Connie & Jack: A Rigged Game
All 9 Episodes Out Now. Binge the unbelievable true story of Connie & Jack.
Based on a true story, this podcast follows Connie Hawkins — a once-in-a-generation NYC basketball superstar who, in 1961, is expelled from college and later blackballed from the NBA for a crime he didn’t commit. His downfall is his association with Jack Molinas, an ex-NBA All-Star turned mob fixer.
Connie & Jack: A Rigged Game
Episode 6: A Superstar in Clown Shoes
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With the ABL collapsed and the NBA's doors slammed shut, Connie Hawkins is forced to play the fool for the Harlem Globetrotters just to feed his family. Meanwhile, with the help of David and Roslyn Litman, Connie prepares to take the NBA to court over their decision to blackball him. This all comes to a head when a new rival league forms: the ABA. Connie wants in, but will the league let him play? And if they do, can he recapture his A-game after clowning with the Globetrotters?
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
Welcome back to Connie and Jack, a rigged game. This is episode six, a superstar in clown shoes. When we left off with Connie in the fourth episode, he dominated the ABL and won the MVP award. He was only 19. Unfortunately, the ABL folded in year two. Connie was out of a job. Again. No college would take him. The NBA, forget about it. He was Connie non grata. So we picked back up with Connie. Job hunting once again.
SPEAKER_07Not a captive if it's where I wanna be.
SPEAKER_11Connie needed a paycheck to support his mother Dorothy and his wife Nancy, and then a new job came from an old boss. Although it was one of those good news, bad news situations. Shortly after the ABL went belly up, Abe Saperstein called Connie. While Saperstein's ABL was gone, he's still at his Globetrotters. And since Connie was the king of the ABL, Abe asked him to take his talents to Harlem. Though not really, the Globetrotters ironically wouldn't play a game in Harlem until 1969. Connie was thankful for the job but dreaded joining the Globetrotters. They were essentially a traveling circus by this point, clowns of the hardwood. If it had been 25 years earlier, it would have been a good basketball opportunity for Connie. Up until the late 1930s, the Trotters were actually a legit hoops team. They even won the World Basketball Tournament in 1940 and famously defeated Miken's championship Lakers in 1948. But Saperstein added comedic shtick to their act throughout the 40s and 50s. With the NBA forming, and more importantly becoming integrated with black talent, comedy increasingly became the Trotter's Lane.
SPEAKER_17Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune wrote, The barnstorming globetrotters were as much a vaudeville act as a sports team, having introduced comedy bits to win over potentially hostile all-white audiences in small town gymnasiums.
SPEAKER_11So when Connie thought about joining them in 1962, they were full-on joksters.
SPEAKER_19Early on, he was asked if he liked playing with them and said, Well, it's a job, and I guess I'm gonna be playing with them a while.
SPEAKER_11Hardly a ringing endorsement. Even still, one of the most talented young players in the country joining the Globetrotters wasn't as disastrous as it sounds to the modern year. If KD joined the Trotters instead of entering the league in 2007, they would have put him in a psychiatric hospital. In Connie's day, even though they were clowning, the talent gap between their guys and NBA dudes was smaller. In fact, Will had played with them in the 58-59 season in what would have been his senior year at Kansas, deciding to forego his final year in college to make 50 grand instead. Connie, however, was afraid of what playing for the Trotters would do to his game.
SPEAKER_15Myron Cope wrote in the Pittsburgh Courier, Because the ABL went out of business, Connie in all probability will have to hire out to the Harlem Globe Trotters as a clown. His style would be deformed, and his development halted.
SPEAKER_11Connie said, While this sounds like an overreaction, for Connie, his game was part of his identity. It was even hard for him to separate other people from their games. If he didn't like the way a guy played hoops, if he was too full of himself, if he shot too much, he wouldn't like that guy off the court. That's just the way he thought. Beyond his family, there was nothing Connie loved more than basketball. Everything good in his life came from it. It rose from a concrete court, and now he was asked to clown around between those lines. Act foolish playing a game he took dead serious. A game that was his purpose. It was like asking Miles Davis to play carnival music. He'd play with the Trotters for three and a half years. It wasn't all bad. True to their name, Connie traveled the world, seeing places he never knew existed. He made international tours to Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. The Trotters weren't just entertainment either. This was the height of the Cold War, and the team was used as propaganda abroad. They worked with the U.S. State Department in an official capacity to counter communists talking about the poor treatment of black people in America.
