The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame :: Connie Hawkins
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Pittsburgh Sports Legends - Connie Hawkins
- Thread starter Alphalion75
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Was fortunate to see him play for the Pittsburgh Pipers when they won the first ABA championship. The Pipers were lucky to get 4000 fans for a game in the old Civic Arena.
He had large hands and he would grab the basketball with one hand before making a move to the basket.
He had large hands and he would grab the basketball with one hand before making a move to the basket.
He was one of my 3 favorite players along with Dr. J and Pistol Pete.
Hawkins would have put up astronomical numbers in the NBA if he had been able to start when he was 21. He would have been another Baylor.
The Pipers played a rare exhibition game in Altoona at the Jaffa Mosque. I was able to see him play that night. Huge presence on the court.
Yinz missed the good stuff. Hawk also played for the Pittsburgh Rens (short for Renaissance) in the ABL, a precursor of the ABA. One of the featured players was Bucky Bolyard, a one-eyed point guard. In college, Bolyard was a backcourt mate of Jerry West on the WVU team that was the NCAA runner up to Cal in the 1959 tournament.
Hawk continued to live in Pittsburgh, even after the Pipers moved to Minnesota for a year, until a few years after he joined Phoenix. He'd coach yout teams in the summer and would also show up and occasionally participate in games at some of the outdoor courts in town.
Read Foul: the Connie Hawkins story when I was a teenager. Good read. Great player.
Yes, “Foul!” by David Wolf. Very good read. Hawkins grew up dirt poor in Bedford-Stuyvesant, pretty much functionally illiterate. (This is my recollection of the book. I would welcome any corrections.) It was a disgrace that he got blacklisted, just a total miscarriage of justice.
Hawkins could shoot better than Doc. Hawk grew up with Roger Brown, remember, a superlative shooter.
Remember those Rens days as well. I'm in an extremely small minority here in Pittsburgh, but I'd take having an NBA team over the NHL in a second. I had zero interest in the Hornets in those days, so the Pens weren't going to change that.
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