Hawkins, "Connie" (Cornelius L.)
Basketball
b. July 17, 1942, Brooklyn, NY
Hawkins was a playground basketball legend as a teen-ager in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. Jerry Harkness, who played for the NBA's Indiana Pacers, remembered seeing Hawkins in a pickup game against Wilt Chamberlain when he was still in high school: "Believe me, Connie more than held his own. . . . He was doing all the Doctor J moves fifteen years before anyone ever heard of Julius Erving."
After leading Brooklyn Boys High School to two city championships, he won a scholarship to the University of Iowa in 1960. But he lost his scholarship in his freshman year because of alleged links to a gambler convicted of fixing games. The NCAA wouldn't allow another school to give him a scholarship, and the NBA wouldn't allow him to play for any of its teams, though no criminal charge was ever brought against him.
Hawkins joined the Pittsburgh Rens of the new American Basketball League for the 1961/62 season, averaging 27.5 points a game, leading the team to the ABL championship, and winning the league's most valuable player award. Then the ABL folded during its second season and he went to the Harlem Globetrotters.
When the American Basketball Association was formed in 1967, Hawkins left the Globetrotters for the ABA's Pittsburgh Pipers. He averaged 26.8 points a game, his team again won the league championship, and he was again named most valuable player.
In the meantime, Hawkins had filed a suit against the NBA for not letting him play. The suit was settled out of court in 1969. He got $1 million and the right to play in the NBA. He joined the league's Phoenix Suns after averaging 30.2 points a game with his ABA team, which had moved to Minnesota.
At twenty-seven, Hawkins had an outstanding "rookie" season in the NBA. He was the first Phoenix player ever named a first-team all-star and he averaged 24.6 points a game, sixth in the league. But his knees were going bad, in part no doubt because of all the games he'd played on hard playground pavements. Hawkins played six more seasons before retiring. Despite his knee problems, he appeared in four NBA All-Star games.
In 616 professional games, Hawkins scored 11,628 points, an average of 18.9 a game, and had 5,450 rebounds.