LAS VEGAS — The top of his refrigerator is crowded with white plastic bottles, neatly aligned in rows, so snug that another couldn’t fit. The bottles are filled with pills and powders — an assortment of vitamins, herbs, proteins and minerals. Vitamin E. Vitamin D. Ashwagandha. Black seed oil.

“Everybody thought I would be dead by now,” Spencer Haywood, 76, said from the living room of his Las Vegas home. “When you all think I’m croaking, I’m going to be able to say I stood for something.”

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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 requiring players be four years removed from high school. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, with Haywood arguing 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 years old and one year removed from high school to be drafted, but Haywood’s 1971 ruling is the benchmark that 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 the struggle from his court battle by proclaiming the outcome “the Spencer Haywood Rule.” His fight 54 years ago helped usher in billions of dollars for the players — and also the league — but Haywood laments he has been left with only emotional scars.

“Even talking about it hurts me,” Haywood said.

He is normally the most jovial of characters. He laughs often, and sometimes he’s the only one who knows why he is laughing. He wears colorful beaded necklaces and bracelets, and they rattle as he enthusiastically tells stories of dinners with Michael Jordan, golfing with Julius Erving, the latest book Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has sent him, or his most recent hang with one of his favorite people, Shaquille O’Neal.

But he turns serious and emotional when the subject turns to his two fights — the Supreme Court case and his push today 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. There are 480 players in the NBA, and 468 of them don’t know who the f— I am. 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.”

Spencer Haywood, pictured last February, hopes the NBA recognizes his landmark U.S. Supreme Court case by naming a rule after him. But it appears to be a long shot. (David Dow / NBAE via Getty Images)

He puts on his size-17 Nikes in preparation for the gym and quips that his motive behind all the vitamins and gym visits is so he can be spry enough to accept the honor in person, if it ever comes.

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It’s a day that likely will never happen.