Episode 4: Connie Non Grata

Back in Brooklyn, 19-year-old Connie Hawkins is a basketball pariah. Unjustly exiled, he can't even get into a pickup game due to his tainted name. That all changes after a legendary showdown with Wilt Chamberlain at Rucker Park, putting him back on the map. When a spite-fueled rival league — the ABL — launches, Connie gets another chance. Will the new league be his salvation or just another dead end?

CREDITS

Created by: Bo Belanger

Written and Produced by: Bo Belanger

Theme Song: "Blame" by Gabriels

Music: Bo Belanger and Udio

VO: Shawn Hawkins, Bo Belanger and ElevenLabs

Sound Design and Mix: Dave Wagg and Collin Thomas

Art: Lincoln Lopes

Special Thanks: Shawn Hawkins, Dave Wolf, Charley Rosen and Kristen Farnam Belanger

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:24

Welcome back to Connie and Jack, a rigged game. This is episode four, Connie Nongrata. In this episode, we'll pick back up with our oversized underdog who was unjustly booted from the University of Iowa in the spring of 1961. Back in Brooklyn, Connie can't even get into a pickup game because his name was tainted and guys wanted no part of him, even though he was innocent.

SPEAKER_11 1:01

19-year-old Connie was ashamed to leave his mother Dorothy's apartment. The Mount Vernon Register News summarized his situation years later, saying, No charges were ever filed against him, but the implications were damaging enough.

SPEAKER_09 1:14

None of the 250 colleges which dangled scholarships in front of him the year before bothered to call and offer him a second chance. Survival itself, says Connie, was a frustrating experience.

SPEAKER_11 1:26

Dorothy believed in her son's innocence and told him to remain faithful, that things would turn around. Close friends like Eddie Simmons and Jackie Jackson also believed he was innocent. But those three, plus some other relatives, was the extent of this support group, as Jackie Jackson recalled the ebony magazine.

SPEAKER_07 1:43

Nobody would have anything to do with Hawk. His own people looked down on him. It's a wonder he didn't turn to dope like half his old neighborhood.

SPEAKER_11 1:51

It was a lonely existence for Connie. And the biggest question was, how would he earn a living if he didn't play ball? Of course, this was the predicament that thousands of kids face. They go all in on a sport because they're great, just not good enough for the pros. But if you've moved all your chips in on that sport, then what? What are you left holding? A 2-7 offsuit? Jack Olson wrote about this dilemma in his 1968 SI series, The Black Athlete A Shameful Story, saying, Sport becomes a black man's raison d'être, or reason for existence, and all too often it is a savagely misleading one.

SPEAKER_09 2:28

The black athlete who fails to become a Wilt Chamberlain or an Elgin Baylor or an Oscar Robertson finds himself competing for employment in an economic market that has little use for the breakaway dribble and the fadeaway jumper.

A Game Not Forgotten

SPEAKER_11 2:42

Melvin Rogers told Olson, a white kid tries to become President of the United States, and all the skills and knowledge he picks up on the way can be used in a thousand different jobs. A black kid tries to become Willie Mays, and all the tools he picks up on the way are useless to him if he doesn't become Willie Mays. Connie was different than most, of course. More tragic because he actually had the skills to be the next Elgin or Wilt. In fact, they said he was both those players rolled into one, but he wasn't getting a shot. He had a winning lotto ticket that he couldn't cash. Hell, back in the summer of 61, he just wanted to get into a game, burn off some energy, a little summertime cooking, but again, nobody would play against him because they were afraid their name would get tainted too, until an extra large man did Connie an extra large favor. The Rucker Tournament in 1961 was played out of court on 7th Avenue between 128th and 129th Streets. Holcomb Rucker, a Harlem teacher, had started the summer basketball tournament a decade earlier, 1950, to help poor youngsters in the neighborhood pursue college careers, and it worked. Hundreds of kids got scholarships off the tourney. Plus, it was home to the best run in the summer. Holcomb would die young from cancer in 1964, but he lived to see his tournament become a big success. Connie showed up that summer representing the Brooklyn team with Eddie and Jackie. The question was, would anyone play against them? He was nervous, and to rattle his nerves more, their first game was against Wilt Chamberlain. The Dipper, one of Connie's idols. Connie showed up late to the game. Perhaps he overslept. Maybe he was nervous of Wilt's reaction. Pat Smith recalls this game in Pete Axhelm's The City Game, saying, It was the kind of game that established citywide reputations.

