Up Close With PSR
Connie Hawkins

Perhaps the greatest New York City playground legend ever, Connie Hawkins is without a doubt one the greatest basketball player to have ever passed through the city of Pittsburgh. He left the University of Iowa in his freshman year when he was linked to a bribery scandal. It was never proven (or even suggested) that Hawkins accepted money, but he was charged with the indiscretion of "failing to report a bribe" and blackballed from the NBA. He was later found to have done nothing wrong. He came to Pittsburgh at age 19 and was named Most Valuable Player of the American Basketball League with the Pittsburgh Rens. After spending 1964 to 1966 with the Harlem Globetrotters, he returned to Pittsburgh for the inaugural season of the American Basketball Association (ABA), where he was named league MVP after leading the Pittsburgh Pipers to their only league title in 1967. Hawkins finally entered the NBA in 1969 and played seven NBA seasons with Phoenix, Los Angeles and Atlanta. The Brooklyn native was enshrined into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame on May 11, 1992.

PSR associate editor Tony DeFazio recently caught up with Hawkins, who works for the Phoenix Suns as a community relations representative, to talk about his career, his time in Pittsburgh, and his thoughts on the NBA stars of today.

PSR: You came to the ABL in 1961 and immediately won the league's MVP award. Given everything you had been through prior to arriving in Pittsburgh, was that an enjoyable season for you?

HAWK: I wouldn't really say it was enjoyable. It was the first time I was in that kind of a situation. I was just a young kid, basically out of high school, playing basketball against grown men. I was nervous – I was just too young to know that I was nervous. My body was not totally developed at that point, and I was going head-to-head against men. I was just trying to survive. I was very happy to be there, though. I was pretty much blackballed from the NBA. I had a family to think about; and I had to earn a living. I had to feed my family and all I knew how to do was play basketball, so it was a great opportunity.

PSR: After a stint with the Harlem Globetrotters, you returned to Pittsburgh with the Pipers of the ABA. You won the league championship and again took home MVP honors. What was it like having that much success playing basketball in a decidedly non-basketball town?

HAWK: My perspective on that is purely as an athlete. I played because I enjoyed it. The fact that were no fans in the stands – it wasn't just Pittsburgh that had trouble drawing fans, it was like that throughout the league – didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game. I was playing the game that I love and I was getting paid. My job was to play basketball. Most people who know about doing something they love for a job would understand how fortunate that type of situation is.

PSR: In between those two stints in Pittsburgh, you played with the Harlem Globetrotters. What was that like?

HAWK: The greatest thrill of my life. I was just a young kid from Brooklyn. I had never been anywhere except across the Brooklyn Bridge, and here I am wearing a Globetrotter's jersey and literally traveling across the globe. We traveled to Europe, Asia. . . all around the world, learning about different lands, different people, different cultures, different languages, different food. It truly opened a whole new world for me. I know now what the term "culturally deprived" really means now. Once you go and see what I saw, you are never the same. I met the Pope, I met Nikita Kruschov. . . visited Rome, Athens, Jerusalem, Nazareth. . . places I used to read about in school and now I was there myself.

PSR: Any specific memories from your days with the 'Trotters?

HAWK: Oh my yes, too many to get into, but I can try. . . playing in Rome for Pope Pius – I don't recall which one – is a pretty vivid memory. We were right in the Vatican, and he was the only audience. Just one guy. . . we'd be doing our tricks and stuff, and we'd all look up to see if he was laughing. He never did crack a smile even, but he was nodding his head occasionally. I guess that meant he was enjoying himself. The next day, after playing for an audience of one, we played in a coliseum in Athens for 100,000. We played in a bullring in Spain, right there on top of cow-dung.

PSR: You didn't join the NBA until you were almost in your late 20s. Do you ever look at your years from 1961 until 1969 as "lost years"? Any bitterness or regrets about the way things worked out after what happened at Iowa?

HAWK: No, just the opposite, in fact. I never played college basketball, so I needed the experience. People said I was disadvantaged, or that I missed out in some way – when I did get to the NBA, I played with all the superstars and held my own. I made the Rookie Team, the All-Star Team, all the teams I was supposed to make, so I didn't understand what it was that I lost. Now if I had never got there, I would have been bitter. But I made it, and I have no bitterness. I got to play with all the greats, and I was just as good as most of them, so I have no regrets. Actually, the only regret I DO have is that I was left off the NBA's 50 Greatest Players. I think I deserved to be on there. . . but I'm sure there are a lot of others who feel the same way.

PSR: Do you think the fact that you played only seven seasons in the league had anything to do with your omission?

HAWK: Well, no, because Shaq made it, and at the time he hadn't been in the league even that long. But who knows, if they voted again today, Scottie Pippen wouldn't be on it, so I guess that's just the way it goes.

PSR: Okay, you brought him up, so let's talk about Shaq and his place in basketball history. Now that he has three rings, I think it's a legitimate question: where does he rank with the great big men of all-time, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell?

HAWK: Well I'm biased I guess. But the fact as I see it is that Wilt is the greatest center, basketball player, and athlete of all time. Look at his stats. Can Shaq duplicate Any of that? Another guy who seems to have gotten buried under some of today's players is Oscar Robertson. He averaged a triple-double over an entire season – how great is that? People get all excited when Magic and Bird started to do it occasionally – Oscar Robertson did it for an entire season! Two others who are under-appreciated are Tiny Archibald, who led the league in scoring and assists in the same season. No one has done that since. And Pete Maravich – watch Pistol Pete on film if you ever get the chance. He does things on film that guys still can't do today.

PSR: You are often referred to as a playground legend. There always seemed to be some mystique in that – what does it mean to be a playground legend?

HAWK: I wear it as a compliment. Most players all started on some sort of playground. Or school yard or whatever. . . each city has their own playground legends, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia. . . and a lot of those guys never made it. Earl Manigoat – The Goat – is probably one of the most famous playground legends, and he never made it big. So there is sort of a mystique about it I guess. . . but "Connie Hawkins, school yard legend" – I can live with that.

PSR: Are you at peace with what happened at Iowa?

HAWK: I'm at peace. Basically, I look at like this: if A didn't lead to B, and B to C, I'd have got to D. I owe a lot to Ross and Dave Littman – if I don't come to Pittsburgh and meet the Littmans, I never get to the NBA. They helped get me set-up and started, and they helped clear my name. They talked to me about a guy named David Wolf, who was writing an article for Life Magazine. The Littmans set that up. David Wolf and I talked, and after he heard my side of the story, he said, "Well if what you are telling me is right, then you never did anything wrong." I said that was what I had been telling everyone, but no one seemed to really care. David Wolf wrote an article that cleared my name and really paved the way for me to get the NBA. I owe that all to the Littmans.

PSR: Are there any other memories of your time in Pittsburgh that stand out?

HAWK: The championship game that first year. We were playing the New Orleans Buccaneers for the championship, and game 7 was at the Civic Arena. We couldn't have averaged more than about 1500 fans per game, maximum, that entire season. But I got there early to get taped and all that, and I was walking through the tunnel about two hours before game time, with my head down, and I heard this rumbling. I looked up and there must have been 8 or 10 thousand people there already. I walked into the locker room asking, "Where the hell did all these people come from?" and I kept asking that same question. . . by game time the place was packed. That was special. The irony is I run into people from time to time from Pittsburgh, and they all say the same thing – "Hey Hawk, I was there when the Pipers won the ABA Championship." I think that crowd, which was probably about 15 or 16 thousand, has grown to over 100,000!