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Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story
This book is about a professional basketball player, Connie Hawkins, but it is also about American athletics. The hope and despair of the ghetto schoolyard, the cutthroat college recruiting, the camaraderie and dissension in the locker room, the gambling scandals, the blacklists, the legal battles - Hawkins has been through them all. For eight years, the graceful, 6'8" Hawkins was an outcast, playing in tainted obscurity, blacklisted by the NBA. As a frightened teenager, he had made false confessions - under police pressure - and was wrongfully implicated in a fixing scandal. David Wolf's magazine acticle dramatically cleared Hawkins in 1969. Foul! in Connie Hawkin's story, a meticulously documented, remarkably candid biography of one of our greatest athletes. A compelling portrait of a unique and perceptive black man, it is also a behind-the-scenes look at basketball.
Hardcover
First published February 1, 1972
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October 20, 2017
10/19/17 - re-reading, a copy loaned from a Cal State U library.
quoting - preface
"This book is about one athlete. But it is also about American athletics, because there are few aspects of sport in this country that Connie Hawkins has not experience firsthand. The hope and despair of the ghetto schoolyard, the pressure of high-level high school competition, the cutthroat college recruiting, the gambling scandals, the blacklists, the legal battles--Hawkins has been through all of them. He has played with the Harlem Globetrotters and in three professional leagues. He has been an outcast and a superstar--and he has emerged as a unique and perceptive man.
...
"But Hawkins life is also a chronicle of the corruption, racism, hypocrisy, and exploitation that are realities in modern, big-time athletics. Connie might have been the greatest basketball player who ever lived. But he never will be. Hawk spent eight years on the NBA's blacklist, wrongfully implicated in a gambling scandal. The mental pain and the absence of top-flight coaching, competition, and medical attention have left deep, irreparable wounds on Hawkins's psyche and on his game. Who is to blame? Surely the legal system in which a semi-literate black teenage could not find justice. But also the callous, high-handed administrators and entrepreneurs who run professional sports ...
"Connie was still an outlaw when I met him in January, 1969. Five months later I was able to write an article for Life magazine which helped clear his name. It was partly responsible for his acceptance by the NBA and the million-dollar settlement of his anti-trust suit against the league.
"While I was working on the article, Connie and I became friends. ... we spent hundreds of hours together. I lived in Hawk's apartment for part of his first season with the Phoenix Suns and he spent eight weeks with me in New York City ...
"Connie is no longer the frightened, ignorant teenager who confessed to things he had not done. He is still uneducated and, in many ways, unsophisticated. But this is an intelligent man. His frank self-analysis, the open discussion of his painful childhood ..."
Page 1 : "Squad cars prowling streets heavy with the stench of uncollected garbage. Whores and winos crowding the sidewalks outside stark brick walkups. Apartments cramped and dilapidated, often without heat in winter or ventilation in summer, crawling with rats and roaches. Children running loose, hard-eyed youths with zip guns, ready to kill for a patch of turf, because the turf was all they had. This was the Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto where Connie Hawkins grew up. For eighteen years it was his only frame of reference; it was where his horizons began and ended. ...
"Cornelius Hawkins was born on July 17, 1942, the fifth of Dorothy Hawkins's six children. Bedford-Stuyvesant was a racially mixed working-class district then. But after the war, the whites began moving out, the buildings decayed, the Sanitation Department cleaned the streets less regularly, the crime rate soared, and Bed-Stuy became a slum.
"He lived on Lexington Avenue--the armpit of the ghetto--beneath the tracks of an elevated train that poured soot into the street and rumbled overhead throughout the night. There were three small factory buildings jammed between the crumbling tenements. At the corner was a candy store where the Hawkins family got their phone calls, a grocery where Connie stacked cans at the age of nine, and a little shop where people bought ice for twenty-five cents because few had electric refrigerators. In the building next to Connie's, a husband and wife ran an all-night blackjack game. Across the street was a whorehouse. ...
"In the Hawkins apartment, hot water was an occasional thing. The walls were bare except for two pictures of Christ: one a simple print, the other lit from behind with eyes that followed you across the tiny living room where his mother slept. There were two small bedrooms. His oldest brothers, Fred and Bobby, shared a single bed in one. Connie slept with two other brothers ... on a cot in the second bedroom. When there was no heat his mother kept the stove on all night and the boys slept in their coats. ...