SPEAKER_09 4:42

Clinton Robinson was playing. Jackie Jackson was there. So was Wilt Chamberlain, who was in his first or second year of Pro Bowl at the time. Chamberlain and Robinson were on the same team along with some other greats, and they were ahead by about 15 points. They looked like easy winners. Then, up in the tree, I heard a strange noise. 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.

SPEAKER_10 5:18

Haxhelm writes, The Hawk was Connie Hawkins. When you ask ghetto basketball fans to cite the very best players ever to come out of New York, you find much disagreement, but a few names are invariably included, and one of them is the Hawk. Yet for years he seemed fated to become one of those virtually forgotten playground stars who never earned the money or fame they deserve. At the time of the game Smith described, Hawkins was a year or two out of boys high, a man without a team or league. Yet he was a magnetic star in Harlem.

SPEAKER_11 5:52

Smith continues saying. It was a great relief to Connie. At last, it was game on. All the pent-up stress, he could now channel through the game he loved. And it was an outpouring of craft that few who were there that day would ever forget. Again, Pat Smith from the City Game.

SPEAKER_09 6:37

Connie got the ball, picked up speed, and started his first move. Chamberlain came right out to stop him. The Hawk went up. He was still way out beyond the foul line and started floating toward the basket. Wilt, taller and stronger, stayed right with him. But then the Hawk hooked-dunked the ball right over Chamberlain. He hooked dunked. Nobody had ever done anything like that to Wilt. The crowd went so crazy that they had to stop the game for five minutes. And I almost fell out of the tree.

SPEAKER_12 7:06

Connie told the New York Times, after my hook dunk, Jackie told me to let Wilt take that fade-away one-hander that banked high off the backboard. And when Wilt put the ball up there, Jackie leaped and trapped it, pinning it against the backboard. Everybody hollered and screamed. But Wilt called timeout. Wilt didn't say anything, but when we looked over, we could see him glaring at us. Pat Smith again.

SPEAKER_09 7:33

Then it was Chamberlain's turn to get back. Wilt usually took it pretty easy in summer games, walking up and down the court and doing just enough to intimidate his opponents with his seven-foot body. But now his pride was hurt, his manhood wounded. And you can't let that happen in a tough street game. So he came down, drove directly at the hoop, and went up over the hawk. Wilt stuffed the ball with two hands, and he did it so hard that he almost ripped the backboard off the pole.

SPEAKER_12 8:02

Connie said, The next 10 times down the court, Wilt said, Gimme the ball. And he dunked it every time. Hard. One time he dunked the ball so hard it bounced up over a 15-foot fence. Wilt didn't like being shown up.

SPEAKER_11 8:20

Pat Smith continues.

SPEAKER_09 8:23

By then, everybody on the court was fired up, and it was time for the Hawk to take charge again. Clinton Robinson came toward him with the ball, throwing those crazy moves on anyone who tried to stop him. And then he tried to loft a layup way up onto the board. Only the Hawk was up there waiting for it. He was up so high that he blocked the shot with his chest. Still in mid-air, he kind of swept his hands down across his chest, as if he were wiping his shirt, and he slammed the ball down at Robinson's feet. That was the Hawk. Just beautiful. I don't think anybody who was in that crowd could ever forget that game.

The Spite League

SPEAKER_11 8:57

As legendary as that game became, with all the unforgettable moments, all that mattered to Connie was that Wilt played against him. He remained forever grateful to Wilt. Wilt was always his own man, not caring what people said about Connie. He formed his own opinions. And after that, Connie was good. Nobody had issues playing with him or against him. The power of Wilt. Connie took advantage. His game played with an extra edge that summer. A heat wave hit New York in late July, the summer asphalt court sizzling. But nothing slowed Connie. He traveled around the boroughs and routinely gave NBA guys with business. Reality, though, set in for Connie in late August. His running mates had lives get back to. Jackie was going back to school like all the other college players, and Ed was going to play in the Eastern League. All the pros were going back to the NBA. Connie had nothing. Fortunately for Connie, a short Jewish man 800 miles away in Chicago ran into misfortune. His name was Abe Saperstein. He stood barely 5'3. One writer described him as a bowling ball in a suit. But what he lacked in inches, he made up for an ambition. He was owner of the Globetrotters, and he thought he had a deal with the NBA. After years of pumping up their gates with his more popular Globetrotter teams, the league would repay him by giving him the LA franchise when they expanded west. Except they didn't. Frank DeFord wrote an SI.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

When Bob Short was permitted to shift the Minneapolis Lakers to LA, Saperstein was shattered by what he regarded as a double cross. In return, he literally refused to utter a word to some of his dearest NBA friends. And in retaliation, he went out and invented the American Basketball League.

