Roger Brown

Roger Brown's basketball story is really a story about redemption. Blacklisted by the NBA and NCAA in 1961 over an association with a known gambler — despite never fixing a game or being charged with anything — he lost the prime years of a college and pro career to a ban he did not earn. When the ABA launched in 1967 he became the very first player the Indiana Pacers signed, and he turned that second chance into a run of dominance: three ABA titles and a reputation as one of the league's most lethal one-on-one wings and biggest-moment scorers. A four-time ABA All-Star, Brown was vindicated in full in 2013 when the Naismith Hall of Fame's ABA committee inducted him — years after his death — cementing a legacy the establishment once tried to erase.