"Connie's parents had come up from the tobacco fields of rural North Carolina. There was Cherokee Indian in their background. Hawk thinks his father did some kind of work for the railroad. He recalls him as a 'country-type man,' who raised chickens in the small dusty backyard and strangled them with his hands when he wanted chicken for dinner. He remembers that his parents often shouted at each other, especially when his father was drinking. But Isiah Hawkins was afraid to lay a hand on his wife. Fred and Bobby, who were eleven and six years older than Connie, were in gangs and could rumble. Their father knew they'd break him in half if he laid a hand on Dorothy Hawkins. And that's all Connie remembers about his father--except that one day when Hawk was about nine years old, his father went away and didn't come back.
"Connie's mother was a large, simple, deeply religious woman who never quite adjusted to the pace and hostility of urban life ..."
"Many youngsters emerge from the ghetto hard, strong, and self-confident. But for Connie, who might have been a troubled child in the best middle-class suburb, Bedford-Stuyvesant was overwhelming. He was slow, shy, and easily intimidated. The environment nurtured these characteristics, and they, in turn, made him less able to cope with the environment. He needed attention, sensitivity, even trained guidance. But everyone around him was too busy just trying to stay alive.
"'Until I got good at basketball,' Connie says, 'there was nothin about me I liked, there wasn't a thing that I could be proud of. I was kind of quiet and insecure. ...
"School was a frightening, depressing experience. ... Everything confused me. And the things they taught--they weren't things I knew about. The readin book had these pictures of little blond kids running the the country with their dog. I came to hate school, hate doin so bad.'
"Each year he fell farther behind. P.S.3 was a typical ghetto school; understaffed, underbudgeted, with outmoded facilities, overcrowded classrooms, and tired, beaten teachers, unable to relate to the sea of black faces before them. There was no time for special help--no time for a tall, skinny boy who didn't seem to catch on. Connie kept his fears inside and became convinced that he was a fool. ...
"Hawkins was always the tallest boy in his class. The other children found his physique uproariously funny. When he was ten years old he stood 5'10' and weighed just 115 pounds ...
"The easiest way to avoid the embarrassment of school was not to go ...
"When he wasn't embarrassed, he was afraid. The streets of Bed-Stuy throbbed with violence. This was the era of the gangs, and New York's toughest were in the Brooklyn ghetto. 'You had to be a member of a gang to get from one side of the street to the other,' Hawkins remembers. 'It was like playin army. Each gang had its own territory ...
" ... But Connie was never in a gang. None wanted him. Fred and Bobby were members, as were a lot of Earl's friends. This was Hawk's protection. 'A lot of times the gangs would chase me,' he says. 'Sometimes I got beat up. But mostly they'd recognize me and say, 'He Big Hawk's brother. He all right.' Freddie was Big Hawk and didn't nobody want to mess with him.' ...
"The was something on the streets that scared Connie even more than the bullies and the gangs. The police. By the time he was in junior high school a gulf of hatred and distrust separated the blacks in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the police of the Eighty-eighth Precinct.
"When Connie began playing basketball in the schoolyards, much of his time was spent on the asphalt courts at P.S.45, four blocks from his home:'From where we played you could see the back of the Eighty-eighth Precinct station house. Almost every day, we'd watch them take black guys out there and beat 'em. They would hit people with their fists and with clubs, and with some hose-type things. And they'd kick 'em. Especially if they fell on the grounds. We'd stop playin ball and stand there and watch. I guess they didn't care if we saw. Wat were we gonna do?'
page 9 - "One evening when he was walking home from school, a squad car swept around the corner on two wheels and screeched to a stop beside him. Connie froze. He had often seen blacks arrested on the street, but now all he could think was that the week before he'd watched a policeman pull his gun and shoot a dog that had been hit by a truck.
"A stocky, red-faced officer bounded from the squad car. 'Against the wall,' he snapped, grabbing Connie by the arm, whirling him around, and pushing him against the side of a building. 'Hands up. Get 'em on the wall. Fast.'
"A second policeman slapped his hands over Connie's sides and hips. 'Turn around, you,' he said coldly.
"Connie was so frightened he still couldn't speak. 'Don't tremble,' he thought. 'If I look scared, they'll think I done somethin.' They ordered him to empty his pockets. He was carrying two dimes and a door key. ... 'That happened a couple of times while I was still in junior high school,' he says. 'I guess I looked older because I was tall. I was always scared of cops. I got uncomfortable if one just looked at me.'