SPEAKER_11 10:57

The ABL, not to be confused with the ABA six years later, was a spite league. It would have 18 from Philly to Hawaii. Imagine that road trip. Saperstein began raising money for franchises. These weren't some backroom big wig meetings. He put out help wanted as in newspapers. Like this one from the Madeira Tribune, titled Pittsburgh Rens of ABL in Need of Money, Man.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

The article read: A backer for the Pittsburgh Rens of the American Basketball League. Applicants can apply for franchise if they can show financial responsibility.

SPEAKER_11 11:37

Oh, how times have changed. Once Sapperstein found money for his teams, which he did, because Abe was a man who got stuff done, he needed talent. Lenny Littman, the ABL owner of the Pittsburgh Rens, invited Connie to a tryout. Dave Wolf tells the story in foul reading.

SPEAKER_09 11:55

The coach was Neil Johnston, who had coached Wilt the year before on the Philadelphia Warriors in the NBA. Johnston threw their best forward at Connie. Connie abused him. After five minutes, Johnston told Littman, this kid could be the greatest ever. Sign him.

SPEAKER_11 12:10

But there were two problems. Connie wasn't eligible because he hadn't completed four years of college, and his name was still tainted from the scandal. To clear the eligibility hurdle, Lippmann declared Connie a hardship case. As mentioned in episode one, Spencer Haywood made this rule famous ten years later when he won this exact case against the NBA. Littman's hardship case for Connie said that he couldn't go back to school because he was supporting his blind mother Dorothy, and so he needed to make a living. It worked. To clear Connie's tainted name, Lippmann made one phone call.

SPEAKER_10 12:44

Jimmy Miller wrote in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Littman contacted Ed Boyle, Allegheny County District Attorney, to check into Hawkins, and Boyle personally had chats with Frank Hogan, the New York DA, who was running the investigations into basketball fixes. Hogan assured Boyle that Hawkins at no time was wanted by his office, or that he would be indicted because there was no evidence that Connie was guilty of duplicity.

SPEAKER_11 13:09

All that was left for Lippmann to do was to sign Connie. Dave Wolf wrote about Lippmann traveling to Brooklyn to do just that and foul, saying, They found a reluctant cab driver to take them to Bedford Stuyvesant.

SPEAKER_09 13:22

Lenny said, his mother was practically blind. So we went to this apartment above a saloon, knocked on the door, and his brother Fred says, Come in. The brother is in bed with this wench. They're both naked. He turns over and Connie introduces us. Fred asks Connie if he wants him to sign the contract. And Connie nods. So Fred signs in the bed without even reading it. We went back to Connie's mother's apartment. There was no lock on the door. He just pushed it open. There must have been a hundred trophies in the living room, and a hi-fi and a bed. It was almost out of Dickens. Connie put the contract down and a roach walked over it.

SPEAKER_11 14:05

Connie would make$6,500 that year in the APL's inaugural season. Lippman and Connie went out that night and got hammered to celebrate. Connie told Lippmann he was a karate expert, and their night ended with owner and player rolling around the sidewalk outside the hotel wrestling.

SPEAKER_12 14:22

Connie said, I was feeling great. I was getting a chance to play ball. I know it wasn't much money, but I didn't have nothing else going for me. And shit, they were gonna pay me more than Iowa did.

SPEAKER_11 14:42

The ABL made a couple of innovations to basketball. Coming from the Globetrotters, Saperstein knew how to entertain. As a small guard in his playing days, he felt that the game was slipping away from the Lilla Guy. Increasingly, centers were too dominant. He invented what he called the home run shot, which we now know as the three-pointer. He consulted with Celtics great Bill Sharman, whom he recruited to coach the ABL's Los Angeles Jets. Sharman talked about this home run shot with the New York Times, saying, I told him I didn't think the name was appropriate for basketball.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Originally he wanted it out about two feet further than it is now. I told him it would be too hard, so we moved it in pretty much to where it is today.

