R.I.P. Connie Hawkins, 1942 - 2017
In 1946, the very year a bunch of arena owners launched the Basketball Association of America, a twenty-something schoolteacher in Harlem launched a youth basketball league at a local playground.
Fast-forward about 15 years:
There were maybe four, five thousand people watching the game, and all of a sudden a hush came over them. All you could hear was a whisper: ‘The Hawk, The Hawk, The Hawk is here.’ Then the crowd parted. And the Hawk walked onto the court. [Axthelm’s The City Game]
Sadly, the visionary and community-minded young educator –
whose name was Holcombe Rucker – was not among the assembled multitude when
Connie Hawkins evoked such admiration. (Mr. Rucker’s “village” lost him to
cancer in 1955.)
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| Prescott (AZ) Evening Courier, Nov. 12, 1970 |
And Friday we lost The Hawk, whose tale is so rife with
tragic “what might have beens” that ol’ Will Shakespeare himself must be
salivating at such tragically heroic possibility.
A high school as well as schoolyard legend, Connie Hawkins’
promising college career (he’d have been a teammate of five-time Celtic
champion Don Nelson) was de-railed by a casual “shoulder-brush” with a shady
character named Jack Molinas – likewise his shot at the NBA.
Between upstart leagues (ABL, ABA) and the Globetrotters,
Hawk kept playing until he was able to “sue” his way into the NBA in 1969,
posting a stat line of 24, 14 and 7 as a 27-year-old-rookie. (Ironically,
Connie and fellow-New Yorker Lew Alcindor joined the league together.)
Connie Hawkins made his Boston Garden debut late in that initial
season, on Tuesday February 10, 1970. The Hawk’s reputation had preceded him
to Beantown. Among that night’s assembled multitude – alas, it was a school
night, so yours truly had to wait a couple of weeks – was none other than Bill
Russell, making his first post-retirement Garden appearance.
Game has always known Game.