"Connie went from P.S. 3 to J.H.S. 258 in the seventh grade ... he stood 6'1', weighed 125 pounds ...
"By then his skills were so inadequate it was impossible for him to keep up in class: 'Not doin well was a complete embarrassment to me. Worse than in grammar school. Teachers told me I was dumb, in front of the whole class. Once we had a quiz and the teacher collected the papers a few minutes before the class ended. He must have noticed I hardly wrote anything. He stood up and he said, 'I want you to know that Hawkins, back there, is the moron of the class.' And he waved my paper. Everybody laughed at me.'
"Hawk's consolation was that, among the friends he had made in the neighborhood, school was irrelevant. On Lexington Avenue there were few high school diplomas tacked to the wall ...
***
Video about one of ten greatest ever basketball players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oElAu...
On the road today, thinking about "Foul!" ... Hawkins deserves recognition as a legend potentially equal with "The Greatest" Ali. For learning about the Manchild's Black Man's world of the 50's and 60's, this one is one of those books I'd most like to re-read. Definitely apt for high school library. Sad to see it commands such a high price used and is no longer available in most public libraries.
Manchild in the Promised Land
quoting - preface
"This book is about one athlete. But it is also about American athletics, because there are few aspects of sport in this country that Connie Hawkins has not experience firsthand. The hope and despair of the ghetto schoolyard, the pressure of high-level high school competition, the cutthroat college recruiting, the gambling scandals, the blacklists, the legal battles--Hawkins has been through all of them. He has played with the Harlem Globetrotters and in three professional leagues. He has been an outcast and a superstar--and he has emerged as a unique and perceptive man.
...
"But Hawkins life is also a chronicle of the corruption, racism, hypocrisy, and exploitation that are realities in modern, big-time athletics. Connie might have been the greatest basketball player who ever lived. But he never will be. Hawk spent eight years on the NBA's blacklist, wrongfully implicated in a gambling scandal. The mental pain and the absence of top-flight coaching, competition, and medical attention have left deep, irreparable wounds on Hawkins's psyche and on his game. Who is to blame? Surely the legal system in which a semi-literate black teenage could not find justice. But also the callous, high-handed administrators and entrepreneurs who run professional sports ...
"Connie was still an outlaw when I met him in January, 1969. Five months later I was able to write an article for Life magazine which helped clear his name. It was partly responsible for his acceptance by the NBA and the million-dollar settlement of his anti-trust suit against the league.
"While I was working on the article, Connie and I became friends. ... we spent hundreds of hours together. I lived in Hawk's apartment for part of his first season with the Phoenix Suns and he spent eight weeks with me in New York City ...
"Connie is no longer the frightened, ignorant teenager who confessed to things he had not done. He is still uneducated and, in many ways, unsophisticated. But this is an intelligent man. His frank self-analysis, the open discussion of his painful childhood ..."
Page 1 : "Squad cars prowling streets heavy with the stench of uncollected garbage. Whores and winos crowding the sidewalks outside stark brick walkups. Apartments cramped and dilapidated, often without heat in winter or ventilation in summer, crawling with rats and roaches. Children running loose, hard-eyed youths with zip guns, ready to kill for a patch of turf, because the turf was all they had. This was the Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto where Connie Hawkins grew up. For eighteen years it was his only frame of reference; it was where his horizons began and ended. ...
"Cornelius Hawkins was born on July 17, 1942, the fifth of Dorothy Hawkins's six children. Bedford-Stuyvesant was a racially mixed working-class district then. But after the war, the whites began moving out, the buildings decayed, the Sanitation Department cleaned the streets less regularly, the crime rate soared, and Bed-Stuy became a slum.
"He lived on Lexington Avenue--the armpit of the ghetto--beneath the tracks of an elevated train that poured soot into the street and rumbled overhead throughout the night. There were three small factory buildings jammed between the crumbling tenements. At the corner was a candy store where the Hawkins family got their phone calls, a grocery where Connie stacked cans at the age of nine, and a little shop where people bought ice for twenty-five cents because few had electric refrigerators. In the building next to Connie's, a husband and wife ran an all-night blackjack game. Across the street was a whorehouse. ...
