Connie Hawkins, the first Phoenix Suns player to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, has died. He was 75.
He was nicknamed “The Hawk” as much for his soaring, gravity-defying swoops to the basket as a play on his name, but most basketball fans never saw the best of Hawkins. In a social media, YouTube and “SportsCenter” generation, Hawkins would have been a sensation. But in the mid-1960s, the best Hawkins highlights played out in the shadows.
A New York playground legend, Hawkins was banished from the University of Iowa after his freshman year, and he was blocked from entering the NBA because of a questionable connection to the central figure in a point-shaving scandal.