SPEAKER_16Saperstein told the Chicago Tribune, How could the communists call us racially prejudiced when a Negro basketball team led by a London-born Jew was universally acclaimed as the best goodwill ambassador sent out by the United States?
SPEAKER_11How effective Saperstein's propaganda tool was when there were pictures of black Americans being hosed and bitten by dogs on the cover of international newspapers at the same time is debatable. But for Connie, he liked seeing the world. In fact, he felt more comfortable in Europe than in America. Dave Wolfe wrote in Foul.
SPEAKER_17In Europe, for the first time, Hawk didn't feel inhibited by the color of his skin. Sitting with teammate Tex Harrison at a sidewalk cafe in Paris, watching the girls walk past.
SPEAKER_19He tried to explain, saying, As soon as I got off the plane, man, I felt like this pressure came off me. People treat you different here. Man, they smile at you. Back home, I always felt like people were down on me because I'm colored.
SPEAKER_11Life with the Trotters, though, was less glamorous than it looked. People looked at them as rock stars who dribble basketballs and sold out arenas worldwide, but they were grinding behind the curtain.
SPEAKER_01Teammate Meadowlark Lemon, dubbed the clown prince of basketball, said, Can you imagine being on the road practically every day with only one set of uniforms? You had to wash your own uniform each night after a game and hope it would be dry by the morning.
SPEAKER_11The meal money on the road was so low that guys had to spend their own earnings to get three decent meals a day, and it was non-stop, as Bill Gauber of the Baltimore Sun wrote. Not only were they making a lot less than NBA guys, they were playing a lot more. So even if the games weren't nearly as physically taxing as a pro game, the pure quantity wore guys down, physically and mentally. Some players were built for this. A guy like Metalark Lemon, who didn't have the game for the NBA and had a natural ability for the shtick, was a great example.
SPEAKER_05As Frank DeFord wrote in Sports Illustrated, Like many clowns, Lemon is not personally funny, but he is a consummate professional, utterly devoted to his craft. He laid awake thinking up new comedy routines and even practiced mugging in front of mirrors.
SPEAKER_11The dedication was impressive, and naturally other parts of their lives could suffer. The Daily Telegraph wrote about Lemon.
SPEAKER_00Lemon would play consistently for the team for the next 24 seasons, touring more than 100 countries and averaging more than 300 games a year. He spent so much of his time traveling that one daughter told her teacher that her father lived at the airport. His first marriage to Willie Maltesby broke down, and in 1978 she was arrested after stabbing him in the back with a stake knife.
SPEAKER_11Fortunately for Meadowlark, he was able to recharge his batteries every summer during their short break by never breaking one rule. He never touched a basketball and never did anything funny. He was an outlier. The Trotter's on court comedy consisted of playing hide and seek with the ball, or one guy dribbling around the entire opposing team while his teammates pretended to sleep. Beyond the damage that Connie believed the clowning did to his game, he objected to it for another reason, as he said in foul, I felt like a fool so much in my life. Some nights, Connie refused to do the shtick altogether, and Saperstein would yell at him after the game. Beyond not wanting to be laughed at, Connie felt like clowning perpetuated negative stereotypes. Specifically, what sociologists call the Sambo stereotype, the inferior but lovable, immature, fun-loving, lazy black man. This is accompanied with the physical characteristics of thick lips, wide grinning mouth, wide dull eyes, and cold black skin. It was wildly popular for the white audience, affirming their own stereotypical beliefs.
SPEAKER_19In foul, Connie said, What we were doing out there was acting like Uncle Tom's, grinning and smiling and dancing around. That's the way they told us to act. And that's the way a lot of white people like to think we really are.
SPEAKER_11Willie Worsley, a member of the Texas Western Championship team, said, The trotters act like white people think black people should act.
SPEAKER_21They tell the white exactly what they want to hear. If you turn the globe trotters white overnight, they wouldn't draw the manager the next night.
