
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