Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story
From Hoopedia
Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story
by David Wolf (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972)
David Wolf tells the story of the bittersweet life of basketball great Connie Hawkins to great effect in this fine book that is a biography and more.
More because "Foul" recounts in detail the circumstances that led to Hawkins' longstanding ban from the NBA for his at best highly tenuous link to corruption in college sports. In telling the story, Wolf paints a damning picture of big-time sports, a picture that is, if anything, truer than ever today.
Wolf sets up the story by giving us a glimpse into Hawkins' poverty-stricken childhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he led an unhappy existence that was relieved only when he discovered he had nearly unparalleled basketball skills. He quickly became a playground legend and developed the trademark swooping moves that many of us who got to see him play remember and that made his nickname so apt: Hawk.
Unfortunately, Hawkins did not receive one important thing along the way: an education. One of the most highly recruited players of the time, he was ready to play the college game on the court, but woefully unprepared to play it in the classroom. He was chronically broke, painfully shy, and extremely naive, a combination which made him particularly vulnerable to the unscrupulous character whose actions ultimately led to his ban from the NBA.
"Foul" also tells a detailed and fascinating story of the fledgling American Basketball Association, which was where Hawkins was forced to play and also where he began cementing his legend in the basketball world. It's instructive to read about the low pay and inferior playing conditions Hawkins endured, all the time knowing, of course, that he could easily compete with the best the NBA had to offer.
Finally, the book delivers a detailed account of the legal fight undertaken to remove the ban. This was achieved by his committed -- and of course poorly paid -- attorneys over the determined opposition of, among others, current NBA commissioner David Stern, who hardly expresses remorse in his interviews with the author.
The final sadness of Hawkins' story, of course, is that while he had an above-average NBA career, his best years were taken from him, and most basketball fans were deprived of seeing him when he was one of the best players in the game.
Connie Hawkins remains in my mind after reading this book, not only because of his compelling story, but because of his resilience and humanity. All in all, "Foul" is a sports classic because it fascinates on so many levels.