SPEAKER_11Not all the players were bothered by it, but for those that were, it was like giving away some self-respect every time you collected a paycheck. The other issue guys had with the Trotters was the meager pay.$125 a week would have been sufficient if Connie was a bachelor, but his family was growing. Nancy and Connie had a daughter, Shauna Lynn. They also supported Nancy's family who lived with her back in Pittsburgh, five sisters and her mentally handicapped brother. Their house was nicknamed the Hawkins Hilton for everyone living there.
SPEAKER_17Plus, as Dave Wolf wrote in Fowl, he was also helping his mother and his brother Randy in Brooklyn. Mrs. Hawkins was now totally blind. Unable to work, she relied on her meager social security and welfare checks, and whatever Connie and Fred could spare. Hawk always sent money, but he was often hard-pressed to come up with it. For the next few years, finances were to be a constant concern.
SPEAKER_11Though some of Connie's financial hardship was his own doing, he was generous to a fault with friends. Back in Pittsburgh, the Littmans talked to him about it during his ABL days, telling him that his New York buddies coming out for the week and Connie buying everything wasn't great for his finances long term. The Littmans even loaned him a bit of money to keep his head above water during his Trotter days. For a guy like Connie, who gave it to the best in the world like Wilt at Rucker Park, how frustrating must it have been to know that what he made in three and a half years with the Trotters was what Wilt made in one month in the NBA. There's the moral indignity of injustice, but also the financial gut punch. Both were painful for Connie. Saperstein wasn't the easiest boss either. Like all egomaniacs, you had to always agree with him, compliment him, stroke his ego, and he had two rules that his black globetrotter players needed to abide by: no Cadillacs and no white women. If players obeyed those two rules and brown nosed him relentlessly, they'd likely remain on the roster, and most players stayed in line despite Sapperstein's authoritarian style, the non-stop schedule, and poor pay.
SPEAKER_12Tex Harrison told the Baltimore Sun, The only mutiny we ever had was in South America, Bolivia, I think. We were going to get on some old, beat-up, obsolete plane, and the pilot came over drunk and wearing a parachute.
SPEAKER_11Tex Harrison was Connie's good friend and mentor on the team and sent that Connie was growing more unhappy and depressed as time went by. In foul, Connie talked about how he felt his game slipping at summer rocker tournaments between trotter seasons, saying, Nobody else noticed, but I couldn't make certain moves as quick as before.
SPEAKER_19I didn't rebound as tough because I wasn't used to rough contact. A lot of times, there was no spark inside me. It was depressing. Sometimes it got so bad I didn't want to play.
SPEAKER_11And the dream of playing in the NBA felt like it was slipping away too.
SPEAKER_19He said, Sometimes, sitting on the bus, looking out the window at the farms and houses and the highway, I think about playing in the NBA, about the years going by, but I tried not to think about all the money I was losing. About how people outside the schoolyards didn't even know who I was. A couple of times I fell asleep and I dreamed about playing against Wilton Oscar, but I'd always in the dream with me on the side of the court watching. I was sure I'd never play in the NBA. When I was with the Trotters, I had no hope, no pride, nothing. I was just a globetrotter.
SPEAKER_10Trying to figure out Paul, just playing. Every step I take, feel full.
SPEAKER_11Connie's hope of playing in the NBA was fading. One reason: J. Walter Kennedy. He replaced Maurice Potilov as NBA Commissioner in 1963. During Connie's trotter years, David and Ross Littman wrote to Kennedy and the NBA on Connie's behalf, as Bill Hughfelder wrote in the Pittsburgh Press, David Littman took the first step toward clearing Connie's name.
SPEAKER_17He wrote a letter to NBA President Walter Kennedy in 1963, pointing out that Hawkins' class would be graduating at the University of Iowa in the spring of 1964 and appealed for his eligibility in the league draft. Kennedy dismissed the appeal. A second letter in November of 1964 drew no response, and in the spring of 1966, Littmann wrote what he called a threatening letter to the league, suggesting that it was violating the antitrust laws and barring Hawkins. Kennedy, and an NBA attorney, met with Littmann shortly thereafter.
SPEAKER_15All they were doing was asking me a lot of questions, Littmann says in an irritated tone. They were not giving me any reason why Connie wasn't playing. I was awfully disheartened.
SPEAKER_17Deciding he had reached a dead end in dealing with the NBA, Littmann filed the lawsuit later that year.
