Connie Hawkins Comes Home, 1970
Posted by bobkuska
[Here’s another feature on Connie Hawkins, his NBA banishment, and his million-dollar redemption with the Phoenix Suns. This article comes from the February 1970 issue of the popular men’s publication True Magazine. The feature also is clearly a follow up to the Life Magazine’s 1969 blockbuster story on Hawkins that the blog recently posted. This True Magazine piece covers a lot of the same ground as the Life article. But reporter Al Stump, mostly remembered for his autobiography of baseball’s Ty Cobb, charts some new ground . . . and garbles a few facts to turn up the melodrama. But still, his sourcing is excellent and, for the quotes alone, Stump’s piece is still worth the read to understand just how ethically wrong-headed the NBA’s blackball of Hawkins really was.]
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The career of Connie Hawkins, now in his first season with the National Basketball Association, has had more downs than ups. But when the up finally came, it was the biggest one, financially, speaking, in the history of professional basketball. Bigger even then the whopping settlement earlier shelled out to Lew Alcindor.
Connie Hawkins, boy superstar/adult black sheep, signed a contract with the NBA that called for a total of $1.5 million. It may have been a bargain for the league. Since signing it, Hawkins has been burning up the boards for the Phoenix Suns, averaging better than 20 points a game, and drawing a house full of fans to a previously empty arena. And he was rich besides. No one could have been more surprised at this unlikely turn of events than Connie himself, who had almost given up hope of ever being allowed to play in the NBA.
The strange odyssey of Connie Hawkins began when he was a high-scoring forward for Boys High in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Hawkins was more than just a good high school basketball player. He was recognized even then by knowledgeable New York fans as a boy who was certain to go on and make it big in collegiate and professional competition.
Hawkins in those days was a naïve, almost-illiterate teenager. What he did at Boys High was play basketball. He wasn’t expected to attend class, and he didn’t. As a high school senior, he wasn’t able to get a driver’s license because he couldn’t read and understand the written test. But he was great with the roundball, and colleges were bidding high for his services. He eventually settled on the University of Iowa. His future looked bright. Then he had the misfortune to meet a man named Jack Molinas.
It was in the summer of 1960. “Molinas came up to me at Manhattan Beach, where we had a playground scrimmage goin’,” says Hawkins. “He was a lawyer and a basketball fan, he said. He rapped real good with us guys. He bought us meals and a couple of times lent us his car. He was ‘Mr. Jack’ to us and invited us to his Brooklyn office. He was sponsoring a benefit game, which he wanted us to play in. He gave three of us $10 each for food and transportation. That same time, he introduced us to a friend of his named Joey. He was another fan, we thought.”
Point shaving—or scoring as much as needed to beat the betting spread—was nothing Connie understood. He’d been 12 years old in 1954 when Molinas, an ex-Columbia U. star, had been banned from the NBA for game betting. No large scandals had happened while Connie was growing up. To him, Molinas was a nice guy who did favors. “Joey”—actually Joe Hacken, a Molinas aide with nine bookmaking convictions on his record—was more of the same.
Molinas-Hacken urged Connie to introduce them to various top college cagers whom he knew from the playgrounds. And he tried, but nothing came of it. “I’d already picked Iowa, so why should college guys do me any favors? Wouldn’t help their schools none,” points out Hawkins.
As it turned out, Molinas had a good reason for wanting to meet collegiate basketball stars. He was the mastermind of a nationwide gambling ring that was in the process of paying 36 college players $70,000 to fix 43 games. He used the playgrounds to meet players. Now on parole, Molinas served a four-year prison term in the case.
In April 1961, freshman Hawkins was picked up at Iowa U. and was removed to New York by detective Anthony Bernhard. “He said they only wanted me to help with the investigation, and I’d be back on campus in a couple of days,” states Connie.
