By the time I first heard about The Hawk a lot of people were saying he was past his prime. But I didn’t know that. All I knew was that the voice coming out of the radio was talking about this player with high-pitched amazement, and The Hawk was about to bump my Lakers from the playoffs.

The year was 1970. The radio voice was Chick Hearn’s. And The Hawk was Connie Hawkins, a twenty-seven-year-old rookie with the Phoenix Suns who was putting on a clinic during the Western Conference Finals. He was torching the Lakers and averaged twenty-five points and fourteen rebounds a game in the series before Los Angeles finally prevailed in seven games. I was nine years old and, back in those days, my bedtime arrived before the start of a pro basketball game, so I never saw The Hawk, didn’t know what he looked like. That all changed a couple years later as Hawkins ended up a Laker and I got the chance to see him up close (on the occasional televised Lakers game), finally being able to match his skills and style with the frenetic Chick Hearn descriptions. His game was soaring, his story a little sad.

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Longtime coach Larry Brown told ESPN, “He was Julius before Julius, he was Elgin before Elgin, he was Michael before Michael. He was simply the greatest individual player I have ever seen.” Those are powerful comparisons and he’s worthy of them, but from my view, The Hawk flew with a style all his own.

Cornelius Hawkins was born in Brooklyn, was said to have first dunked a basketball when he was eleven years old and created the kind of playground legend they make movies about. He was all set to go to the University of Iowa on scholarship, but instead got implicated – erroneously and unfairly – in a point-shaving scandal. His scholarship was revoked and a paranoid NBA blackballed him. He played a season in the minor leagues of pro basketball and then several years with the Harlem Globetrotters, but the world got robbed of some choice, irreplaceable moments of basketball genius.

Hawkins, then in his mid-twenties, re-emerged for the 1967-1968 season and essentially grabbed the basketball world by the collar and shook it. It was the inaugural season of the American Basketball Association and Hawkins found himself playing for the Pittsburgh Pipers. He led the Pipers to the championship and was the League’s playoff and regular season MVP. In a league forever immortalized for the creativity and pure athleticism of its players, Hawkins was the biggest badass on the block.

The following season, the NBA added two teams, in Phoenix and Milwaukee, and they flipped a coin to see who would have the privilege of drafting Lew Alcindor. Phoenix lost that fateful toss, and in what felt like a consolation prize, the NBA made amends with Hawkins and gave his rights to Phoenix. Hawkins would have a seven-year NBA career, and in those fleeting moments, left a timeless impression on anyone who saw him play.  The Hawk had style.

Hawkins gets marginalized as a “dunker” – and he could for sure throw it down – but he was so much more … He was a wizard, a contortionist, an inventor, an undeniable flying object. He was built like the letter “X”, all arms and legs with a physical length that resembled a man on stilts. He was 6′ 8″ and could virtually step over defenders, reach around them and create shots and score buckets through an anatomical geometry that was hard to imagine and impossible to stop. The Hawk had huge hands. His teammates would pass him the ball and he would catch it with one hand, not stopping it, not cradling it, but rather, instantly gripping it like he had been tossed a tennis ball. He would often receive the ball, one-handed, and without a dribble, use that long, telescopic arm to flip up a finger-roll, get an easy layup or float down the lane and score with a scoop shot. He could shoot, he could drive, he could make up shots that didn’t exist and find ways to score that had never crossed the mortal mind. In an era of Hall of Fame big men, The Hawk would routinely enter the land of the trees, brazenly challenge them, and then emerge magically with two points.

Connie Hawkins was a rare bird. Nature doesn’t produce these kinds of players and you couldn’t design one in a lab if you tried. The next time you see a young high-flyer, a long, lean basketball prodigy who seems to soar and score with ease, remember, the “era of flight” in the NBA started with The Hawk. RIP.