SPEAKER_11This got the NBA's attention. The league hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to investigate the charges and officially banned Connie from the league a few months later in May of 1966. Connie's NBA lawsuit prevented him from playing with the Globetrotters because the Littmans needed to have an outclause in the contract so that Connie could join the NBA if they want their case. Saperstein didn't oblige and dropped Connie. He was unemployed again. And this started his Annis Heribolis. Nancy was pregnant with her second child, and he had two extended families to support. Connie said in foul.
SPEAKER_19That was the most depressing year of my life. I didn't have no job. I didn't do nothing. I figured the suit was my only chance, and I didn't want to think about it. It looked like I was finished.
SPEAKER_17Dave Wolfe wrote One evening, as Hawk sat with Nancy in their tiny living room, her eyes lit up.
SPEAKER_08Connie, why don't you go back to teaching English?
SPEAKER_17Hawk stared at her incredulously. Then he remembered. When they had been dating, in an effort to impress her, he'd made up a story about being a substitute English teacher in the New York City school system. A sad smile crossed his long mustached face.
SPEAKER_19Honey, what I done told you then was a bold face lie. I ain't never taught nothing in no school. I never been no teacher. Nancy laughed. Then she became serious.
SPEAKER_08Well, what else can you do, Connie? What else can you do besides basketball?
SPEAKER_19Nothing. You know that. Nothing.
SPEAKER_11And again, a short round man's frustration led to another opportunity for the tall, skinny superstar. His name was Dennis Murphy, and he was the former mayor of Buenaport, California. He was a dreamer, ambitious. He moved his family around so much that his kids went to 14 different schools. In 1966, Murphy's dream was to bring pro sports to Anaheim, specifically an AFL football team. The AFL and NFL were in serious merger talks, so the way Murphy saw it, if he could get an AFL team in Anaheim under the wire, he'd either soon have an NFL franchise or they'd buy him out. But by the time he got the money together from a bunch of local guys, the merger already happened. And Murphy knew the LA Rams would never allow another NFL franchise in LA, so he pivoted.
SPEAKER_02Murphy said, When we didn't get the team, the guys we had put together said, Hey, you know what? We ought to try something else in sports. So we got together and decided either basketball or hockey. I knew more about basketball and knew more people involved with that sport, so that's where I concentrated my efforts.
SPEAKER_11Hardly scientific, though he did recognize that the NBA should have more than 12 teams. It wasn't a Netflix DVD to streaming level pivot, but it was a damn good one. AFL team to basketball league. And that's how the American Basketball Association, the ABA, was born. But would it work? People were understandably wary. Just a few years before the ABL tanked. The NBA laughed at the ABA's chances. It was like a big brother snickering at a younger brother suggesting a game of one-on-one in the driveway. It was going to be the Saturday morning backdown special, or so the NBA thought. But one man you didn't back down was George Miken, the first great big man in the NBA, who Murphy shrewdly brought in as the ABA's first commissioner. It was Murphy's first master stroke. Miken gave the ABA instant credibility. He was the most recognizable and respected name in hoops in the first half of the 20th century. Murphy and Miken, at 5'6 and 6'10, respectively, certainly made a curious pair. Though Murphy credits Celtics' great Bill Sharman, who he knew from their days at USC, with recommending Miken. In fact, Sharman was gonna be the ABA's first frontman, but instead took a head coaching job for the San Francisco Warriors in the NBA. Sharman had more good ideas for Murphy though. He coached Steinbrenner's Cleveland team in the ABL and convinced Murphy to adopt the three-pointer. Another great call. And then it was Miken, with bad eyesight, who had trouble seeing the brown basketball when watching Hoops, who invented the now iconic red, white, and blue ABA ball. They also would invent the slam dunk contest. The one thing the ABA did really well from the beginning was understanding it had an entertainment product. They were less precious about the game than the NBA. In fact, the entertainment of today's NBA has its roots as much in the ABA as any other place. But back in the fall of 1966, when they were trying to get the league off the ground, it remained to be seen whether these changes would draw fans. One thing that would help, the most important commodity of any sports league, was talent. The ABA's goal from the jump was a merger with the NBA, modeling themselves after the successful AFL-NFL merger. One of the best tactical moves the AFL used was creative ways of finding talent. They went after guys from small colleges and predominantly black colleges, both sources generally ignored by the NFL at the time. They also went after the guys that the NFL discarded whose talents they perhaps misjudged. So when Murphy and his 11 team owners looked around for talent, Connie was an obvious choice. And Connie wasn't the only innocent kid to have been ruined by the scandal. His New York buddy Roger Brown, Doug Moe, Charlie Williams, and Tony Jackson were among others. In Terry Pluto's Loose Falls, Miken said,
SPEAKER_16Things I did as ABA commissioner was to let those guys play. I investigated the situation and they seemed alright to me. I figured they deserved a second chance.