"In the Hawkins apartment, hot water was an occasional thing. The walls were bare except for two pictures of Christ: one a simple print, the other lit from behind with eyes that followed you across the tiny living room where his mother slept. There were two small bedrooms. His oldest brothers, Fred and Bobby, shared a single bed in one. Connie slept with two other brothers ... on a cot in the second bedroom. When there was no heat his mother kept the stove on all night and the boys slept in their coats. ...
"Connie's parents had come up from the tobacco fields of rural North Carolina. There was Cherokee Indian in their background. Hawk thinks his father did some kind of work for the railroad. He recalls him as a 'country-type man,' who raised chickens in the small dusty backyard and strangled them with his hands when he wanted chicken for dinner. He remembers that his parents often shouted at each other, especially when his father was drinking. But Isiah Hawkins was afraid to lay a hand on his wife. Fred and Bobby, who were eleven and six years older than Connie, were in gangs and could rumble. Their father knew they'd break him in half if he laid a hand on Dorothy Hawkins. And that's all Connie remembers about his father--except that one day when Hawk was about nine years old, his father went away and didn't come back.
"Connie's mother was a large, simple, deeply religious woman who never quite adjusted to the pace and hostility of urban life ..."
"Many youngsters emerge from the ghetto hard, strong, and self-confident. But for Connie, who might have been a troubled child in the best middle-class suburb, Bedford-Stuyvesant was overwhelming. He was slow, shy, and easily intimidated. The environment nurtured these characteristics, and they, in turn, made him less able to cope with the environment. He needed attention, sensitivity, even trained guidance. But everyone around him was too busy just trying to stay alive.
"'Until I got good at basketball,' Connie says, 'there was nothin about me I liked, there wasn't a thing that I could be proud of. I was kind of quiet and insecure. ...
"School was a frightening, depressing experience. ... Everything confused me. And the things they taught--they weren't things I knew about. The readin book had these pictures of little blond kids running the the country with their dog. I came to hate school, hate doin so bad.'
"Each year he fell farther behind. P.S.3 was a typical ghetto school; understaffed, underbudgeted, with outmoded facilities, overcrowded classrooms, and tired, beaten teachers, unable to relate to the sea of black faces before them. There was no time for special help--no time for a tall, skinny boy who didn't seem to catch on. Connie kept his fears inside and became convinced that he was a fool. ...
"Hawkins was always the tallest boy in his class. The other children found his physique uproariously funny. When he was ten years old he stood 5'10' and weighed just 115 pounds ...
"The easiest way to avoid the embarrassment of school was not to go ...
"When he wasn't embarrassed, he was afraid. The streets of Bed-Stuy throbbed with violence. This was the era of the gangs, and New York's toughest were in the Brooklyn ghetto. 'You had to be a member of a gang to get from one side of the street to the other,' Hawkins remembers. 'It was like playin army. Each gang had its own territory ...
" ... But Connie was never in a gang. None wanted him. Fred and Bobby were members, as were a lot of Earl's friends. This was Hawk's protection. 'A lot of times the gangs would chase me,' he says. 'Sometimes I got beat up. But mostly they'd recognize me and say, 'He Big Hawk's brother. He all right.' Freddie was Big Hawk and didn't nobody want to mess with him.' ...
"The was something on the streets that scared Connie even more than the bullies and the gangs. The police. By the time he was in junior high school a gulf of hatred and distrust separated the blacks in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the police of the Eighty-eighth Precinct.
"When Connie began playing basketball in the schoolyards, much of his time was spent on the asphalt courts at P.S.45, four blocks from his home:'From where we played you could see the back of the Eighty-eighth Precinct station house. Almost every day, we'd watch them take black guys out there and beat 'em. They would hit people with their fists and with clubs, and with some hose-type things. And they'd kick 'em. Especially if they fell on the grounds. We'd stop playin ball and stand there and watch. I guess they didn't care if we saw. Wat were we gonna do?'
page 9 - "One evening when he was walking home from school, a squad car swept around the corner on two wheels and screeched to a stop beside him. Connie froze. He had often seen blacks arrested on the street, but now all he could think was that the week before he'd watched a policeman pull his gun and shoot a dog that had been hit by a truck.
"A stocky, red-faced officer bounded from the squad car. 'Against the wall,' he snapped, grabbing Connie by the arm, whirling him around, and pushing him against the side of a building. 'Hands up. Get 'em on the wall. Fast.'
"A second policeman slapped his hands over Connie's sides and hips. 'Turn around, you,' he said coldly.
