The Hawk That Saved Pittsburgh
Connie Hawkins once led his team to an electrifying league title — one that remains all but forgotten today, even in the City of Champions.
by BRIAN LUTZ
The Cauldron, Jun 11, 2015
Picture the superstar: a 6'8 basketball magician, a towering forward and silky-smooth ball handler who is nearly unstoppable on the block. He’s an artist above the rim, too; the missing link in the evolution from Elgin Baylor to Julius Erving to Michael Jordan and beyond. He honed his game on the playgrounds of Brooklyn before capturing the Big Apple’s heart; to this day, he’s thought of by many as the second-best prep player New York City ever produced after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Despite all that, when you see highlights of a career spent mostly in obscurity, the first thing you notice about Connie Hawkins is the way he used his giant hands. For him, palming the ball was his own singular art form, the showpiece among his unique arsenal of weapons. Using paws that were ten inches from palm to finger, he snagged one-handed rebounds high above the fray, and fired crisp passes with the flick of only one wrist. When he posted up, the ball and hand became one, yo-yo-ing behind his back or kept secure at some other remote outpost, far away from any defender.
Hawkins was the prototype for that certain type of player: The scorer with panache. Before the Ice Man, George Gervin, perfected the finger roll…
Before Dr. J’s famous reverse layup against the Lakers…
Before Jordan dazzled the world with his unmatched ball-fakes…
...there was the Hawk, a revolutionary innovator whose epic palming could probably be the subject of its own documentary:
In 1969, Hawkins made his NBA debut with the Phoenix Suns. He was 27 years old and had not played a single minute of college ball. For eight years, he had been banned from the NBA — first informally and then officially — for his alleged involvement in a gambling scandal during his freshman year at the University of Iowa. Then-NBA Commissioner J. Walter Kennedy came down hard on anyone suspected of associating with point-shavers, and Hawkins had borrowed about $200 from Jack Molinas, a notorious fixer that would later end up in a New York prison. (He was the inspiration for Burt Reynolds’ character in The Longest Yard.)
Hawkins sued the NBA a few years later with the help of two Pittsburgh-area attorneys, David and Roslyn Litman, and after Life Magazine published a story in 1969 casting extreme doubt on his involvement in the scandal, the league settled. The story eventually became a well-regarded biography, Foul, written by David Wolf, which greatly detailed that period of Hawkins’ life.
The unjust exile not only robbed Hawkins of many years of his prime, it also cemented his legacy as one of the great what-ifs in NBA history.
At age 19, he joined the Pittsburgh Rens of the short-lived American Basketball League and was named league MVP. He spent a few unfulfilling seasons with the Globetrotters, where he refined his skills, but found the work mostly demeaning. By the time he joined the Suns years later, Hawkins was fresh off of knee surgery and generally believed to have been diminished by age and injuries. He still managed to make four all-star appearances, averaged 18 points per game, and was eventually voted in to the Hall of Fame.
The untold story, however, is how the Hawk also once dominated the only league that would have him. In his first year with the fledging American Basketball Association, Hawkins did it all; scoring at will, giving the league instant credibility, winning the MVP, and leading the Pittsburgh Pipers to a championship that remains largely forgotten today.
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The Pipers were one of the ABA’s original eleven teams, and at least initially, it appeared that Pittsburgh would be a good fit for professional basketball. The then-new Civic Arena was the best facility in the ABA at the time, and Hawkins, the Pipers’ signature acquisition, was by far the league’s most well-known player and biggest attraction.
Hawkins dominated from the beginning and wowed observers across the league with his tremendous talent. Teammate Charlie Williams said that Hawkins could have easily averaged 50 points a game “if he decided to do it.” The Pipers won 54 games in their inaugural season, featuring four players who averaged at least 20 points per game.
Unfortunately, the team struggled out of the gate to draw a reliable following. Its official average attendance in 1967–68 was listed at 3,200 per game, but most people considered the ABA ticket sales and attendance figures to be wildly inflated. Also, the cavernous Civic Arena had a capacity of about 12,500, which made even the better crowds seem miniscule. Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Penguins, who joined the NHL that same year as an expansion team, were averaging about 7,000 fans per night. Even with Hawkins, the Pipers didn’t see more than 2,000 fans in the seats for their first dozen home games.
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One explanation for the indifference could have been the team’s early-season record; the Pipers started just 11–12 before making a splashy trade with the New Jersey Americans (the future Brooklyn Nets) to acquire another high-scoring forward, Art Heyman.