SPEAKER_13Bill Erickson, an early ABA owner, told Sports Illustrated, We demanded that the players had never been convicted, and they had to have top references on their behavior since the fixes. So far, it has been beautiful. We have had about a dozen of these players, and four of them are all-stars.
SPEAKER_11Gabe Rubin, who made his money from running an adult theater in Pittsburgh, was the owner of Pittsburgh's new ABA team, the Pipers. Rubin called the local sports writer named Jim O'Brien looking for talent.
SPEAKER_05O'Brien recalled their conversation and loose ball, saying, Rubin's voice on the phone was so low, so gravelly, that I wondered if it was an obscene call. He said, Hello, Jimmy.
SPEAKER_04I understand that you know a lot about basketball.
SPEAKER_05So I talked with Gabe and I gave him some names of players, including Connie. He'd been hanging around Pittsburgh. He was playing in an industrial league at the Young Men's and Women's Hebrew Association, a team called the Porky Chedwicks, and admission was 50 cents a night. In the summer of 1967, Connie had no money. He was living in a row house on Charles Street on the north side of Pittsburgh. The place was in pretty bad shape. He had just about hit bottom.
SPEAKER_11Ruben signed Connie, who was happy to play in Pittsburgh, so that he could be with Nancy, Shauna, and their baby son Keenan. But even with Connie's greatness, his legendary, almost mythical status on the New York playgrounds, and his youth, still only 25, there were questions if he could recapture his A game after three and a half years of clowning with the Globetrotters. Could he still dominate like he did in the ADL? Bill Nunn Jr. wrote in the new Pittsburgh Courier.
SPEAKER_17More than one person who has watched Connie Hawkins in action insist his layoff last year and the years he played with the Harlem Globetrotters have affected his game. One cage buff had this to say about Hawkins recently. He still has all the tools to be a superstar, but he has to go back to fundamentals. He's picked up a lot of bad habits the last couple of years. As a result, he's going to be made to look bad unless he gets his game back to where it was when he was in the old ABL.
SPEAKER_11And it wasn't just pride on the line for Connie. He needed to perform at a high level to help his NBA lawsuit. David Lippmann explained in foul.
SPEAKER_15I saw it as an aid to our lawsuit. I didn't think his ability had been sufficiently established during his period in the ABL. I wanted to be able to prove in court that he was a great player.
SPEAKER_11In training camp, Connie got the flu and lost weight he couldn't afford to lose. Then it was a recurring toe infection. And when he came back from that, he was too eager and started pressing. He struggled with endurance. Four years off from competition had done its damage, and the press, rarely his friend, didn't deviate from their script. Jim O'Brien wrote in Pittsburgh's Weekly Sports, Quite often Connie is conning the fans.
SPEAKER_04What really bugs a guy about Hawkins is that here's an athlete endowed with all the physical assets necessary to make it big, and all he does is go around believing he's the greatest and that the world owes him a living. Hawkins doesn't work hard, doesn't seem to care enough. Cosetta, the coach, ought to kick him in the pants instead of pampering him.
SPEAKER_11The irony of O'Brien's line, all he does is go around believing the world owes him a living, is especially rich. It was rough sledding early for the Pipers. By Thanksgiving, they were 11 and 12, and Connie, though showing occasional brilliance, was uneven. Even his foul shooting, which had always been solid, 78% on his career, was rough, having nights where he'd go 3 of 7 and 4 of 13. But slowly, Connie got his groove back, and by early December, the Pipers started rolling. They ran off 15 straight before the All-Star Break. Connie wasn't a solo act. He had dudes around him who could play. Fellow first team All-ABA member Charlie Toothpick Williams was at the point. Third team All-ABA trooper Washington banged inside for the Pipers. Shooting guard Chico Vaughn was either 50 years ahead on analytics, or he just loved jacking throughs. But either way he could shoot. And to round up the squad, the Pipers picked up Art Heyman mid-season to add more interior toughness in rebounding. They called Art the pest, not because he went to Duke, but because he was the quintessential, love him if he's on your team, want to strangle him if he's on the other team guy. You know the types, the Bill Lambeers, Delvadovas, Dylan Brooks, etc. What impressed Connie's teammates most wasn't how easily he could score, it was how well he played the team game, the little winning things he did that didn't show up on the average fan's radar, that feel we talked about in episode one. He was also a natural leader, not a loud one, but the quiet Tim Duncan, Steph Curry type, where it's done by example.