David Litman, the Pittsburgh attorney who believed in Hawkins and stood up for him when nobody else would, is indignant about the way Connie was treated by the New York police. Litman’s records attest that Hawkins was held in custody for two weeks at the Prince George Hotel, interrogated “harshly” at least 20 times, never advised of his rights or allowed a lawyer, and “kept total prisoner, not even allowed to phone his mother across the river, despite his frantic attempts to secure help.” Nor was Connie allowed to call his Iowa coach, Sharm Scheuerman.
Litman: “If Connie had stuck to the true story that he told at first, he’d have been released. But they sweated and threatened him with years in jail. They had him terrified. After days of this, he panicked and agreed to do what they wanted. As we proved later, the admissions were ridiculous. One day, for instance, he said he took $500 from Molinas, the next day it was $1,000, and again it was $1,500. He said he’d arranged for a University of Colorado star forward to meet Molinas. While he was saying it, the same player was telling the grand jury that the introduction had been made by another high school athlete. Hawkins wasn’t even present when this happened.”
Where Connie destroyed himself, sums up Litman, was in accepting a $200 loan from Molinas. Used to help out his family, the money was repaid in six months. But to a grand jury, the $200 sounded like rampant point shaving.
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The evidence against Hawkins, if any, never came out in court. (Joe Hacken pleaded guilty under an indictment that did not mention Connie.) Still, in those days, even the faint whiff of scandal was enough to scare off the NBA. Connie was blacklisted, barred from playing in the only genuine major league that professional basketball possessed. He couldn’t continue playing at Iowa either. But the hoop sport was the only thing he knew, and he had to scramble around to get some sort of a job shooting baskets. It must’ve been a stroke of faith that put him in touch with attorney Litman, who stuck with the case for eight years until Hawkins was finally reinstated by the league.
It was the fall of 1961, and Connie was 19 years old when he met David Litman. Litman’s brother Leonard owned the Pittsburgh Rens of the short-lived American Basketball League. He signed Connie to a two-year contract calling for $6,500 the first year and $7,500 the second. Unfortunately, the team folded early in the second season, and Connie joined the Harlem Globetrotters. But while Connie was in Pittsburgh, playing for the Rens, David Litman got interested in him and decided to pursue the case.
Nobody in basketball or in the legal profession thought Litman had the ghost of a chance of getting Connie reinstated by the NBA. But he stuck with it for eight long years, investing some $40,000 of his own money in the project. Litman describes his eventual success as the “greatest gratification of my life.”
The more he worked on the case, the more Litman became convinced that Hawkins was innocent and that the NBA blacklist was totally unjust. The big problem, of course, was the forced confessions sweated out of Connie during those two weeks at the Prince George.
In May 1969, one of New York District Attorney Frank Hogan’s interrogators told a reporter that he regretted the tactics used on Hawkins. But they’d been necessary, he insisted, to wring the truth from 150 suspects. Looking back, the cop felt that Hawkins had lied about himself and wasn’t guilty. To neutral questioners, when he left jail, Jack Molinas testified that Connie only had borrowed from him, never figured in any fix or attempted fix.
“Try to prove that to the NBA,” tartly snaps Dave Litman, who lost 20 pounds and spent 10,000 work hours in hope of exculpating his client. “In 1963, in 1964, 1965, and 1966, I pleaded with Commissioner Walter Kennedy to review the case. I asked him to talk to Molinas and Hacken and the detectives involved. And got nowhere.”
Doing his own investigating, Litman by 1963 was able to demolish other rumors about Hawkins—one being that college recruiters had obtained white lovemates for him. Another break came when Litman learned that the now-defunct American Basketball League had checked up on Connie. The ABL gave him a clean bill. Abe Saperstein’s Globetrotters did the same—with the same results.
“So then, in 1966, I threw a $6 million suit at the NBA and, although we were in an onus probandi situation—the burden of proof was on us—I thought it would wake them up,” explains the peppery Litman. Like hell it did. The Hawk, as Connie is often called, had to join the shaky new American Basketball Association and perform before crowds of 1,500.
