We’ve talked before about how Connie Hawkins was mistreated by the basketball establishment. He came out of New York City’s Boys High School and accepted a scholarship to Iowa in 1960, only to get caught up in a point shaving scandal that he clearly had no part of.
It was based in and around New York though and he was ultimately expelled from Iowa and no other school would take him, and the NBA blackballed him when he was eligible for the 1964 draft.
He played in the ABL, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the ABA for several years before moving to the NBA in 1969 when the league concluded it would lose a lawsuit he had filed against it.
People had seen bits and glimpses of his genius, and in the videos we’ve seen and shared here, we’ve seen some of it.
This video really shows how far ahead of his time he was. One of the more amazing things in this video comes about :15 seconds in. Look at what he’s doing here. We’ve never seen anyone do that. Not Wilt, not Dr. J, no Michael, not anyone.
Part of that is because of his enormous hands and part of it is just his innate creativity that NBA players weren’t prepared for in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
It’s tempting to wonder what might have happened had he been drafted with his class in 1964. The first pick of that draft went to the Los Angeles Lakers who took UCLA’s Walt Hazzard.
If the Lakers had taken Hawkins, they would have added him to to a team that had Elgin Baylor and Jerry West. Those guys were good enough to challenge the Boston Celtics dynasty. If they had had another freak athlete to pair with Baylor, they might have broken the dynasty.
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