SPEAKER_01Charlie Williams talks about this in loose balls, saying, Connie deserved a lot of credit for making us into a team. Let's face it, he was a tremendous, overwhelming talent. He could have decided he was going to average 50 points a game and been able to do it. But he loved and understood team basketball. He would get on Chico Vaughn and myself not to shoot so much from the outside, but he wouldn't say, get me the ball. He'd say, let's move the ball around, let everyone touch it. People wanted Connie to shoot the ball more. I know George Miken told him to do that. No matter what Miken or anyone wanted, Connie knew how the game was supposed to be played and he talked a lot about passing and defense. He was a true student of the game. He'd say to me, Hey Charlie, watch me close tonight. See if you can find something to make me better. When a guy of Connie's ability says that to you, it makes you look at your game in the mirror too. He really was a leader, and by the end of the year, guys got the message.
SPEAKER_11These winning ways, like the instinct to make the extra pass, are contagious, and there's nothing better to watch in basketball. It makes you feel all warm inside, like a Glen Fiddish, in front of a crackling fire on a cold winter's night. Life in the ABA was not dull. There were a lot of characters floating around. Exhibit A was Chico Vaughn. Chico spoke in the third person. He was also the precursor to AI on the practice front, and he had a soft spot for Scotch. As the years dragged on, his legs were less and less up for practice from foul.
SPEAKER_17The 27-year-old Vaughn explained to Connie. Of getting too old to practice. The sheet gotta save his strength for games.
SPEAKER_03Trainer Alex Medic recalls, He'd come in like he was on a three-day bender. I'd tell the writers he couldn't work out because he had a flu.
SPEAKER_17Sometimes Chico didn't make practice at all. He seems to have been plagued by an extraordinary number of deaths in his family, and was habitually in mourning, says Medich.
SPEAKER_03That was his big excuse. Sheik lost four aunts, ten brothers, and five sisters that season, and his father died about five times.
SPEAKER_11One time, when a distraught Chico told owner Gabe Rubin that his dad had passed, the club sent a wreath of flowers to his father's home in St. Louis. His father sent back a note thanking them for the flowers. The league also had a lot of fights. Like today's NHL, they knew there was entertainment value in fighting, and they milked it as the league struggled to draw fans.
SPEAKER_02Peter Vesey talked about it in Basketball A Love Story, saying, There were times when there'd be a fight in a game, then a fight in the locker room, and then a player on the team bus would try to finish the fight.
SPEAKER_11Charlie Scott remembers his coach Al Bianca's rule on fighting. If you didn't fight, you were fined. Of course, the fighting wasn't always welcome. The league hosted a kids' charity game, and for once, they drew about 7,000 fans, mostly kids. A fun Sunday afternoon affair, or so they thought. 30 seconds into the game, a player knocked another player out with a violent right-left-right combination, punches that echoed across the gym of horrified youngsters. The ABA implemented a no-fouling out rule, which as you can imagine, was a great incentive for players to maul the living hell out of the opposing team. Jim Murray of the LA Times summed up the physicality of the leak best, writing, You almost had to present your x-rays to get a free throw. And of all the people getting roughed up, Connie was at the top of the list. The veterans didn't like getting shown up by the rail-thin superstar and pounded him as he drove to the hoop or went up for a rebound. Connie took the beating well. He even played in the post for a stretch when they were short-handed on Biggs. He was soon covered in welts and bruises. He'd missed four games because of a blood clot after getting popped in the thigh, but returned and led the Pipers on a 12-game winning streak. But even with all the winning, Pittsburgh had a hard time drawing fans. As Connie said in Basketball, a Love Story.