SPEAKER_11 15:27

So Sakrerstein scrapped a name but kept the innovation. He also widened the lane from 12 feet to 18 feet to prevent centers from dominating the paint. The NBA would widen its paint to 16 feet soon after. And the three-pointer would be adopted into the NBA in, well, this is a good time for some pop-up trivia. In what year did the NBA adopt the three-point shot? The grand prize of pride is yours if you said 1979. Stefan Dame should petition to make Abe Saperstein's birthday a national holiday. Saperstein caught a ton of flack for changing the rules. Sam Smith wrote in the Chicago Tribune, Abe's wife, Sylvia told him.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Abe, the girls at Mahjong were talking again today about your league. It seems their husbands think you're doing a terrible thing. They want to know what right you've got to change the game. They say Dr. Naismith, whoever he is, made a basket two points. And what right do you have to add another?

SPEAKER_09 16:25

And Saperstein exploded. They don't understand. The little man is being forced out of the game, and somebody needs to do something. Abe's daughter, Eloise, said.

SPEAKER_11 16:47

Beyond the three-pointer and the wider pane, the other revelation that season was Connie.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Look around. So many smiles hand in the elder standard.

SPEAKER_11 16:59

First, he moved Dorothy and his younger brother Randy to a nicer apartment in a new neighborhood in New York. Then, he proceeded to tear the league up. Bill Nunn Jr. of the Pittsburgh Courier reported that halfway through the season, Connie was averaging 26 points in 21 boards a game, 26 and 21, and he was only 19 years old. Ironically, it was the boy amongst men who was the man amongst boys. Once he started dominating, he was a marked man. When opposing teams' double and triple teams didn't work on him, they resorted to violence. Another way Saperstein differentiated his product from the NBA was to allow for a rougher game. Players got away with anything short of assault, and opposing teams belted rail thin Connie under the boards and when he drove to the hole. Actual punches. What NBA players would get suspended for today were mere fouls in the ABL. One night, after even the customary pounding didn't slow Connie down, Bill Spivey, another innocent player wrongly in exile, his from the 51 scandal, who now played for the ABL's Long Beats Chiefs, slugged Connie in the eye. It was called a personal foul, and Connie missed six games because he was in the hospital. It's easier to list where Connie didn't get hurt that first year than where he did. He had hip, knee, eye, and elbow injuries, plus a broken finger. Despite being constantly banged up, people quickly sensed his greatness. Alex Medij, assistant coach for the Wrens, told the St.

SPEAKER_10 18:29

Louis Sporting News, There are only two players in basketball I'd rate over Hawkins right now. The newspaper added, In addition to his physical qualifications, Hawkins possesses all the intangibles, the insatiable eagerness to learn, the drive to excel, the ability to relax completely, confidence that mark the truly great in any sport.

SPEAKER_09 18:56

Head coach Neil Johnston said, A lot of big stars like to win, but often they're in it for the self-glorification, too. This kid's not in it for himself. He wants to win. Later, Johnston told the Boone News Republican, I don't think I've met a nicer kid to coach or work with than Connie.

SPEAKER_11 19:16

And one of the most impressive things about Connie during this time was his own quotes. Like all true grades, Connie was more keyed in on his weaknesses, telling Myron Cope of the Pittsburgh Courier, I don't have a hook.

SPEAKER_12 19:28

I don't have a left hand. My defense has been very bad.

Deja Screwed

SPEAKER_11 19:33

Can you imagine a guy like Luka Donchish saying these things to the press? It'd be a bizarro hoops world. Connie led the Wrens to a hot start in November. They stood atop the Eastern Division at 5-1 when a funny thing happened. All of the owners who had signed off on Connie joining the league, satisfied with Littman's probe into the scandal and the league's hardship case decision, suddenly wanted Connie out. The other owners asked Saperstein to ban Connie.