“I can’t speak for Commissioner Kennedy nor for the other NBA owners,” said Richard Bloch, president of the Phoenix Suns not long ago. “As for me, when we signed Hawkins, I apologized to him for what had been done.”
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Insiders are sure the apology never would have been uttered, but for the antitrust lawsuit and the loss, or threatened loss, of NBA greats jumping to the other loop. Such greats as: Rick Barry, Zelmo Beaty, Dave Bing, Billy Cunningham, and John Havlicek. To land Hawkins would be a powerful counterblow. War flamed hotter every day. The ABA, signing 60 percent of its college draft picks in 1969, began to cut into the NBA’s receipts. Although the latter always before had spurned Hawkins because he was tainted, suddenly last March, the wind shifted.
Totally discouraged, Hawkins was sitting in the office of Bill Erickson, owner of the Minnesota Pipers of the ABA. He was getting $15,000 per season under a no-option contract from the Pipers, nowhere near what he was worth. But where else did he have to go?
Phoning Dave Litman, Erickson said, “I have Connie here with me, and we’d like to work out a deal for next season.”
Replied Litman, “Mail me the offer. I’ll consider it. Connie isn’t sure what he’ll do.”
“Sure, he’s sure,” said Erickson. “What are you trying to tell me—that the NBA wants him?”
Everyone but Litman knew this was impossible. Asking to speak to Hawkins, the attorney warned him to sign nothing and told him to prepare for a Los Angeles trip.
Hawkins did as he was told, but he was understandably pessimistic. He felt he had proven himself innocent. He had not known Molinas was a gambler; he had not participated in any game fixing or point shaving; and he hadn’t even introduced Molinas to any players. He had borrowed $200 from Molinas to meet an urgent need in his desperately poor family, but he had paid it back within a very short time. In spite of all this, the NBA still refused to lift its ban.
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Playing for the Rens, the Globetrotters, and finally the Pipers, Connie was earning a small fraction of what the NBA would have paid him. And Hawkins was carrying a heavy load. He was supporting a mother, who is blind, along with a wife and two children.
Then the miracle happened. It wasn’t a real instant-type miracle, of course. It was the result of eight years’ hard work by attorney Litman and a number of other factors. But it was miracle enough for Connie Hawkins.
It was June 19, 1969. Hawkins was in Los Angeles, broke and scuffling, wandering the streets. Somewhere else in that city, the NBA Board of Governors was holding a meeting. The decision reached by that meeting made Connie Hawkins rich.
Attorney Litman had made two other trips to Los Angeles earlier that month. Each time, the NBA seemed on the verge of making a deal with him, and each time it had fallen through. As he was getting off the plane in Pittsburgh after the second trip, he received an urgent call at the airport. It was from Richard Bloch of the Phoenix Suns. Bloch told Litman the league was ready to move and implored him to get the next plane back to the coast.
When Litman got to Los Angeles, he discovered that Commissioner Walter Kennedy had interrupted a Far-Eastern tour and flown in from Hawaii. Top representatives from every club were at the meeting. Things were about to happen. It took almost all night before a final agreement was reached, but at 5 AM Connie Hawkins got good news.
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He was a millionaire. At the age of 27, he was better than a millionaire. An organization which he’d never believed would do business with him had paid Connie, in cash money, in a prepaid annuity, and in a guaranteed salary spread over five seasons, close to $1.5 million. Included was almost $300,000 in cash [equal to about $2.5 million today].
Within seven months from that date, he’d receive another $80,000 for his first year’s services, part of a $400,000 salary package.
When he turns 45 years old, he will be paid $25,000 annually for the next 24 years, or $600,000.
The contract was with the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and the NBA itself—the latter being a group which had proclaimed the day never would dawn when any such tool of the underworld as C. Hawkins would wear an NBA suit.