SPEAKER_19The only place that drew a crowd was Indiana. Every time we played in Indiana, they would pack the place. 15,000, 18,000 people.
SPEAKER_11But for the rest of the league, a story from the HBO documentary Long Shot sums it up best. The league booked Muhammad Ali for a pregame fight to boost attendance, but all the fans took off after the fight and only a handful stuck around to watch the game. This story from Fowl also sums it up well.
SPEAKER_17A game between Pittsburgh and New Orleans in Memphis was delayed 30 minutes during the second quarter, when a power switch failed and the arena was plunged into darkness. The players were told a possum got caught in the wiring. When the lights went on, they discovered that most of the crowd of 400 had gone home.
SPEAKER_11So though the Pipers were playing great, in the back of Connie's mind was whether this league would last or if he'd soon be unemployed again. Despite the small crowds, the Pipers entered the playoffs with the league's best record at 54 and 24. And by season's end, despite years of clowning, Connie recaptured his A-game. Steve Snapper Jones, an ABA All-Star and eventual NBA broadcaster, said in loose balls.
SPEAKER_18Connie just cruised during much of the regular season.
SPEAKER_11As he told the Independent Press Telegram.
SPEAKER_19But, you know, since the playoffs started, I've been getting nervous right before the games. I didn't want to tell nobody.
SPEAKER_17It had been a long time since Hawkins was nervous before a game, but it's a good feeling. After four years with the Harlem Globetrotters, he had almost forgotten how it felt.
SPEAKER_19Connie said, I've enjoyed it, because this is what I've wanted to do.
SPEAKER_11With eight teams making the playoffs, Connie and the Pipers needed to win three series to win it all. First up was Connie's old friend Roger Brown and the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers eventually turned into the best ABA team year in and year out, but they didn't have it that first year. The Pipers swept them. Then they went up against a young great center named Mel Daniels, who became a key piece with the Pacers later on, but played for the Minnesota Muskies in his rookie year. The Pipers treated Mel and the Muskies to a gentleman's sweep, dusting them four games to one. It all set up for the best team in each division squaring up for the championship. Connie faced Doug Moe, Larry Brown, and the New Orleans Buccaneers. Connie dropped 39 on them in Game 1, shooting a wildly efficient 74% from the field to get the win in Pittsburgh. The Buccaneers' top performer with 41 points and 23 boards was a man named Red Robbins. God damn it, you gotta love the ABA. Game two, still in Pittsburgh, got rowdy at the end of the third when Connie fouled out and fans started throwing objects on the floor. Larry Brown had 28 and New Orleans 1x9 to even the series. In Game 3, the Pipers on the road led by 10 after three quarters but gagged on it, and New Orleans grabbed the win behind a great defensive game from Doug Moe, who was guarding Connie. Red Robbins had 30-22 for the Buccaneers. And a wild thing happened after the game when the fans rushed the court at the buzzer, Art Heyman hospitalized a fan when they got into a pushing match. Heyman was taken into custody by the police, and yet this was just a mere footnote in the paper the next morning. In Game 4, still in New Orleans, Connie almost got into a fight with fans during the layup lines before the game. Two fans underneath the basket heckled him repeatedly with the N-word, Fortunately, a teammate held Connie back and cooled him down, and Connie wisely took it out on the Buccaneers instead, dropping 47 in a game fourth thriller. He led a fourth quarter rally, and then at the end of regulation, Larry Brown stole the ball with his team down three, dribbled down the court, then realized something. The newly invented three-point shot backpedaled to the three-point line and fired one off that went in just as the buzzer sounded, sending the game into OT. In extra time, Connie had a shot with eight seconds left to win but missed. Charlie Williams got the rebound though and was fouled. He made a foul shot with one second left to get the win and even the series at two apiece. But the most important information from the game wasn't reported in any of the newspapers the next day. Connie injured his right knee in the game, and Payne was building in it throughout the second half. It was a torn ligament. He missed game five in Pittsburgh. The Buccaneers came out flat though, thinking they'd win easy without Connie playing, that classic tale. Connie's teammates put up a good effort but came up short and lost by three. The Pipers were now down 3-2 and one game away from elimination. The good news was game six was four days away. The bad news was that Connie's right knee was stiff and painful. The press reported he'd play. His coach, Vince Cassetta, said he wasn't sure. A couple thousand miles away, Jerry West was in a similar predicament when he got hurt in the final minute of Game 4 of the 68 finals as his Lakers squared it up 2-2 against the Celts. His team would lose in six. Would Connie's team suffer the same fate? The night before the game, Connie's knee was extremely stiff and the pain didn't allow him to sleep. Dave Wolfe wrote in foul.
