Cornelius Lance "Connie" Hawkins (July 17, 1942 – October 6, 2017) was an American professional basketball player. A New York City playground legend, "the Hawk"
was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992.
Early years
Hawkins was born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, where he attended Boys High School, and played for coach Mickey Fisher. Hawkins soon became a fixture at Rucker Park, a legendary outdoor court where he battled against some of the best players in the world.[1]
Hawkins did not play much until his junior year at Boys High. Hawkins was All-City first team as a junior as Boys went undefeated and won New York's Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) title in 1959. During his senior year he averaged 25.5 points per game, including one game in which he scored 60, and Boys again went undefeated and won the 1960 PSAL title. Hawkins then signed a scholarship offer to play at the University of Iowa.
College and investigation into point-shaving
During Hawkins' freshman year at Iowa, he was a victim of the hysteria surrounding a point-shaving scandal that had started in New York City. Hawkins' name surfaced in an interview conducted with an individual who was involved in the scandal. While some of the conspirators and characters involved were known to or knew Hawkins, none – including the New York attorney at the center of the scandal, Jack Molinas – had ever sought to involve Hawkins in the conspiracy. Hawkins had borrowed $200 ($2,000 in current dollar terms) from Molinas for school expenses, which his brother Fred repaid before the scandal broke in 1961.[2] The scandal became known as the 1961 college basketball gambling scandal.
Despite the fact that Hawkins could not have been involved in point-shaving (as a freshman, due to NCAA rules of the time, he was ineligible to participate in varsity-level athletics), he was kept from seeking legal counsel while being questioned by New York City detectives who were investigating the scandal.[3]
Expulsion from Iowa
As a result of the investigation, during which Hawkins maintained that he had no involvement in the scheme,[4] and despite never being arrested or indicted, Hawkins was expelled from Iowa. He was effectively blackballed from the college ranks as no NCAA or NAIA school would offer him a scholarship. NBA commissioner J. Walter Kennedy let it be known that he would not approve any contract for Hawkins to play in the league. At the time, the NBA had a policy barring players who were even remotely involved with point-shaving scandals. As a result, when his class was eligible for the draft in 1964, no team selected him.[2] He was formally banned from the league in 1966.[2][5]
Professional career
Pittsburgh Rens (1961–1962)
Hawkins in 1962
With the biggest professional basketball league having blackballed him, Hawkins signed an undrafted deal with the Pittsburgh Rens of the American Basketball League (ABL), an aspiring rival to the NBA. He played for them for only one season and one partial season before the league unceremoniously shut down on New Year's Eve in 1962. On January 15, 1962, to kick off the second half of the ABL's inaugural season, he scored a league-record 54 points in a 110-108 loss to the Cleveland Pipers.[6] By the end of the season, he would be both named a member of the All-ABL First-Team and become the league's most valuable player, with him putting up averages of 27.5 points (the league's leader that season), 13.3 rebounds, and 2.3 assists per game in 78 total games played for the Rens. His second season would have him dealing with injury problems, but before that season prematurely ended, he would still average 27.9 points (second behind Bill Bridges that year), 12.8 rebounds, and 2.6 assists in only 16 games played for that year.[7]
Harlem Globetrotters (1963–1967)
After that league folded in the middle of the 1962–63 season, Hawkins spent four years performing with the Harlem Globetrotters.[8]
During the time Hawkins was traveling with the Globetrotters, he filed a $6 million lawsuit against the NBA, claiming the league had unfairly banned him from participation and that there was no substantial evidence linking him to gambling activities. Hawkins's lawyers suggested that he participate in the new American Basketball Association (ABA) as a way to establish his talent level as adequate to participate in the NBA, as well as an immediate source of income.[9]
Pittsburgh/Minnesota Pipers (1967–1969)
Hawkins joined the Pittsburgh Pipers in the inaugural 1967–68 season of the ABA, leading the team to a 54–24 regular season record and the 1968 ABA championship.[10] Hawkins led the ABA in scoring that year and won both the ABA's regular season and playoff MVP awards.
The Pipers moved to Minnesota for the 1968–69 season, but injuries and a knee surgery limited Hawkins to 47 games. The Pipers made the playoffs despite injuries to their top four players, but were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. Following the playoffs, the Pipers franchise moved back to Pittsburgh.
