1971
Haywood v. National Basketball Association
Haywood left college early, signed with a rival league, then tried to enter the NBA before its mandatory four-year waiting period was up. The league said no. The Court let him play. Every underclassman who has entered a draft early since is standing on Haywood's exception.
Why it still matters
Draft eligibility rules exist at the sufferance of antitrust law, not by right. Haywood is why.
The old rule
The NBA would not draft or sign a player until four years after his high school class graduated. A player with no college eligibility left and no NBA door open had nowhere to sell his services but a rival league.
The legal hinge
An interim order on a stay, not a judgment. Douglas, sitting as Circuit Justice, vacated the stay that would have kept Haywood off the floor while the antitrust case proceeded — which let him play, and left the four-year rule facing a group boycott theory the league chose to settle rather than test.
What people believe
The Supreme Court struck down the NBA's four-year rule.
What actually happened
The Court decided a stay application. There was never a merits ruling — the league settled with Haywood, and eligibility limits came back later through collective bargaining, where the labor exemption shields them. The rule did not die; it changed the instrument it rests on.
What it cost
Haywood was booed, sued, and treated inside the league as the man who broke the rules. His career and his health declined well before the sport acknowledged what the case had opened, and the recognition came decades late.
Who captured it
Every underclassman who entered a draft afterwards, and the leagues themselves, which learned to place eligibility rules inside a CBA where antitrust cannot reach them.
If it had gone the other way
The four-year rule was not going to survive the ABA's willingness to sign teenagers — competition for that talent existed and the NBA was losing it. Haywood determined the mechanism and the timing rather than the outcome. What is genuinely contingent is where eligibility ended up: bargained rather than litigated, which is why the age minimum is negotiable today instead of unlawful.
Why you still care
Sources
Historical summaries prepared from published opinions and secondary sources. Commentary and analysis, not legal advice.