HE ONCE seemed like an urban legend, a myth, one of those shadowy figures who fit comfortably into a once-prevalent stereotype: the city kid who wasn’t very smart, who jettisoned his future with bad decisions and who was comfortable only on asphalt, never able to tailor his aerial acrobatics to the strictures of organized hoops.
Except it was wrong. Connie Hawkins, who died last week at 75, may have been undereducated, but he was a thoughtful man who got caught up in events beyond his control and whose game, once he got a chance to show it to a mainstream audience, was splendidly versatile, highlighted, to be sure, by a superb athleticism that predated Julius Erving, among others.
The Brooklyn-born Hawk (above, 42) could dunk, it was said, by the time he…
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Sports Illustrated (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 16, 2017