SPEAKER_09 20:01

Jimmy Miller wrote in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Well, it seems that some of the coaches, especially one who has a personal dislike for the 19-year-old star, have swayed several of the club owners to the theory that the Rens not only signed Hawkins illegally, but that the star has brought the league some adverse publicity via several magazine pieces in connection with the Fix cases. Funny thing, there never has been any definite proof that Hawkins was involved in the shady point-shaving incidents. The owners could have fingered him long before this on the evidence they will present in a meeting with Commissioner Abe Saperstein this afternoon. It just seems that nothing at all would have been done about Hawkins if he were just another player. But now that he has established himself as one of the bright stars of the new league, those snipping coaches suddenly have developed a sense of righteousness, or are they afraid that Connie will wind up stuffing the ball down the gullets of their clubs, individually and or collectively?

SPEAKER_11 20:56

Connie's coach Neil Johnston, who had only known Connie for a few months, went to bat for him in the press. It was a much-needed ally given how much his name had been battered by the newspapers for the last eight months.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

The Pittsburgh Press wrote, Coach Neil Johnston of the Rens feels an injustice is being done to Connie Hawkins, his star player, by a constant rehashing of circumstances that brought his name into the New York investigation of the college basketball point-shaving scandal last winter.

SPEAKER_09 21:26

Johnston said, I don't know why they keep making references to this thing. It seems like a constant rehash, like people are conspiring against this kid.

SPEAKER_11 21:36

Johnson expressed his admiration that the 19-year-old scoring leader of the ABL was able to rise above the environment he grew up in, one of the poorest sections of Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_09 21:46

Johnston said, He was only a freshman at Iowa, and I don't think many people would be trying to fix freshman games. And he didn't introduce anybody to anybody.

SPEAKER_11 21:56

David Littman, Lenny's brother, who was the club's attorney, Represented Connie and visited Saperstein. It was a bizarre meeting. David Lippman recalls it in foul.

SPEAKER_10 22:07

When we met with Saperstein, it turned out they weren't so concerned with the scandal or his eligibility as they were with stories that Molinas set up Connie with white women. That concerned Saperstein very much. Saperstein questioned Lippmann, then interrogated Connie. He apparently satisfied them that white womanhood had not been defiled by a black man. Littman was told that Hawkins could continue in the league.

SPEAKER_11 22:31

This is consistent with Saperstein's long-running rule for his black Globetrotter players. No Cadillacs, no white women. Connie kept playing and the Rens kept winning. His brilliance on the court won over local fans. Early in the season, when Saperstein set up double headers with his Globetrotter teams, fans scattered after the first game. But now, as the St.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Louis Sporting News wrote, The Globetrotters returned to Pittsburgh, a record 12,641 fans arrived early and stayed through both games to see Hawkins in action.

SPEAKER_11 23:06

There were only a handful of men on the planet talented enough to establish a basketball franchise in a new city. Connie was one of them. He was happy playing pro ball, even in the second-rate league at a reduced rate. How reduced was his pay? The Pittsburgh Courier reported that Elgin Baylor's salary was seven times higher than Connie's. Ouch. The average NBA salary was over double what Connie was making, and he was no average dude. He was giving it to NBA guys at Rucker in the summer. Was he bitter? He told the Atlanta Constitution years later.

SPEAKER_12 23:45

Something was taken away that I always dream of doing, playing in the NBA. So I put it out of my mind. I didn't allow myself to think about it.

SPEAKER_11 23:56

He certainly wasn't complaining. That wasn't in his nature. He just kept balling. As well as things were going for Connie on the court in his rookie ABL season, something better happened off of it. He met his future wife, Nancy. Early in the season, before the Rens made basketball popular in Pittsburgh, a friend introduced Connie and his teammate, Jim McCoy, to a pair of sisters, Nancy and Nadine Foster. Connie liked Nancy. Nancy recalled the story to the Arizona Republic years later, saying, He told me he played with the Pittsburgh Rens.

SPEAKER_05 24:38

I thought to myself, oh, a hockey player.

SPEAKER_11 24:41

Though the sisters weren't twins, they were only three years apart, and they looked so similar that people mistook them for twins. Connie's ego was bruised after Nancy made the hockey comment, but they recovered. Dave Wolf tells the rest of their meat cute story in foul, writing, Connie whispered to Jim, The one I got is an idiot.

SPEAKER_12 25:02

I don't want her no more. Let's switch.

SPEAKER_09 25:05

Connie got into the back seat of the car. When the girls caught up, one of them slipped in beside him. And Connie didn't realize he was sitting next to the girl he thought he'd discarded. Connie said. Her name was Nancy Foster.