SPEAKER_17He was the last player to board the plane. His teammates stared dejectedly as he hobbled down the aisle and slid into a seat besides Trooper Washington. Connie stretched out his leg and said, It's bad, man. I don't know what I'm gonna do. Before the game, he applied heat, a bomb, ice, everything. But nothing helped. Connie said, I'm gonna shoot around. He grabbed a basketball and hobbled onto the empty court. The stiffness did not decrease. He couldn't make lateral movements without excruciating pain. After 10 minutes, he was ready to give up, return to the locker room, and change. Then he felt the knee beginning to loosen.
SPEAKER_19Connie said, I was excited. I couldn't believe it. The more I moved on it, the more it got loose. It still hurt. I was still dragging it, but I felt maybe I could play.
SPEAKER_11Connie told Cazetta he'd give it a go even though he couldn't straighten it. He wrapped it tight and was limping, but played. He didn't just play, he played the entire game, the only player on either team to do so. The Buccaneers were hot in the first half and had a 13-point lead at halftime. Then, Connie put on a show.
SPEAKER_17As Dave Wolf wrote in Foul, still limping, he drove, leaped, and twisted through the New Orleans defense, hitting dunks, follow-ups, jumpers, and several impossible schoolyard specials. Seconds before the third quarter ended, Hawk hit a resounding stuff to tie the game, 93-93. In the huddle, his teammates stared at him open-mouthed. Payne still gripped his knee in the fourth quarter, but Hawk kept scoring and Pittsburgh pulled ahead. He had 11 points in the final period, including five of six free throws in the last minute. With 35 seconds left, Pittsburgh up three, Jess Branson of New Orleans drove, hoping for a three-point play. Hawk's arm swung like a giant windmill. His hand smashed the shot to the court.
SPEAKER_11Pittsburgh won by six. The series was tied at three apiece. Connie had 41. It was a heroic performance, not one that anyone in attendance would soon forget. Bill Sharman was there, and Cassetta told the press that Sharman agreed with him that, quote, Hawkins is the greatest basketball player in the world. Perhaps Bill Russell, who'd captured his tenth title the next night, could quibble. But these quotes certainly helped the Littons prove the obvious to the NBA in their lawsuit. Connie was a great player. He picked up a jammed shoulder and a black eye in game six to go with his torn ligament. And something weird happened in Pittsburgh for Game 7. The fans finally showed up. The Pipers didn't disappoint. They closed out New Orleans at home, winning the first ABA championship 122 to 113. The injured Connie finished with 20, 16, and 9. Grown men wept in the locker room. Each of Connie's teammates came by the table where he laid his leg out and shook his hand and thanked him. Connie was a champion. He didn't know what the future held. Would he ever get his shot in the NBA? That night, on May 4, 1968, it didn't matter. The question was finally off his mind. He was basking in the glory of a championship. People could say whatever they wanted about him, but they couldn't deny his heroic performance on one leg in Game 6. Fans are fickle, and ultimately, players want respect from their peers, the other men in the arena. This is what Larry Brown said about Connie.
SPEAKER_20He was Julius before Julius. He was Michael before Michael. He was simply the greatest individual player I have ever seen.
SPEAKER_11Brown's teammate Doug Moe, one of the best defensive forwards in the ABA, shared his teammate's sentiment, saying, He was the first guy on that Dr.
SPEAKER_06J Michael Jordan level. Nobody could match him.
SPEAKER_11Unlike the ABL, the ABA would survive its second season. But the biggest thing that happened to Connie that year wasn't on the court. It was a young writer named Dave Wolf showing up to write an article about him for Life magazine. The article changed his life.
SPEAKER_14We want to juxtapose that with Connie's lawsuit against the NBA. So then we'll jump back to our present day in 1968, where we'll meet Dave Wolfe and show all the startling reveals in Connie's lawsuit.