Episode 288 - Connie Hawkins: An Interview with Bo Belanger

0:00And that's the end of the first half, as the team said to the locker room, the Spartans lead the Bulldogs by a score. You guys stink. Jeez, Coach, we're only down a couple of points. No, I mean, you guys really smell. You need to hit the showers. And here, I got every one of you new bars of soap from the Sterling soap company. Each bar is artisan crafted using natural ingredients and essential oils. They also have shaved soaps, cologne, beard, balm, and a whole lot more. Now get in there. But Coach, we have another half to play. I don't care. I can't stand to be around you a few minutes later. All right, bring it in tight. You guys are still playing terrible, but you're smelling great out there. Now listen, you're going to need to stock up for the rest of the season. We got a lot of tough games left. So go to sterlingsoap.com after the game. That's STIRL-I-N-G-Sope.com. You got that? Yes, Coach? Great. SterlingSope.com on three. One, two, three. SterlingSope.com. Welcome back to award winning basketball history 101 part of the sports history network.

1:04I'm your host Rick Loisah, and this is the podcast we bring to life, some of the forgotten stories from basketball history. We're bringing old school basketball to a new school audience. And today we bring you an interview with Bo Belanger. He is a writer, producer, and the creative force behind a new podcast series about the life of Connie Hawkins and Jack Malinas. The podcast is called Connie and Jack, a rigged game. Connie Hawkins is a Hall of Fame player who was initially banned by the NBA for accusations of shaving points while at the University of Iowa. The problem was that he never actually played a single game while at Iowa. And Jack Malinas was a former NBA player who had turned to gambling and was a ringleader of a massive point-shaving scandal in college basketball. The two men cross paths only briefly, but the impact to Hawkins was far-reaching. So, without further ado, here is our interview with Bo Belanger. Welcome back to basketball history 101 with Rick Loisah.

2:21And today, as I mentioned in the intro, I have Bo Belanger with me, and he has put together his own podcast called Connie and Jack, a rigged game, and really looking forward to hearing that. So, this is our interview with Bo, and so, Bo, welcome to the show, we appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks for having me, Rick, I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So, you know, we got in touch with each other, you know, for this podcast, and you've got your own that you wanted to share and talk about, and I'm more than happy to have you on. Connie Hawkins, Jack Malinas, and the college point-shaving scandal from the 50s, and I think you did the 60s. I think there was a different one in the 60s, but obviously there was a lot of people involved. But Connie Hawkins is probably one of the more famous, if not the most famous player, that got caught up into it. I'll say like that got caught up in it. Yeah, absolutely. He was, there was a number of guys who were sort of, they were never charged with a crime.

3:28The other big name is Roger Brown, but there are others, Doug Moe, and a handful of guys who were never charged with a crime, you know, in Connie's case, not charged with a crime, and it really derailed his career even though he knew Malinas from playing in the school yards, and he had taken along which he paid back, but they sort of yanked him off the campus at Iowa, he was just a freshman, and brought him to New York, and he had sort of a hellish two weeks during this investigation when they were trying to get Malinas. This was a 61 scandal, and yeah, he told the truth for about a week, and then he realized that they wanted to hear certain things, so he started telling him what they wanted to hear. You know, it's basically just started spinning a web of lies for the cops because they were after Malinas, you know, no, was never read his rights, was wearing the same pair of clothes for two weeks, they won't let them call his mother, you know, it was pretty very much

4:28fully tactical in this investigation, but he flew back to Iowa and they said you need to withdraw, and his life was basically ruined from accepting a loan from Jackalinas. So what drew you to this story in particular, because there are, you know, hundreds of possible stories you could do through basketball history, but why was this one, did stick out for you? Yeah, so I came to this story, I was actually helping some friends develop a TV show about the ABA, and I was doing a lot of research for it, so I read like Terry Pluto's book, Loose Balls, which is a classic, and a number of other books, Dr. J had not a biography, which I loved, and my uncle recommended this book, Fowl, which is about Connie Hockinson, and it was out of print, and I read the book, and I got like, was able to get my hands on a copy of it, read it, and the story just stayed with me, you never stored the show, but sort of the story stayed with me, I reached out to, was trying to figure out the rights