"Connie was so frightened he still couldn't speak. 'Don't tremble,' he thought. 'If I look scared, they'll think I done somethin.' They ordered him to empty his pockets. He was carrying two dimes and a door key. ... 'That happened a couple of times while I was still in junior high school,' he says. 'I guess I looked older because I was tall. I was always scared of cops. I got uncomfortable if one just looked at me.'
"Connie went from P.S. 3 to J.H.S. 258 in the seventh grade ... he stood 6'1', weighed 125 pounds ...
"By then his skills were so inadequate it was impossible for him to keep up in class: 'Not doin well was a complete embarrassment to me. Worse than in grammar school. Teachers told me I was dumb, in front of the whole class. Once we had a quiz and the teacher collected the papers a few minutes before the class ended. He must have noticed I hardly wrote anything. He stood up and he said, 'I want you to know that Hawkins, back there, is the moron of the class.' And he waved my paper. Everybody laughed at me.'
"Hawk's consolation was that, among the friends he had made in the neighborhood, school was irrelevant. On Lexington Avenue there were few high school diplomas tacked to the wall ...
***
Video about one of ten greatest ever basketball players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oElAu...
On the road today, thinking about "Foul!" ... Hawkins deserves recognition as a legend potentially equal with "The Greatest" Ali. For learning about the Manchild's Black Man's world of the 50's and 60's, this one is one of those books I'd most like to re-read. Definitely apt for high school library. Sad to see it commands such a high price used and is no longer available in most public libraries.
Manchild in the Promised Land
September 10, 2013
Connie Hawkins might well have been the best basketball player ever, but that will never be known because of the unfortunate problems that kept him out of the NBA for so long. Wolf wrote one of the best biographies I've ever read, not just one of the best sports-figure biographies, in this excellent portrayal of his rise from poverty to being black-listed to eventual vindication. I don't follow basketball much anymore, but I think that this is a book well worth reading for anyone interested in the life and times of one of the greats.
January 31, 2008
A tremendous, riveting, often-heartbreaking account of schoolyard basketball legend/NBA star Connie Hawkins. Even though it's more than 30 years old, it's still an educational read about how the promise of sports stardom (both collegiate and professional) can betray so many talented inner-city kids. People like Hawkins paid dearly so that many years later, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, et al, could go straight to NBA fame and fortune without attending college.
August 24, 2015
One of the best basketball books ever written, The story of Connie Hawks fight to join the NBA. The Hawk played in the ABA for two years, then joined the Phoenix Suns for the 1969-70 NBA season.
October 2, 2024
5/5, maybe the best book I’ve ever read? Definitely the best non-fiction! I bought it at random from a bookstore in Greensboro for a couple bucks without knowing anything about the author or the player the book is about. So glad I took a chance on it!
Connie Hawkins had an insane life. This book is an excellent example of great journalism, a funny historical analysis of what professional basketball was like in the 60s (not particularly glamorous), and a really interesting look into the lives of black teens growing up in NYC ghettos in the 50s. The book was first published in 1972 but I feel like there were lots of great lessons about perseverance and making difficult life decisions that are just as relevant today.
Hawk might just be my all time favorite athlete and I have never seen a single clip of him playing!
Connie Hawkins had an insane life. This book is an excellent example of great journalism, a funny historical analysis of what professional basketball was like in the 60s (not particularly glamorous), and a really interesting look into the lives of black teens growing up in NYC ghettos in the 50s. The book was first published in 1972 but I feel like there were lots of great lessons about perseverance and making difficult life decisions that are just as relevant today.
Hawk might just be my all time favorite athlete and I have never seen a single clip of him playing!
August 11, 2018
One of the best sports books ever, or heck, just one of the best books ever. Ahead of its time (copyright early 70's) in merging sports with the sociological problems of the inner city. David Wolf captures the rise, fall, and rise again, of ghetto superstar Connie Hawkins, who along the way gets shafted by the college game, and wrongfully banned by the NBA. A fantastic look inside the life of the NYC ghetto, street ball, and the struggles of a athletically gifted man, who just wants (and needs) a break in life.
Sadly, this magnificent book is out of print. If you can find it, read it, and keep it!
Sadly, this magnificent book is out of print. If you can find it, read it, and keep it!