With still other benefits added, the deal was better than Lew Alcindor’s earlier reported $1.3 million contract with the Milwaukee Bucks, which made it one of the biggest deals ever negotiated in sports. The size of it wasn’t what left Hawkins numb and speechless. It was the fact that it happened at all. From 5 AM on, for several hours, he couldn’t talk. He could only sit, weeping.
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Now, Hawkins is proving to fans what basketball insiders have always known. He is one of the half dozen or so players who really deserve the appellation superstar—a leaping, twisting, 6-feet-8, one-hand shot specialist for whom it may not be too late to join the Wests, Robertsons, Reeds, Baylors, and Chamberlains at the very top.
Since Connie was a teenager, many people have known he had that kind of ability. When the present season started and he suited up with the Phoenix Suns, Connie wasn’t bitter, but—of all things—grateful. “People think I should feel revenge,” he said recently, warming up to play the New York Knicks, “but I don’t. I can’t do any gloatin,’ because the odds were thousands to one against me. When I was on the outside, I had nothin’. Now, my family is set for life, and the thing I’ve always wanted, bein’ in the best competition there is, has come true.”
Civil rights activists have tried to use him to advantage, but he’ll have none of it. The Hawk won’t crow because he believes in love and non-militancy. His words come quietly, soberly. “Listen, I been out on the cold street with a blind mamma at home and a daddy who disappeared when I was a little kid. This is a hard world, where something is always lookin’ to hurt you. Sure, I suffered a lot when they made me out a crook and ruled me off. I was so ashamed. I didn’t come out of the house for months. But the main thing is: When you get a break, appreciate it. Don’t knock it.”
Gripping a practice ball one-handed, he did a couple of left and right fakes, also one-handed, and popped a 20-footer through the net. At no time did his left hand touch the ball. Wilt Chamberlain says of him, “He’s the only guy in the world, besides me, who can completely palm the ball. He can do anything on the court. Hawkins is one of the three best basketball players I ever saw.”
Lew Alcindor has gone further with: “I never saw anybody better. Hawk could have been All-NBA at any of three positions long ago—if they’d let him.”
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This reflects general opinion. Coaches can’t say enough about a flash-quick man who palms with a pair of hands longer and broader than those of most seven footers. Connie’s hooks measure nearly 10 inches from the base of the palm to the fingertips, and he can whip a pass which sizzles—either hand, Globetrotter style—between his legs to a teammate 50 feet away. He can start a pass and bring it back after it’s well on the way. He bounces the sphere in front of him and spins it back to his hand—reverse English. Fans come up yelling at such stunts. “That may look like comedy,” says San Diego Rockets coach Jack McMahon, “but he happens to be the best feeder in the business.”
Yet his willingness to forgive and forget surprises many critics. “Connie’s a kind man, to begin with. And he’s used to being hurt,” points out Paul Silas, the Phoenix Suns rebounding star. “One time, a few years ago in Louisville, Kentucky, he was sitting in a hotel lobby. A woman guest came up, shoved her bags at him, and told Connie to put ‘em in her car. He gave her a ‘yes, Ma’am,’ just like the bellhop she took him to be, and went and did it.”
Last September, a restaurant waiter kept calling Hawkins “boy.” His teammates furiously demanded that he slap down the waiter. Connie delayed until the meal ended, then said, “Please don’t call me ‘boy,’ because I’m all grown up now.” As the waiter stiffly walked away, he whispered to a friend, “I hope I didn’t hurt his feelings.”
The late Harlem Globetrotters’ owner Abe Saperstein, who employed the Hawk, during four of his years in exile, once remarked, “He’s got so much faith in this country that the American Legion should put him on posters.”