5:31of the book, like, you know, why isn't this been made, it's just a fantastic story, why isn't it been made into a, you know, TV show or movie or anything, and basically, I ended up talking to Connie's grandson Sean Hockinson, who's been a partner with me on this project, and Sean just explained that they weren't sophisticated enough to have like, when Connie passed, to have any life rights set up, so everyone would try to get the rights of this book, would fail, you know, it was, it was sort of a combination of the thing, it was, there's Connie's story really sticking with me, and then after talking to Sean and hearing how he wanted his grandfather's story out there, and rightfully, it's a fantastic story, it's a really a story about Perseverance, and it's incredibly impressive what Connie went through, and so it's sort of those two factors where I was like, I'm going to spend a lot of time trying to make this happen. Well, two things that kind of have two questions in mind here, so first I want to ask you, how you got in touch with Sean Hockinson to do this story, like, how did you find, or how did he find you to participate?

6:34I found him, when I, I believe it was just on Instagram, I was just trying to find any members of Connie's family that I could get, and Sean was, you know, grandson of, he's the son of Sean, Connie's oldest daughter. He was just the one I reached out to, and it was such a blessing because he's just, he's just so passionate about it, getting, you know, his grandfather's story out there, so it was really just lucky. Yeah, oh, that's amazing. I mean, I guess, you know, social media comes in hand in these kinds of things sometimes. Absolutely. And you put in quite a bit of time putting all this together if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I put in a short answer is probably, you know, a year, a year and a half of research. The reason that was the case is because, like I said, the rights to this book follow this by Dave Wolf, it's a fabulous book, would recommend anyone who can get their hands on it. It's out of print, sort of criminally, I think it's such a good book.

7:37But they, we couldn't get the rights to that book, and I wanted to, it's sort of the definitive story of Connie's life, and I wanted to source the source Connie story sort of outside of that book. So what I did was I went into newspaper, you know, this is the during the, the depths of COVID, and went into just magazine and newspaper archives, and just sort of dug around for all the newspaper articles, all the magazine articles I could get, you know, read a number of other books as well, just try to, you know, figure out another way at this story. I didn't want to just retail gave story, you know, a straight biography of Connie, and that's where Jack comes in. I initially had actually wanted to try to throw out the relationship between Connie and his mom. But I wasn't able to find much about her. But this Jack Melinas character was really hopping off the page as I was doing my research. She's just a, as you covered in one of your previous episodes, who is a fantastic player,

8:38All-American at Columbia, was a first round draft pick in NBA, and then booted from the league for betting on his own games. This was about 10 years before Connie. This is like the mid-50s, and always had a sort of this, as you mentioned in your episode, just really an addiction to gambling, that he couldn't kick. And so he was an NBA, XMBA player, turned, he sort of started running the mob and ran this college fixing scandal. The light bulb moment was, when I realized, I told these guys story a sort of like a dual biography. If you have Connie's story, this one guy who just really wants one shot in life. And then you have Jack, who seems to be getting a lot of chances, and he keeps blowing it. And that was sort of the, once I was like, okay, if I could just tell this as a dual biography, this is a really powerful story, sort of larger themes about America sort of start to emerge. And that was a good moment during the research process. Yeah, and yeah, you're right, Melinas himself is just such a fascinating character.

9:45With a guy with as much talent and having played, I mean, you would think he might be the last person to begin gambling on games, but everybody's different. You could do a whole thing just on him, but I love the idea of doing, like you said, the dual biography of how their paths cross and how each of their stories progressed before and after the actual incident with Connie Hawkins. Yeah, it's really only a pretty brief moment in time when they, when their lives cross. It's obviously just a shame they did for Connie, because they really derailed his life for about a decade. But it's a brief moment in time when, when Jack was trying to influence, he was probably in his second or third year running this fixing operation. So this is the end of the 50s, early 60s. As you mentioned, great basketball player. So all the guys in New York knew him, because he'd just go around to all the big pick-up

10:49games. And when Connie met him, he said, I was impressed with Jack, because he was one of the few guys I met whose hands were almost as big as mine, and Melinas was a hell of a basketball player. So he'd go around to these playgrounds and try to recruit these kids. He was looking for kids who had financial insecurities, because obviously they'd be more willing to throw a game form. So he met a bunch of these players. He happened to cross paths with Connie, and he'd split these guys 10 bucks here, and they are trying to get in their good graces, and then it wasn't, I think it was six months later, Connie was home for Christmas, but he's a freshman, of course, so he's not playing at that point on the varsity. So this is back, as you know, before freshman to play on the varsity team in college. And he was home for Christmas, and his coach had given him a couple hundred bucks for his dorm fees for the spring, but Connie spent that money on Christmas gifts for his family. So he was terrified of having to go back to school and face his coach with the money, you

