Tosheff says he has paperwork documenting that Cousy agreed to a secret "sweetheart deal" with Stern, in which Cousy and his fellows agreed to keep quiet, and stop lobbying publicly, in return for Stern's getting them pensions in the '88 CBA. Universally, the three- and four-year men say they knew nothing of the 1988 deal before it was announced, and many say they only began pushing for a pension after that.
Cousy says he's being given credit for power he didn't have.
"Yeah, they're mad at me," he says of Tosheff's group -- though he couldn't remember Tosheff's name offhand. "It's because they think we were sitting around the table negotiating, giving things away. It wasn't like that. The NBA said this is what we're going to do and we said, 'Thank you very much.' We were glad to get anything.
"And I have to say it wasn't brought up at the time. There was no one saying that we should have included the three- and four-year guys. I don't remember that argument being made at all. And if it was, I'd like to think positively of my guys that we'd have said something about it. But we just didn't think of it."
Cousy, meanwhile, who says he lives comfortably and plans to donate any increase in his own pension to needy former players, is unimpressed by O'Neal's gesture of paying for Mikan's funeral, calling it a P.R. stunt, though he says he liked O'Neal when he met him while making the movie "Blue Chips" in 1994.
"I'm 76 years old, and I guess when you get a little older you get cynical," he says. "If you" -- meaning Shaq -- "really want to help the old guys, why don't you put in a call to [union chief] Billy Hunter, who'll return your phone calls, and tell him, 'We should do something for them.'"
The players association didn't return a call seeking comment, and O'Neal couldn't be reached.
One issue that can't be avoided when looking at the NBA of today and the league in its early days is race. Most current NBA players are black. In the '50s, the league was overwhelmingly white. Could it be that today's black players are withholding help from their elders as a sort of payback for long-ago racism? Isaacs, the historian, doesn't think so.
"Maybe there are some current black players who think, 'Oh, well, they don't deserve anything.' I wouldn't deny that there may be some," he says. "I think there are just as many, especially those who take an interest in the history of the game, who would not buy in to that."
The more likely, more widespread problem is that not many active players take an interest in the history of the game.
"We were like that too," Cousy says. "When you're a professional athlete you're so wrapped up in what's going on around you, you just don't have time for anything else."
And so it goes. The NBA cash register rings and the men who helped build the league fight it and the union and at times one another for a small share.
"The two things we have left, probably," Tosheff says, "one is our faith, if we've got one, and number two our memories. And if our memories are not good ones, like being in the NBA, then we have a hard time sustaining the rest of our life."
Some of the excluded players are interested only in the principle of the thing. "I make no bones about it: I'm fortunate that I don't need their goddamn money," says Budko, who had a long and successful career in the insurance business and now lives in a retirement community in the Baltimore, Md., suburb of Timonium.
"But that still doesn't take away from the fact that there are fellows that are benefiting that in many ways my credentials far outdo whatever they did to contribute to the success of the league."
Others don't just want the money, they need it.
"I'm financially destroyed. I haven't got any money at all," says Ezersky, who lives with his wife in a condo in Walnut Creek, Calif., that a grandniece and her husband bought for them to live in. They pay their relatives a reduced rent.
Ezersky says he has only "the stupid head on my shoulders" to blame for not planning for his own future, and he doesn't begrudge current players their success. "I have no bad feelings. Hey, gosh, I wish them all the luck in the world. God bless 'em, we should all make $10 million a year," he says.
But he helped create the world those players live in, and, he says, "a little tiny bit would help quite a bit. Some of the guys don't need it, but some of us really do.
"I keep getting all these letters from the NBA and the players association. All the big affairs. How many rooms would I like? I always write back, 'How many rooms can I get for $1,265 a month in Social Security?' I always put that down. 'Thanks for the help.' I get no response."
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