Hawkins' lawyer, Roslyn Litman, and her husband, fellow lawyer S. David Litman, who was the brother of the Rens owner, filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NBA in 1966, arguing that the league and its owners blacklisted Hawkins.[11][12] The NBA had refused to allow any team to hire Hawkins, who at the time the Litmans started working with while he was still playing for the Harlem Globetrotters.[11][12]
Hawkins in 1969, with his attorney, Roz Litman, celebrating the settlement of his antitrust case against the NBA
In the light of several major media pieces, most notably a Life magazine article written by David Wolf, establishing the dubious nature of the evidence connecting Hawkins to gambling, the NBA concluded it was unlikely to successfully defend the lawsuit. Seeking to avoid a defeat in court which might jeopardize its ability to bar players who had actually participated in gambling, the NBA elected to settle after the 1968–69 season and admit Hawkins to the league. The league agreed to a $1.3M settlement in 1969.[11]
The league paid Hawkins a cash settlement of nearly $1.3 million (approximately $10,800,000 in 2024), and assigned his rights to the expansion Phoenix Suns. He would be assigned to the Suns as a result of them winning a coin toss over the Seattle SuperSonics.[13] Although the Pipers made a cursory effort to re-sign him, playing in the NBA had been a longtime ambition for Hawkins and he quickly signed with the Suns.
Phoenix Suns (1969–1973)
In 1969, still recovering from knee surgery in his final ABA season, Hawkins hit the ground running with the Phoenix Suns, when he played 81 games and averaged 24.6 points, 10.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game. In the final game of his rookie season, Connie had 44 points, 20 rebounds, 8 assists, 5 blocks and 5 steals. The Suns finished third in the Western Conference, and in the 1970 NBA playoffs they were knocked out by the Los Angeles Lakers in a seven-game Western Conference Semifinals series in which Hawkins carried the Suns against a team that had future Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West. In Game 2 of the series, on March 29, 1970, Hawkins led the Suns to a 114–101 victory while scoring 34 points, grabbing 20 rebounds, and recording 7 assists.[14] For the series, Hawkins averaged 25 points, 14 rebounds and 7 assists per game.
He missed 11 games due to injury during the 1970–71 season, averaging 21 points per game. He matched those stats the next year, and was the top scorer on a per-game basis for the Suns in the 1971–72 season. He averaged a comparatively low 16 points per game for the Suns in the 1972–73 season.
Averaging 11.3 points nine games into the 1973–74 season and having been replaced in the starting lineup by Mike Bantom, Hawkins was traded from the Suns to the Lakers for Keith Erickson and a 1974 second-round selection (31st overall–Fred Saunders) on October 30.[15][16]
Atlanta Hawks (1975–1976)
Injuries limited Hawkins' production in the 1974–75 season, and he finished his career after the 1975–76 season, playing for the Atlanta Hawks.
Due to knee problems, Hawkins played in the NBA for only seven seasons. He was an All-Star from 1970 to 1973 and was named to the All-NBA First Team in the 1969–70 season. His No. 42 jersey was retired by the Suns.
Despite being unable to play in the NBA when he was in his prime, Hawkins' performances throughout the ABL, ABA and NBA helped get him inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992.[17]
The Hawkins' story up to 1971 is documented in the biography, Foul by David Wolf, ISBN978-0030860218[18]
In a skit for NBC's Saturday Night Live in 1975, Hawkins played against singer Paul Simon in a one-on-one game accompanied by Simon's song "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard." The skit was presented as a schoolyard challenge between the two and had Simon winning, despite the disparity in height between the two men (Simon at 5 ft 3 in, Hawkins at 6 ft 8 in).[19]
One of Hawkins' nephews is Jim McCoy Jr., who scored a school-record 2,374 career points for the UMass Minutemen basketball team from 1988 to 1992.[20][21]
He was the grandfather of Shawn Hawkins, who played professional basketball internationally and was a two-time scoring champion in Taiwan's Super Basketball League (SBL).[22]
Hawkins moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and worked in community relations for the Suns until his death from cancer on October 6, 2017, at the age of 75.[23][24][25]
In popular culture
Hawkins’ story is the topic of a song titled "The Legend of Connie Hawkins" by Dispatch on their 2021 album Break Our Fall.
† Special voting by the panelists selected Julius Erving as the ABA's all-time most valuable player and Bobby Leonard as the ABA's all-time best head coach