11:53know, the tuition, whatever it was, the money for books, gone, and Jack always said, had to tell him, if you ever need anything, you know, give me a shout, and Connie said, it's like he was the one guy who I knew that sort of money side went to him at Barth Jorn of Box. I went back to school. His brother Fred repaid Jack, and then, you know, this is like April of his freshman year and detective shows up on campus, and as I mentioned from there, it sort of goes really downhill for Connie. Yeah. And it's one of the tough stories to listen to because he was such a fantastically gifted player, and we did not get to see him in the NBA, or even in the ABA for quite a while, because of, because this was, you know, hanging around his neck, and it's just one of those kind of big what ifs, you know, what if he wouldn't able to go into the NBA as a normal rookie, you know, same age as all the other rookies, you know, just where would his, where would his career numbers stand in comparison, and yeah, it's one of those, those stories

12:58that he's kind of just such a shame that it all would happen, how it went down. But you know, you're going to get, you're going to go deep in and, you know, bring out details and stories related to what's happening here that are, I imagine going to be quite eye opening. Yeah. It's really, it's a funny story, because it's really on the one hand, you know, he ends up, you know, making the Phoenix franchise eventually, and he's a, he's a great star, you know, all star in the NBA, and someone the league is proud of, but it's a very conflicting story for the NBA, because they're really a villain in the story. They, you know, as you sort of, when you listen to the podcast, you sort of hear like they were very negligent in, in looking into Connie's case, in fact, they didn't, they didn't sort of look into whether he was, he was never charged with a crime, Malinus and Hacken had been saying for years that he was innocent, and so he, he's really sort of presumed guilty

14:01by the league, and it, it, like you said, it is an absolute shame because he was incredibly talented. People often said he was sort of a link between Baylor and Dr. J as far as the big guys who really took, you know, Baylor took the game to the air for the first, first, how he was really the first time to sort of play in the air, and then people, of course, the, the next guy is Dr. J, that people know of, but really the connection there was Connie, which made you guys, and he was playing around New York, and just a height of New York hoops, you know, when Connie was, he was a playground, a, a god in the, in the late 50s, early 60s, and just so much, you know, this is like a, you know, young Lou Alcinder was taking the inspiration from him, of course Dr. J was around as a young, they called Dr. J Little Hawk at Rucker, because he, their game had such similarities to each other, but it's, it's a huge what if career, and he, he ends up, you know, coming into the, I don't want to spoil too much, but I'm sure some, some people know the story, he, he gets into the

15:05league, um, relatively, you know, and it's just, it's, um, he's not, he's not the, there's, there's a lot of lost years, someone has a chord about, um, it's like finding, uh, when you see him play, uh, it's like finding like a lost Picasso on the attic, because it's like, he's just, he, there, it's certainly masterpieces on the court that he put together that we'll just never, never know about. Yeah, right, because yeah, he, essentially, he should have been in the league the whole time, and then just wasn't because, obviously, because of what happened with the, with the, with the loan and all that, um, now, you also in, in, in bringing in his family, which I think is really, really neat, um, his grandson, uh, Sean, uh, you said he participated, so what was he, in his passion for his grandfather's story, uh, how was he able to participate, or what did that look like, you know, what, what, what's his involvement with the, uh, with the podcast? Well, it was, he used challenges, so patient, because this was, I did this research, um,

16:06as I mentioned, this was like early COVID, so this is, you know, 2020, it's been, so it was a six, I think five or six years for this project, and, um, he, he, as I mentioned inspired me to really dive in and, and source it outside, um, Dave's book, and so he, he was a huge source of inspiration, and then we never really know, knew what form it would take. There was initially, um, trying to do film TV that didn't really take, and then it was, well, you know, maybe this could be, um, a podcast, and so Sean, Sean was just sort of along for the ride, encouraging me as I sort of did all this research. There was never really, never really knew what his involvement in it would be, and it wasn't until the last year and a half or so, where, um, I wanted him involved in some way, and I had the idea, um, that if it'd be cool if he read his, um, Connie's quotes in the story, and that was sort of the light bulb there, and I just, it just felt like a nice way to, for Sean to be a part of the project.