SPEAKER_12 25:18

Her sister was Nadine. We took them dancing and out to eat. They ate like cows. Pancakes, sausages, shrimps. It must have been two full meals. If Nancy hadn't been so good looking, I would have cut her loose. I wasn't making enough to pay for dates like that. We kept seeing them, but I still couldn't tell them apart. I kissed Nancy hello, and it turned out to be Nadine. Then one day, I said to Nancy, I'm sure glad I got you instead of your dumb sister who thought I was a hockey player. She laughed but didn't say nothing.

SPEAKER_09 25:51

Months later, Nancy admitted she was the dumb sister.

SPEAKER_11 25:55

By that point, Connie had fallen for Nancy. Like him, she supported her family. She worked as a cocktail waitress to provide for her mentally challenged brother and five younger sisters. Connie and Nancy got married a year and a half later. The Wrens were cruising that first season until injuries began to pile up. Determined to keep them on a championship track, Connie had an idea. He brought his friend Eddie Simmons in for a tryout.

SPEAKER_09 26:21

Dave Wolfe wrote in foul, Simmons was clearly the best guard on the floor. After years of teaming in the schoolyards, he and Hawkins worked intricate two-man maneuvers like lifelong dance partners. Eddie filled the hoop with long-set shots. The czar startled unsuspecting Wrenz with sleight-of-hand passes. Hawkins was sure Simmons would be signed. After the workout, however, Coach Johnston said nothing about the contract. Finally, Hawkins asked the coach what he was waiting for. Johnston shifted uneasily, then mumbled, This wasn't a tryout, Connie.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

We haven't got room for another guard.

SPEAKER_09 26:56

Connie's two black teammates laughed when he told them about the conversation.

SPEAKER_12 27:00

They said, What'd you expect, man? You ought to grow up. They don't want any more Negroes on a team.

SPEAKER_11 27:05

Quota systems were prevalent across all sports in the 50s and 60s. It was obvious when you looked at the rosters, but not many fans gave it much thought, much less talked about it. Jack Olsen summarized the quota system in his SI series The Black Athlete: A Shameful Story, writing, Quotas are a routine fact of life in all professional sports.

SPEAKER_10 27:26

The establishment thinks it is giving the fans, i.e. the whites, what they want. And though the front office personnel shudder at the thought of being held responsible, they are the ones who establish the quota. The main reason offered in any honest discussion of the subject is identification. Psychologically, the fans have to be able to identify with the team, and how can white fans identify with black players? But fans also like a winner, and the general manager must work from two curving lines on the graph of his club's success. One charts performance, the other identification. The more Star Negroes he uses, the better performance he is likely to get. But, he reasons, the more Negroes he uses, the less white fan identification he gets. It is where the two lines cross that a quota is established. One that varies from city to city, sport to sport, and team to team. Nothing is more obvious in professional sport than the fact that there are quotas, and few things are as hotly denied.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

A black baseball player speaking off the record for Olson's article in fear of retaliation spoke about the quota system using a measurable stat saying, There are plenty of white guys who have been around here 15 years with lifetime batting averages of 240, but you don't see many Negroes around like that.

SPEAKER_11 28:43

Later studies proved this player's theory correct. Some white players defended the quarter system at the time with less measurable attributes.

SPEAKER_03 28:51

Chris Buford, a Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver, said, Negroes tend to range higher and lower emotionally than white players. If you get in a game on a day when a majority of them are moody, then you can be in trouble if you are playing a lot of them. To me, 7 to 10 is the ideal number of Negroes to have on a football team.

SPEAKER_11 29:10

Oof. This emotional side, or a bad attitude, was used as a defense because it's harder to measure. It's also how a lot of managers justified not drafting black players, and how a lot of coaches justified not playing them. Attitude is more subjective than a batting average or a field goal percentage. In basketball, they lean on this subjectivity to keep the court assistant in place until the mid-1970s. But by 1979, 73% of the NBA was black. Talent won out. Connie was hurt by what happened to Ed. For as dominant a player as Connie was, you'd think he would have had more power in that situation. But he didn't. And Ed was his guy, his early mentor on the court, his friend who believed he was innocent in the fixing scandal when everyone thought he was guilty. Connie says in foul, They heard Ed.