A brash, freewheeling player and self-described outlaw, Heyman was a star at Duke in the early 1960s, launching the then-middling basketball program to a level of national prominence which sustains to this day. He led the nation in scoring during his senior year and led the Blue Devils to their first-ever Final Four. In 1961, he was involved in a late-game scuffle with Larry Brown (yes, that Larry Brown) in an incident that is widely regarded as the spiritual beginning of the Duke-North Carolina rivalry.
The Knicks chose Heyman first overall in the 1963 draft, but he washed out of the NBA after five underwhelming seasons. Nonetheless, he proved to be the missing piece in the Pipers’ offensive machine. Shortly after the trade, the team won 15 consecutive games and 18 out of 19, slowly building a fan base along the way. In a January game against the Minnesota Muskies, about 12,300 fans packed into the Civic Arena, one of the biggest crowds ever for an ABA game.
Williams, nicknamed Sweet Charlie, was another player blacklisted from the NBA for dubious gambling connections. He was an indomitable scorer who thrived in the ABA’s uptempo style. With Hawkins, he developed something of a signature fast-break play: A rebound would come to Hawk and he would unleash a one-handed pump-fake, then float a pass over the top to Williams for a layup.
Chico Vaughn shared the backcourt with Williams, and the duo made ample use of the newly-introduced three-point line. Stats from those days are scarce, but in Terry Pluto’s groundbreaking ABA history book, Loose Balls, Williams said he and Vaughn probably jacked up a combined 7 or 8 threes each game. Both players took more total shots that season than Hawkins.
With four quality scorers, the Pipers averaged 112 points per game and waltzed through the Eastern Division playoffs, losing only one game in the first two rounds.
Awaiting the Pipers in the finals were the New Orleans Bucs, champions of the ABA’s Western Division and the earliest team in the long and colorful historyof professional basketball in the Crescent City. One of the team’s principal owners was Sean M. Downey, who much later became famous as the host of the Morton Downey, Jr. Show, a pioneer in trash TV. Prowling the sidelines was legendary coach Babe McCarthy, who in 1963 snuck his Mississippi State team out of town in order to defy a long-standing rule banning them from playing integrated teams, so they could face Loyola-Chicago — who had four black starters — in the NCAA Tournament.
The Bucs’ star was Doug Moe, a former All-American at UNC who, like Hawkins and Williams, was banned from the NBA due to point-shaving connections. The 6’4 Moe was a streaky shooter and lockdown defender, but he balked at signing with the Bucs unless they also agreed to add his childhood buddy, who was then an assistant coach at North Carolina: 5’9 guard Larry Brown. (Yes, that Larry Brown.)
Considered too small for the NBA, Brown was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets in 1963 but didn’t make the roster. When a scout asked him how he could, at his size, possibly hope to guard stars like Oscar Robertson or Jerry West, Brown famously responded, “I read in the paper they average 30 a game; I don’t think anyone’s guarding them.”
Brown flourished with the Bucs, averaging about 13 points and 6 assists per game, and winning MVP of the ABA’s first All-Star game. He has spoken many times about his fond memories of the Big Easy.
“I loved every minute of playing in New Orleans with that team,” he told NBA.com. “That league and that team meant a lot to me because they gave me a chance to prove that I could be a player at the top level. I wouldn’t trade that experience — that one year — in New Orleans for anything.”
The Bucs’ lineup also featured Jimmy Jones, a sharpshooter out of Grambling who was drafted 13th overall by the NBA’s Bullets that year but chose to play with the red, white and blue ball. In seven ABA season, Jones scored over 10,000 points, and in 1997 he was selected (along with Hawkins and Moe) to the ABA’s All-Time Team.
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The first ABA Finals would prove to be a classic. In a back-and-forth seven-game series, neither team scored less than 100 points in any game. The largest margin of victory was nine points. Though the Pipers had home-court advantage, the fans in Pittsburgh continued to pretty much ignore them; attendance didn’t get past the 4,000 mark for either of the first two games. The Bucs at this point had a rabid following, and their home court, Loyola Field House, was packed to a capacity of 7,000 for the games in New Orleans.
Hawkins took center stage, controlling play at both ends and proving that he could carry a good team. Despite missing 11 minutes of action in Game 1 because of foul trouble, he still poured in 39 points. The Pipers lost Game 2 after he fouled out in the third quarter.
The games in New Orleans featured a frenzied and often hostile crowd — according to Wolf, the fans lobbed racial insults at Hawkins, and Heyman actually got into a minor scuffle in the stands at one point. The Bucs prevailed in Game 3 despite trailing most of the way, and the following night, Hawkins collected 47 points and 13 rebounds in an overtime win. But he also suffered a knee injury that would force him to miss Game 5. New Orleans would prevail in a tight game, putting them on the brink of a championship going back home.