17:07He'd been, as I mentioned, just a huge inspiration for it all, and it'd a great, just like patient partner encouraging, we had some really close calls and a handshake deal that fell through, just some like heartbreaking deals, um, before we got to this point, and he was just so encouraging on the way, so it was, um, I was so happy that he wanted to, you know, voice his father's quotes in it, and that it ended up happening was, was really cool. Yeah. No, that, that's really neat. It, uh, that kind of reminds me of, uh, what is it, the, of Val Kilmer's, uh, documentary he made about himself, and it was his son who read, who was that kind of the narrator of it, but his voice was so similar, I didn't, I couldn't even tell that it wasn't Val Kilmer until I found out afterwards, uh, but I, I love that of having the, you know, the grandson reading the quotes by Connie Hawkins, and, you know, to give it that, that sort of, uh, that weight or that, that kind of a, kind of an authenticity, so to speak, to, to what he, what Connie, uh, you know, would have said back then.

18:09Absolutely. Yeah. And he's, um, Sean's in his very area, which is where, um, Connie was for a lot of, you know, where he raised his family, so, um, you know, it's, it ties back to Pittsburgh again, and Connie's family, and, uh, yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was really special that Sean's been, been a part of us. Oh, that's, that's so neat to hear. Um, so again, I, I don't want to, I don't want to give away too much of it either, because you're going to do a fantastic, or you have done a fantastic job, uh, with these episodes. And, um, so at what point, um, when can we expect to hear the first episode of the, Connie and, uh, the story, Connie and Jack are, a rigged game. Yeah. So we're going to be putting these out, um, in early March, and I can, um, get you an exact, we're still sort of figuring out some marketing stuff, Rick. So I don't, I'm forced to have an exact date for you, um, but it'll be, um, the month of March. Okay. Yeah. We're going to run it.

19:09This felt like a good time. We have, um, you know, basketball sort of coming into full swing here between the, the tournament and, and NBA starting to heat up. So this is, if I left a good time to do it, um, they'll run, um, for a month, they'll be, um, going to drop two episodes the first day and then, um, after that, basically two episodes a week. So it'll run, there were all nine episodes will run, um, over a course of four weeks that will likely start in, in early March. Yeah. That's, that's fantastic. And you're right. The timing can be better. You have college basketball running its championship, uh, pro basketball getting ready to, to head into their playoffs and, and, and round out their season. Um, yeah. I mean, basketball's on, on the mind, uh, for most sports fans right now. So yeah, I agree. It, it, it is great timing. Um, so again, the, the, the, the podcast is called Connie and Jack, a rigged game. And so we're looking at, I think you said nine episodes in total two in the first day

20:10and then two a week after that. So I can't wait to, to hear it and to, uh, to go deeper, um, into this story. It just, it sounds fantastic. And it is such a fascinating time of basketball, uh, where the NBA is emerging on, on stronger financial ground. And then this is happening with Jack Malinas is happening with Connie Hawkins all at the same time. Um, uh, it's just, uh, yeah, as a basketball fan, uh, I'm just so excited to, to get into this. Yeah. Thanks for having on record. Both guys have, as you mentioned, um, uh, interesting lives. Jack is a very colorful character and Connie has this, not, not only was he, uh, sort of relative, the unknown, great basketball player, he just has this amazing life story. Um, so I think, I think, um, certainly, folks of your, um, your podcast, I think we'll like it. The, the people who really like basketball history. And I'm hoping, um, you know, it strikes your core with other folks too, just like a good idea. It's just a sort of a classic underdog story. So I, I thank you again for having me on a, as I mentioned before we jumped on it from

21:15your podcast and all the deep dive she'd do. So it's, it's a pleasure to talk to you. Yeah. Well, thank you again, Bo. And we appreciate your time and we definitely are looking forward to, uh, to hearing your episodes. Again, Connie and Jack, a rigged game. So thank you again. And I appreciate your time, Bo. We want to thank Boba Langer and we are so excited to hear the podcast for ourselves because this is such a fascinating story. Again, the podcast is called Connie and Jack, a rigged game. Check it out. Well, that's it for today. Join us next time when we share another story from basketball history. That's next time on basketball history 101 part of the sports history network. The headquarters of sports history here, go to sportshistorynetwork.com to find out more about this and other sports history podcasts. If you like what you hear, please hit that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our page on Facebook. It's called basketball history 101 podcast. There you will find short historical posts and I'll announce there when you episodes come out. I want to thank my producer and editor, Jacob Lawiza, join us each week as we continue

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