Connie Hawkins
10.17.2006 - Updated on 08.2.2006
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Connie Hawkins
Date of Birth:17 July 1942
Born At:Brooklyn, NY USA
Height: 6’5"
NBA Experience : 7 seasons
Career accomplishments
- ABL All-Star First Team with the Rens (1962)
- ABL MVP at the age of 19 (1962)
- Named ABA MVP in its inaugural season, after leading the Pipers to the first ABA championship while averaging 26.8 ppg (league leader) and 13.5 rpg (1968)
- ABA All-Star First Team (1968, 1969)
- First Phoenix Sun ever named to NBA First Team (1970)
- First Phoenix Sun elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame
- Four-time NBA All-Star (1970-73)
- All-NBA First Team (1970)
- Team MVP (Phoenix Suns-1971)
- NBA career average 16.5 ppg and 8.0 rpg
- When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired, he listed Hawkins as one of the top 15 players he had played with, and against, in his 20-year NBA career
Connie Hawkins biography
Hawkins was known as one of the first players capable of swooping, soaring flights to the hoop, followed by acrobatic, throw-down dunks.
His career was limited when as a freshman at University of Iowa, he was implicated in a gambling and point-shaving scandal in New York. Though Hawkins was not arrested or indicted, he was linked to the scandal and therefore prohibited from continuing his college career or joining an NBA team.
Hawkins initially toured the world with the Harlem Globetrotters. Then at age 19, played for the Pittsburgh Rens of the American Basketball League and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. Hawkins joined the Pittsburgh Pipers in the inaugural 1967-68 season of the American Basketball Association, leading the team to a 54-24 regular-season record and the ABA championship.
With Hawkins star power secured in the ABA, combined with a lawsuit against the NBA as well as high profile positive publicity, NBA Commissioner J. Walter Kennedy lifted the ban against Hawkins after settling his antitrust suit for more than $1 million. Hawkins then played 7 additional seasons in the NBA for the Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, and Atlanta Hawks.
Connie Hawkins was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992. He currently works in community relations with the Suns.