Knee injuries in those days were something of a wild card; many athletes from that era, including Joe Namath and Mickey Mantle, suffered knee injuries that doctors didn’t really know what to do with. Hawkins’ injury likely fell into that category. He suited up for Game 6 with his right knee wrapped heavily from thigh to ankle, and painted his masterpiece: 41 points and 12 rebounds on one leg, leading the Pipers from back from an early 15-point deficit to force a Game 7.
The fans in Pittsburgh finally showed up for the deciding game, overwhelming the Civic Arena’s ushers and causing the opening tip to be delayed by almost an hour. The revved-up Pipers, behind a packed crowd of about 11,500, went up big early and held on late for a 122–113 victory. All five starters scored in double figures, and Hawkins narrowly missed a triple double, with 20 points, 16 rebounds and 9 assists. The fans stormed the court and the team popped champagne in a jubilant locker room. In Loose Balls, Williams, who led all scorers in Game 7 with 35 points, described the scene:
“It was very emotional in the dressing room. Remember, we were guys who were cut by the NBA, or denied the chance to play in the NBA. In one way or another, all of us had been rejected, and we had gone out and won a championship…A number of us sat there saying, ‘We did it,’ over and over.”
The Pipers’ title celebration didn’t include the extra standard fanfare. There would be no parades, championship banners, reunions, retrospectives, or even highlight reels. The team abruptly moved to Minnesota that summer; it was rumored that ABA commissioner George Mikan needed a team in Minneapolis to replace the outgoing Muskies because the league’s headquarters were located there.
It’s undeniable that the Pipers never established a foothold in Pittsburgh — they didn’t even have a radio contract for their title-winning season — but nothing drove that point home more than when they returned in 1970, rebranded as the Condors. Local interest, never that strong to begin with, became almost nonexistent. By 1972, the team stopped playing home games in Pittsburgh and folded shortly after the season.
Hawkins played about half a season in Minnesota, and in 1969, the NBA finally lifted his ban and he signed with the Suns. Any concerns that he was washed-up should have been quelled when he averaged 24.6 points per game as a rookie and was named all-NBA. But it was in the playoffs that the Hawk put to rest any doubts about his ability to play at the highest level.
In the first round, the Suns faced the powerful Lakers, who had played in the NBA Finals in six of the previous eight seasons and trotted out a star-studded lineup anchored by Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, and Jerry West. In Game 2 in Los Angeles, Hawkins put up 34 points, 20 rebounds, and 7 assists as Phoenix pulled off the upset, 114–102. Suns coach Jerry Colangelo said after the game that it was the greatest individual performance he had ever seen. It was the Suns’ first ever playoff win.
Phoenix shocked the league in gaining a 3–1 lead in the series, but the Lakers (who would again reach the Finals) would prevail in seven games. Hawkins was already a star. Though he played just four seasons with the Suns, the team retired his number, and in recent years he was a community representative for the team.
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The circumstances of Hawkins’ career surely burdened him, but he rarely expressed regret at the way it played out. In 2010, he told SLAM Magazine: “Look, I’m in the Hall of Fame. That’s the pinnacle. They saw the best of me. I was fortunate enough to play against the best players in the world, and I know what I did against them.”
“He was the first guy on that Dr. J-Michael Jordan level,” Moe would say many years after losing to the Pipers. “No one could match him.”
Heyman is quoted in Foul describing the Hawk during the ’68 ABA playoffs: “I’ve played with the best ballplayers in the world and I’ve seen the best ballplayers. Connie Hawkins is the greatest and I’m not just saying that. He would give you his heart.”
Mel Daniels won three championships in four years as part of the Indiana Pacers’ ABA dynasty, and made the Hall of Fame in 2012. In 1968, he was on the Minnesota Muskies, who lost to the Pipers in the Eastern Division finals. In Loose Balls, he said this about Hawkins:
“A guy who was a basketball person could watch Connie and see the subtle things — his passing, how he blocked shots and rebounded and knew how to help out his teammates on defense. I am convinced that the Connie Hawkins who led Pittsburgh to that first title could play in the NBA and be on the same level as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan are today.”
Because of the tragic nature of his story, and because of the way his career unfolded, Hawkins will always be remembered for what he might have been. Could he have been one of the best forwards of all-time? Could he have dominated the NBA for an extended period? Maybe he could have even been the rarest thing of all, the goal of every great one: The best player on a championship team. Or maybe that’s exactly what he was.
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