But while he’s been stoic in acceptance of his lot, when the tip-off comes, number 42 for the Suns turns into a tough brawler—socking it to them on the defensive board, banging bodies around at the other end. This despite the fact that he is one of the lightest 6-feet-8 men in history. At 200 to 205 pounds, he gives away 30 to 50 pounds to opponents, without being outmuscled. Hawkins is so bone-thin that you expect to see powerful guards break his backbone.
Yet, cradling the ball in one hand, he crashes through to the hoop, fending off the monsters with a revolving vicious forearm which doesn’t mind how many teeth it removes. Having that free arm makes all the difference. While he’s beating them off with it, he’s jockeying to perform one of the game’s highest leaps, one enabling him to touch the backboard 14 inches above the rim. With just an easy running hop, he can stuff two-pointers. In situations where he’s jammed in tight and needs shooting room, it’s nothing for the Hawk to explode upward, plant both knees on the guard’s back, force the man over to form a level platform, and while riding him, dunk in a basket.
He’s some kind of playmaker, too. “Generating a five-man attack is a dying art,” observes Bob Cousy with disgust. Cousy, the former backcourt great now coaching the Cincinnati Royals, remarks: “Today, all guys want to do is score and score, and most of the assists they get really are only bailout deals, where they can’t get the basket and pass off. Phoenix has been a poor ballclub, but now with Hawkins, they’ve got a tremendous two-way threat. He can mix it and score—or he can draw two defenders with him, and then, bang, hit the open man. It’s called floormanship—and you can’t win without at least one man who has it.”
A pass from the Hawk is creative and like no other. He’s a trick-play Globetrotter with all the other pro skills. Against Cincinnati, one night this winter, he blocked a shot at his basket and retrieved the ball in the corner. Fastbreaking downcourt, he encountered pressure at the center line. He faked a pass left, then flipped a blindside pass to the right to forward Jerry Chambers. At no time had he even glanced at Chambers. The ball returned to him. Dribbling behind his back, he moved in to within 15 feet of the hoop, went up—and whipped a pass between his scissored legs to Silas, who was clear.
Silas missed. Outleaping 6-feet-11 Connie Dierking, Hawkins one-handed the rebound and, in the same movement without looking, hit guard Gail Goodrich, who scored. Phoenix beat the Royals by two points on a last-second assist from Hawkins.
Early this winter, Connie was averaging 20-plus points per contest although double guarded and coming off a recent knee operation and a tonsilitis attack. This was nothing like the 40 – and 50- point nights he had with the ABA’s Minnesota Pipers in previous years, but it was remarkable considering that he hadn’t yet “learned” the opposition, and the Suns weren’t much help.
”My tonsils cause trouble all the time,” Connie was saying later in the season. “No money at home to have them pulled when I was young. We lived partly on relief after my old man walked out on the family. My mother raised six kids, workin’ at jobs all the time, but she worried so much about things that she got what they call obesity. She weighs over 300 pounds today. Then she got glaucoma and went blind in 1962.”
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His boyhood home on Lexington Avenue was in one of the worst slum areas of Brooklyn. It was a neighborhood of whores, junkies, numbers runners, and pimps. Now all that is behind him.
Hawkins’ first move with his new bankroll was to buy a $50,000 home for wife Nancy and children in the Point Breeze section of Pittsburgh. From a cheap flat, they moved into a four bedroom-and-den with stereo, air conditioning, patio—the works. The Hawk added two new cars. He took care of the financial problems of his brothers and sister. Flying to Pittsburgh, he told his hospitalized mother, whom he calls “Sweetcakes,” that he was purchasing her a new home, which she might even be able to see—for now, surgery on her blind eyes, never before to be afforded, was possible and would be performed.
“Anything you want, Sweetcakes,” said the Hawk from Lexington Avenue, leaning over her bed and putting her hands in one of his huge ones. “You can have anything in the world you want.”
Dorothy “Sweetcakes” Hawkins knew what she wanted. “Just one thing, Connie,” she told him. “Don’t ever again take any $10 meals from some stranger you meet in the park!”
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