Connie Hawkins, Pioneering N.B.A. Hall of Famer, Dies at 75
Hawkins played one season in the American Basketball League
and two seasons with the Globetrotters and was a star in his two seasons in the American Basketball Association, which later merged with the N. B.A.
“Evidence recently uncovered,” Mr. Wolf wrote, “indicates
that Connie Hawkins never knowingly associated with gamblers, that he never introduced a player to a fixer, and that the only damaging statements about his involvement were made by Hawkins himself — as a terrified, semiliterate teenager who thought he’d go to jail unless he said what the D. A.’s detectives pressed him to say.”
On Hawkins’s behalf, Roslyn Litman, a civil liberties activist, along with her husband
and law partner, S. David Litman, and another lawyer, Howard Specter, sued the N. B.A.
Connie Hawkins, a high-flying basketball sensation who was molded on the playgrounds of New York and later inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame,
but whose career was unjustly derailed when the N. B.A.
He became one of the finest players in New York City high school basketball history
when he starred in Brooklyn and was chosen as a first-team all-American.
Going back to his years as a playground legend, Hawkins had the kind of jaw-dropping flash
that superstars like Elgin Baylor, Julius Erving and Michael Jordan would display, turning pro basketball into a national sports spectacular.
Comments
Comments are disabled for this post.