SPEAKER_12 30:01

He wanted to play pro ball so bad, but he couldn't get a chance. He got his hopes up, he proved himself, then they cut him down. I don't think he ever got over it. He started becoming a different person after that. They heard him just because he was black.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Feeling shape.

SPEAKER_11 30:25

Despite the Ren's injuries, Connie's dominance kept the team in the top half of the standings. In his rookie season, Connie led the league in scoring, tied Bill Bridges for the rebounding title, ranked fourth in shooting percentage, was a unanimous All-Star selection, and collected MVP honors. How dominant was he? Again, Dave Wolfenfowl.

SPEAKER_09 30:47

Cleveland Pipers owner, George Steinbrenner, heir of a wealthy shipbuilding family, and its business, Kinsman Marine Transit, offered to trade his entire team for Connie. Throw in one of your ships, Lenny Littman left, and it's a deal.

SPEAKER_11 31:01

Steinbrenner, who became a legendary owner for the Yankees, was up to his old tricks even back then as an ABL owner. When his sister Susan, the team's secretary, showed up late to work, he fired her, only to rehire her by midday at the insistence of his mother Rita. Another Steinbrenner classic, on the first day of the second season, he sold the player to the Hawaiian Chiefs at halftime of their game. He told the player to turn in his uniform and suit up for the Chiefs mid-game so that he could save on travel expenses on their way home. Unfortunately for Connie, the ABL second season sank like one of Steinbrenner's ships. Pittsburgh was one of the few teams actually drawing fans thanks to Connie, but still, even they were hurting for money. The car the team gave him for MVP honors the year before was repossessed because the team couldn't make the payments. Saperstein had lost$2 million total on the league, and that was his limit. He was out. He suspended the league in December of 1962, in the middle of the second season. Connie told Dave Wolf that as all the other players talked about their plans in the Wren's office on the last day, whether it was off to play in the Eastern League or attend NBA camps, panic and depression swept over him.

SPEAKER_12 32:19

He said, I was petrified. I didn't know what to do. I walked out of there crying, I went back to the house and went in my room and cried some more. I felt like my whole career was over. Everything I touched seemed to turn out bad. I didn't know what was going to become of me.

SPEAKER_11 32:37

Connie's college class wouldn't graduate until 1964, so technically he wasn't allowed in the NBA yet. But he was starting to wonder if he'd ever be welcoming the NBA. As the Columbus Daily Telegram reported in 1962. Of course, Gottlieb was wrong. The DA's office absolved Connie to Saperstein and Littman a year earlier. It took one phone call. But Commissioner Potilov, nor any MBA owner, ever picked up the phone. He was blackballed. He was Connie Nongrada. But something good happened to Connie around this time. He wouldn't have been able to clock it in real time, but he developed a friendship with two people in Pittsburgh who became lifelong friends and changed his life. They were David Littman, the legal counsel of the Rens, and brother of the owner, Lenny, and David's wife, Roslyn, also a lawyer. David and Roslyn instantly liked Connie, as so many did. There was just something about him. Once people got to know Connie, they liked him.

SPEAKER_10 33:55

As Myron Pope wrote in the Pittsburgh Courier, Connie Hawkins is a jazz-loving, fun-poking, overgrown kid of 21 who smiles at the world.

SPEAKER_11 34:06

The Ren's general manager, Joe Gordon, said simply, Hell, you have to love this kid. David and Roz Littman were no different.

SPEAKER_04 34:14

In Foul, they spoke about the early days of their friendship with Connie, saying, We were friendly with a lot of the players, but that Western trip, I think we were both drawn to Connie. He tried so hard in games. It meant so much to him. On that trip, we began to feel what a special kid he was. He was totally unsophisticated, but still gracious and considerate. He did little things, like remembering to introduce us to his friends.

SPEAKER_11 34:39

They were also struck by his kindness and his reluctance to hurt others. And Roz noticed something else that was different about him, saying, Connie was still distant and withdrawn.

SPEAKER_04 34:50

He was almost on a different wavelength. He was so closed into himself, so afraid of being hurt. It was a long time before he could really trust us.

SPEAKER_11 34:59

Connie had only spoken about the fixing scandal with his mother Dorothy and a few close friends. He never talked about it with his teammates in Pittsburgh, and they had the good sense not to press him on it. Slowly, Connie began to trust David and Roz. He'd open up to them. They'd believe him when he said he was innocent. And their friendship would be one of the most important of Connie's life.