March 18, 2020
Great read for any basketball fan. Plus, if you have an affinity for old school hoops (as I do) it’s a real treat. I loved reading about all the old players, their games, and how they were perceived in their own era. The schoolyard stories are great, in particular the Hawk’s matchup with Wilt Chamberlain at the Rucker.
Hawk’s journey to the NBA, the focal point of the book, is remarkable and shocking. Interesting to ‘see’ him grow as you continue to read.
The Hawk’s story is also a depressing commentary on society, as many of the themes still hold true today. Remains relevant for anyone involved in high school, college, or professional basketball.
Easy to read, real page-turner.
Hawk’s journey to the NBA, the focal point of the book, is remarkable and shocking. Interesting to ‘see’ him grow as you continue to read.
The Hawk’s story is also a depressing commentary on society, as many of the themes still hold true today. Remains relevant for anyone involved in high school, college, or professional basketball.
Easy to read, real page-turner.
May 15, 2018
Agree with some earlier reviews - interesting and tragic story of one of best basketball players ever, but gets bogged down in details of individual games [evidently ones that the author was present for].
Also, for me the book ended too soon - before his career ended. Good reporting on his early life and the specifics of how he was denied the opportunity to play in both college and the NBA. Brings in many famous players of the era.
Also, for me the book ended too soon - before his career ended. Good reporting on his early life and the specifics of how he was denied the opportunity to play in both college and the NBA. Brings in many famous players of the era.
February 10, 2021
I read this book years ago in high school, and it was a very well written and enlightening telling of the Connie Hawkins story. It really made me wish I could have seen him in his prime -- he was a truly awesome basketball talent, who was barred from the NBA (and therefore played in the ABA) for years due to a scandal that was not real. Eventually late in his career he was able to play in the NBA. Highly recommended for sports fans.
November 19, 2024
I’m not sure why I liked this so much. Perhaps because I knew nothing about Connie Hawkins. It’s a great story but also perhaps the first that tells the plight of black athletes in the 60s that came to be a stereotype.
January 23, 2021
Loved it. Great history lesson of NYC basketball in the ‘60s, the early Harlem globetrotters and the ABL/ABA/NBA — all based around the legend, Connie Hawkins
April 23, 2025
5 stars for the Hawk and 4.5 for the writing.
March 5, 2017
Connie Hawkins is a pretty remarkable story. From start to finish, it's incredible and Wolf does a good job of telling the story. The book gets tedious at times in details of games, sometimes making a season seem as if it is going in reverse, but Hawkins plight makes the book worth reading from start to finish.
February 22, 2008
I overstudied for my comprehensive exams at LSE which left me totally spent. We moved to Chapel Hill in the fall of 1973 and I began working on the gounds crew for UNC along with prison work release inmates including "Cool Daddy", a murderer and other unforgettable characters. I could only manage to read the Connie Hawkins story, which was ghost written no doubt, formulaic, and geared for a dull witted 14 year old. It took me about 6 weeks to finish it in my zombie state. Connie Hawkins grew up poor in Brooklyn, went to Univ of Iowa and then the NBA. I only recommend the genre for someone who has no gas left in the intellectual tank and has the curiousity of a flea.
August 13, 2012
One of the best inspirational sports books ever. It's not just for fans of basketball it's about the struggle of life and never giving up on your dreams. You can get anywhere you want in life if you decide to not accept failure. If you want something that appear unattainable read this book... you will change your mind and go for it.
July 19, 2009
One of the very best sports biographies ever written. Well researched and blunt; painting an honest yet not always flattering picture of Hawkins. You come away feeling you understand both the man and what he went through, inflicted by others as well as by himself.
December 23, 2010
Although slow and uneven at certain points, this insider's look at the life of the unfairly maligned Connie Hawkins is both a moving story of redemption as well as an excellent social history of professional basketball in the late 60s and early 70s.
September 13, 2009
great book! they railroaded this dude...
October 13, 2010
Interesting story of the colorful life of an NBA star, who was also a star at the "other" basketball - street ball.
I remember enjoying at the time.
I remember enjoying at the time.
February 11, 2011
A great biography of Connie Hawkins.
November 30, 2013
The story of the great Connie Hawkins, compellingly told by David Wolf and Hawkins himself. Will always be one of the great- - and most important- - hoops books.
October 19, 2014
One of the best sports books I've ever read. A compelling read especially if you like basketball.
December 17, 2015
Great read. Book given to me by Bob Lobelson.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews