Podcasts about Connie Hawkins

Connie Hawkins, simply stated, was a phenomenal basketball player. Inducted into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992, his career was robbed of five years of his NBA career. And not just any five, the first five. Hawkins was a legend on the playground in New York City. Recruited to play college ball at the University of Iowa, he was wrongfully accused of being involved in a point-shaving scandal that ultimately cost him his college career, which then led to him being banned by the NBA. Instead, Hawkins hooked on with the newly formed ABL (American Basketball League) and the Pittsburgh Rens. However, the ABL didn't make it through its second season. From the ABL, Hawkins wound up playing with the Harlem Globetrotters and then found his way to another startup basketball league, the ABA (American Basketball Association). and the Pittsburgh Pipers. Finally, after two years in the ABA, the NBA lifted the ban on Hawkins after it realized its ban on him wouldn't stand up in court, and Hawkins finally realized his lifelong dream, a career in the NBA. Many say Hawkins was Dr. J. before there was a Dr. J., and that's what the NBA missed, and that's what Hawkins was robbed of. A no-doubt first-round talent, Hawkins made his way to the Phoenix Suns and wound up averaging 24.6 PPG in his first year with the team. But, by then, knee injuries had slowed him down. On this episode of Sports' Forgotten Heroes, author Mark Whited joins the show along with Sean Hawkins, Connie's grandson, as we look back at the legendary career of the "Hawk."

Balls of Confusion: Pro Basketball Goes to War(1965-70) is the first of a two-part story about one of the most transformative events inpro basketball history: the war between the National Basketball Association and its challenger the American Basketball Association (ABA).From this nine-year battle for the heart of the game, modern pro basketball emerged in the mid-1970s and grew into today's global, multibillion-dollar sports industry. Part One takes a definitive behind-the-scenes look at both leagues marching to war, their marketing schemes, their labor woes, their legal challenges, and their coming to terms with the 1960s and the nation's changing attitudes on race. If you love sports history and pro basketball's throwback days of Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Connie Hawkins, and Julius Erving, this is a book for you, with part two soon to follow. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won. His next book, a biography of Moses Malone will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Balls of Confusion: Pro Basketball Goes to War(1965-70) is the first of a two-part story about one of the most transformative events inpro basketball history: the war between the National Basketball Association and its challenger the American Basketball Association (ABA).From this nine-year battle for the heart of the game, modern pro basketball emerged in the mid-1970s and grew into today's global, multibillion-dollar sports industry. Part One takes a definitive behind-the-scenes look at both leagues marching to war, their marketing schemes, their labor woes, their legal challenges, and their coming to terms with the 1960s and the nation's changing attitudes on race. If you love sports history and pro basketball's throwback days of Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Connie Hawkins, and Julius Erving, this is a book for you, with part two soon to follow. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won. His next book, a biography of Moses Malone will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Balls of Confusion: Pro Basketball Goes to War(1965-70) is the first of a two-part story about one of the most transformative events inpro basketball history: the war between the National Basketball Association and its challenger the American Basketball Association (ABA).From this nine-year battle for the heart of the game, modern pro basketball emerged in the mid-1970s and grew into today's global, multibillion-dollar sports industry. Part One takes a definitive behind-the-scenes look at both leagues marching to war, their marketing schemes, their labor woes, their legal challenges, and their coming to terms with the 1960s and the nation's changing attitudes on race. If you love sports history and pro basketball's throwback days of Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Connie Hawkins, and Julius Erving, this is a book for you, with part two soon to follow. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won. His next book, a biography of Moses Malone will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Balls of Confusion: Pro Basketball Goes to War(1965-70) is the first of a two-part story about one of the most transformative events inpro basketball history: the war between the National Basketball Association and its challenger the American Basketball Association (ABA).From this nine-year battle for the heart of the game, modern pro basketball emerged in the mid-1970s and grew into today's global, multibillion-dollar sports industry. Part One takes a definitive behind-the-scenes look at both leagues marching to war, their marketing schemes, their labor woes, their legal challenges, and their coming to terms with the 1960s and the nation's changing attitudes on race. If you love sports history and pro basketball's throwback days of Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Connie Hawkins, and Julius Erving, this is a book for you, with part two soon to follow. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won. His next book, a biography of Moses Malone will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Balls of Confusion: Pro Basketball Goes to War(1965-70) is the first of a two-part story about one of the most transformative events inpro basketball history: the war between the National Basketball Association and its challenger the American Basketball Association (ABA).From this nine-year battle for the heart of the game, modern pro basketball emerged in the mid-1970s and grew into today's global, multibillion-dollar sports industry. Part One takes a definitive behind-the-scenes look at both leagues marching to war, their marketing schemes, their labor woes, their legal challenges, and their coming to terms with the 1960s and the nation's changing attitudes on race. If you love sports history and pro basketball's throwback days of Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Connie Hawkins, and Julius Erving, this is a book for you, with part two soon to follow. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won. His next book, a biography of Moses Malone will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we share the story of the Pittsburgh Pipers who later became the Pittsburgh Condors. The team only lasted five seasons before going out of business, but they relocated twice, went through 8 head coaches, and 3 name changes. But they will always be the original ABA champions when they featured Connie Hawkins as their leading scorer.CREDITSRick Loayza: Head researcher, writer, and voiceJacob Loayza: Editor, producer, and publisher MUSIC"Disco Funk" by Jam Morgan"Horizons" by Roa SPORTS HISTORY NETWORKsportshistorynetwork.comsportshistorynetwork.com/podcasts/basketball-history-101/ FACEBOOKm.facebook.com/Basketball-History-101-103801581493027/ BUSINESS CONTACTbballhistory101@gmail.com

Connie Hawkins paved the way for so many and Bill tells basketball stories about interactions with Jerry West and others. Tonight is the 50th year of the Willie Stargell Awards Banquet. PAUL IS BEING HONORED!

Audio en el que volvemos a imaginar alternativas a la realidad de la NBA, es decir, “qué hubiera pasado si” (“what ifs”). Hablamos sobre Michael Jordan y su no retirada en 1993; el Julius Erving (Doctor J) de la década de los 70; la llegada a la NBA de un joven Connie Hawkins; la entrada de Olajuwon en los Portland Trail Blazers y su unión con Clyde Drexler; el probable excelente rendimiento de los Blazers con Brandon Roy, Greg Oden y LaMarcus Aldridge juntos y sanos; Koby Bryant permaneciendo en los Charlotte Hornets (quienes lo eligieron en el draft); Bill Russell permaneciendo en los St. Louis Hawks sin ser traspasado a Boston Celtics; Utah Jazz no regalando su primera ronda de 1979 por Gail Goodrich (elección que supuso la llegada de Magic a Lakers); Shaq y Kobe manteniéndose juntos y bien avenidos en Lakers; Magic Johnson sin contraer el VIH; y Len Bias sin morir por sobredosis en 1986. Reemitimos este programa ya difundido en “Back to back” (15-11-2022). ------ Contacto y redes: - iVoox (Era baloncesto): https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-era-baloncesto_sq_f1687000_1.html - XLS con todos los audios: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k9YiJkMkIMwONwX1onZZTBHBffYVtnlgT2oBebypG0A - Twitter: @erabaloncesto - Blog: https://erabaloncesto.home.blog - erabaloncesto@gmail.com ------ Sintonía: - Not listening (Ketsa): https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/equinox-rising/not-listening ------ Presentado y creado por Alejandro Ruiz, José Manuel Gómez y Manuel Álvarez López. Publicado el 22 de abril de 2024.

In 1967, a new basketball league was born, the ABA (American Basketball Association) with teams in 11 cities including Indianapolis, Oakland, New Orleans, Denver and Dallas. The ABA also put a team in Pittsburgh, the Pipers. After a slow start, the Pipers got it going and twice won as many as 14 games in a row. In fact, the Pipers finished the season with a record of 54-24. They won the Eastern Conference and then worked their way through playoffs. In the first round, they swept the Indiana Pacers 3-0. In the Eastern Finals, they took out the Minnesota Muskies 4-1 and in the championship, in seven games, the Pipers outlasted the New Orleans Buccaneers 4-games-to-3. The Pipers were good. real good. In fact, they might have been good enough to qualify for the NBA playoffs. They were led by a budding superstar - Connie Hawkins. Blackballed by the NBA for his alleged involvement in a point shaving scandal, Hawkins was named the ABA's regualr season MVP and playoff's MVP. He averaged 26.8 ppg during the regular season and 29.9 ppg in the playoffs. Of course, later in hi career, he was finally granted entry into the NBA where he continued to excel and was ultimately elected into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame. Back to the Pipers. Despite winning the East, the team's fanbase was minimal at best. So, the Pipers, after just one year in Pittsburgh, packed up and headed north to Minneapolis. The Muskies left for Florida. Ironically, the Muskies couldn't draw fans and the Pipers, after relocating to Minnesota, couldn't draw fans in Minneapolis either. So, they packed up and headed back to Pittsburgh. Without a doubt, the Pipers had quite a unique history and on this episode of Sports' Forgotten Heroes, basketball historian and author Mark Whited stops by for a lively discussion about the Pipers, the ABA and Connie Hawkins.

For this week's podcast, Brion shares some books and movies that were written about or written by former players. A few were written or directed by Quinn Early, and not surprisingly, there are a few books about Nile Kinnick. There are also books about Duke Slater, Connie Hawkins, Chuck Long, Bob Stoops, Chris Street, Ronnie Lester and even some less famous players. Player profiles include Jerry Hilgenberg, who walked-on at Iowa in the early 1950's and had two sons that played at Iowa and in the NFL (Jay and Joel). Sadly he passed away last week. With the news yesterday of Kadyn Proctor joining the Hawks, I also profile a big-time football recruit back in 1972, Butch Caldwell. He also had all the big schools after him, as he was a dual-threat QB that was desperately needed after Iowa's 1-10 season in 1971. He helped lead the Hawks to a huge upset at #11 Penn State in 1976. Links from the podcast: Books and Movies about or from former Iowa Hawkeye players and coaches: https://hawkeyerecap.com/books.asp Kinnick: The Documentary - Movie Review: https://hawkeyerecap.com/article.asp?id=11 Chuck Long book review: https://hawkeyerecap.com/article.asp?id=3 Bob Stoops book review: https://hawkeyerecap.com/article.asp?id=1 Jerry Hilgenberg: https://hawkeyerecap.com/player.asp?id=829 Butch Caldwell: https://hawkeyerecap.com/player.asp?id=148 About Hawkeye Recap: HawkeyeRecap.com: https://hawkeyerecap.com/ X: https://twitter.com/hawkeyerecap Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Hawkeye-Recap-138063260418459/

Notes and Links to Theresa Rundstedtler's Work        For Episode 212, Pete welcomes Theresa Rundstedtler, and the two discuss, among other things, her early love of sports and reading, her work as a Raptors dancer, and the ways in which her voracious reading gave rise to her further exploring sports and race, as well as salient themes like free agency, racist stereotypes and white paternalism and intriguing people like Simon Gourdine and Connie Hawkins and Wali Jones from the 1970s era of the NBA.     Theresa Runstedtler, PhD is an award-winning scholar of African American history whose research focuses on the intersection of race, masculinity, labor, and sport. Her most recent book, Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA (Bold Type Books, 2023), examines how Black players transformed the professional hoops game, both on and off the court, in the 1970s. She is also the author of Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line (UC Press, 2012), a transnational biography that explores the first African American world heavyweight champion's legacy as a Black sporting hero and anti-colonial icon in places as far-flung as Sydney, London, Cape Town, Manila, Paris, Havana, and Mexico City. Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner won the 2013 Phillis Wheatley Book Prize from the Northeast Black Studies Association. Runstedtler has written for Time.com and the LA Review of Books, and shared her expertise on the History Channel, Al Jazeera America, Vox.com, NPR, and international radio outlets including the BBC and CBC. Originally from Ontario, Canada, she is a professor at American University and lives in Baltimore with her husband and son.     Theresa's Website   Buy Black Ball   Black Ball Review from Los Angeles Review of Books At about 2:35, Theresa discusses her appearance on The History Channel in discussing Jack Johnson's    At about 4:35, Theresa discusses her childhood sporting career, especially her time in figure skating and dance   At about 7:15, Theresa discusses her reading interests growing up    At about 10:30, Theresa discusses her time working as a dancer for the Toronto Raptors   At about 14:00, Theresa talks about what she saw during her years the lives of so many involved with the NBA on a regular basis   At about 15:15, Theresa discusses her reading and writing interests and the ways in which she became a historian    At about 18:00, Theresa explains how and why she got into writing about sport    At about 18:50, Pete notes multiple parallels between the book and today's world and sporting world, and Thersa follows up by talking about how she found people in some ways more open to talking about race through sports    At about 24:35, The two talk about a pivotal and faulty newspaper story by Chris Cobbs, and Theresa explains why she chose to start the book referencing it   At about 28:20, Pete cites Donovan X. Ramsey's research on an erroneous story that exacerbated views on the crack epidemic   At about 29:00, Theresa discusses seeds for her book, especially her research into Len Bias' death and how he became a “symbol of a greater moral panic”    At about 31:20, Pete alludes to Maurice Stokes' mistreatment and the early days of player labor organization   At about 32:10, Theresa responds to Pete's question and lays out why the 70s of the NBA has been “overlooked”   At about 33:05-35:20, Theresa talks about the book as a sort of redress   At about 35:40, The two discuss the difference between the “cultural associations” of fighting in 1970s   At about 36:30, Pete details the book's first part involving monopoly, and he and Theresa discuss Connie Hawkins' importance in the time period and beyond; Theresa gives background on seeds for the book coming upon her connecting Hawkins and Colin Kaepernick's stories   At about 40:40, Spencer Haywood is referenced, and Theresa expands on his story, especially his connection to players' right and the ABA/MBA merger   At about 47:20, Pete references the clash between conservative sportswriters of the early 1970s and socially active and aware players like Wali Jones and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, especially with regards to flimsy investigations regarding drug use in the NBA    At about 53:25, Pete cites advancements for Black coaches like K.C. Jones and Lenny Wilkens and Theresa discusses the ways in which the coaches were judged differently and how they were calm and collected as a rule   At about 55:30, Theresa expounds upon early Black coaches and their often “democratic” ways of coaching in opposition to some of the archetypal drill sergeant-type coaches   At about 57:25, Theresa details the intriguing story of Simon Gourdine and speculates on reasons why he was turned down for NBA Commissioner and what might have been…   At about 1:00:25, The two discuss thoughts of the time and as the years have gone on regarding players like Kermit Washington and Bernard King   At about 1:01:30, Pete asks Theresa about ending the book with an Epilogue revolving around Larry Bird and Magic Johnson's impacts   At about 1:05:50, Theresa talks about exciting future projects   At about 1:06:40, Theresa recommends Jumpman by Johnny Smith and The Cap by Joshua Mendelsohn      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.    Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl     Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.    Please tune in for Episode 213 with Andrew Porter, the author of, among other work, the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the short story collection The Disappeared, published in April 2023.    The episode will air on November 21.

Connect with us on Instagram! Chris Quinn: @cquinncomedy Dominic DiTolla: @ditolladominic Produced by @ty_englestudio If you enjoy this podcast, please help support us @: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-sports-experience-pod/support --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-sports-experience-pod/support

Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA details the political landscape of the NBA from 1960s to the 1980s. In the Traveling Hoopers first book club we parse through the themes of the groundbreaking book. Part 1 deals with the exile of possible NBA stars Connie Hawkins and Spencer Haywood as they deal with gambling allegations, hardship rules, and of course race. Catch More Of Our Content Here! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/creator-home Twitter: https://twitter.com/travelinghooper?lang=en IG: https://www.instagram.com/traveling_hoopers/?hl=en Website: https://travelinghoopers.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-traveling-hoopers/support

Live from New York, it's The Paul Simon Show!!   Ep. 2 of NBC's Saturday Night is basically a Paul Simon Special, highlighted by a reunion with old pal/partner, Art Garfunkel.  The cast shows up for about 4 minutes of total screen time.  Randy Newman and Phoebe Snow are the Musical Guests & special guests/cameos include The Jesse Dixon Singers, Jerry Rubin, Connie Hawkins, and Bill Bradley!  If you like Paul Simon you'll love this episode of SNL that sees Paul sing 7 songs.  Don't worry, there is still time for The Muppets and a film by Albert Brooks.  If it seems like a lot of Paul Simon and a lot of singing...it is.  But is it too much?  Who are we to judge?  This episode goes on to win an Emmy (fact).Subscribe today! And follow us on social media on X (Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.

Larry is joined by professor and writer Theresa Runstedtler to discuss her new book 'Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA'. They begin their conversation by discussing how Dr. Runstedler's connection to the NBA via the Toronto Raptors dance team and the corporatization she witnessed within that organization during her stint inspired her to research the primary aspects of her book. Next, they examine the history of segregation in professional basketball, how racial context was tied to the emerging style of play within the game, and pioneers like Connie Hawkins who insisted on wage equality for black players in the league (8:19). They then dive into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's influence on the ABA-NBA merger and the influence of racially biased media coverage on the public's perception of black players and the sport's overall revenue in the 70's (25:15). After the break, they take a look at the ascension of Simon Gourdine, the first black NBA executive, and talk about the obstacles that hinder black coaches and executives throughout all of the major American sports leagues (38:27). Larry and Theresa end the pod by discussing how the ‘74 Finals, the emergence of Larry Bird, and the inclusion of the slam dunk contest affected the marketability of the NBA (42:42).  Host: Larry Wilmore Guest: Theresa Runstedtler Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Octavo episodio de “Era baloncesto” en la familia de “Back to Back” en el que volvemos a imaginamos alternativas a la realidad de la NBA, es decir, “qué hubiera pasado si” (“what ifs”). Hablamos sobre Michael Jordan y su no retirada en 1993, el Julius Erving (Doctor J) de la década de los 70, la llegada a la NBA de un joven Connie Hawkins, la llegada de Olajuwon a los Portland Trail Blazers y su unión con Clyde Drexler, el probable excelente rendimiento de los Blazers con Brandon Roy, Greg Oden y LaMarcus Aldridge juntos y sanos; Koby Bryant permaneciendo en los Charlotte Hornets (quienes lo eligieron en el draft), Bill Russel permaneciendo en los St. Louis Hawks sin ser traspasado a Boston Celtics, Utah Jazz no regalando su primera ronda de 1979 por Gail Goodrich (elección que supuso la llegada de Magic a Lakers), Shaq y Kobe manteniéndose juntos y bien avenidos en Lakers, Magic Johnson sin contraer el VIH, y Len Bias sin morir por sobredosis en 1986. Si en los comentarios hay más sugerencias las incluiremos en futuros programas. ------ Contacto y redes: - iVoox (Back to back): https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-back-to-back-nba_sq_f1569664_1.html - iVoox (Era baloncesto): https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-era-baloncesto_sq_f1687000_1.html - Twitter: @B2BSpain - Twitter: @erabaloncesto - XLS con todos los audios (Era baloncesto): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k9YiJkMkIMwONwX1onZZTBHBffYVtnlgT2oBebypG0A/edit?usp=sharing - Blog (Era baloncesto): https://erabaloncesto.home.blog ------ Sintonía: • Not listening (Ketsa): https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/equinox-rising/not-listening ------ Presentado y creado por Alejandro Ruiz, José Manuel Gómez y Manuel Álvarez López. Publicado el 15 de noviembre de 2022.

Domantas Sabonis is the new Connie Hawkins? Any chance you know the names of the refs last night? Not sure it was the best crew! Kings are not currently getting the calls that the best teams are. Mike Brown right for hammering the point home? Jerry wants a “Hoe much the Refs sucked” two minute […]

The Doc invites founding member of Dispatch Brad Corrigan on the show. The two discuss going on tour with O.A.R., playing in California now and 22 years ago, writing the General, learning it in Russia, playing music with a philanthropic purpose, and much much more. Make sure to listen! Monologue (Buzzfeed AI quiz): 0:00:20 Birthday Suit 1: 14:56 Ripped From the Headlines: 20:11 Dispatch - The General: 34:52 Shoutouts; 40:33 Miscellaneous File: 42:52 Quickhitters: 46:30 Things that Don't Suck: 51:00 Brad Corrigan Interview: 57:12 Dispatch - The legend of Connie Hawkins: 1:16:47 The Doc G Top 3 (Movies in Theaters): 1:25:42 Birthday Suit 2: 1:35:48 Birthday Suit 3: 1:38:23

In this episode of the Shoot Hoops Podcast, Chase and I examine the impact of the New York Renaissance Big Five, which was the first all-black professional basketball team, and of Rucker Park, which is arguably the most famous basketball court in the world. Bob Douglass and Holcomb Rucker, two influential Black leaders in the Harlem area, prove to have a lasting impact on Harlem, basketball, and African American culture. The Rens could be the greatest team ever, as they won over 2500 games and dominated their era like no other. Meanwhile, the Rucker was a place of social congregation for African Americans for decades. NBA stars like Dr. J, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Nate Tiny Archibald, Wilt Chamberlain, Stephon Marbury and other collide with streetball legends like Earl Manigault, Pee Wee Kirkland, Connie Hawkins, Joe Hammond, and many more. There is a lot of crossover between these NBA players and streetballers: Connie, Marbury, Iverson, Julius Erving, Rafer “Skip to My Lou” Alston, and many more. In front of a primarily Black audience, some of the best hoopers in the world put on show after show, expressing creativity in their dribbling, dunking, and passing.

What do the guy who made the greatest tackle in Super Bowl history, the guy who hit the most famous homerun of the past 40 years, and the guy who Mike Tomlin tried to trip on his way to the endzone all have in common? They all played for a Pittsburgh team at one point in their careers. In this episode we will look back at some famous sports names who you may have forgotten spent part of their career as a member of a Pittsburgh team. How many of these guys will you remember?Connect with the show:Visit us on the webFollow us on TwitterFollow us on Facebook

There's a place where sports and data meet, and it's as powerful a collision as on any football field!  Jeff Sagarin has been a figurehead in the sports analytics realm for decades, and we're thrilled to have had the chance to have him on to talk about his data journey!  There's a fair mix of math AND sports geek out time in this episode.  And, did we mention that Dr. Wayne Winston is sitting in on this episode as well? References in this Episode: 2 Frictionless Colliding Boxes Video Scorigami Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. Today's guest is Jeff Sagarin. Is that name familiar to you? It's very familiar to me. In my life, Jeff's work might very well be my first brush with the concept of using data for any sort of advantage. His Power Ranking Columns, first appeared in USA Today in 1985, when I was 11 years old. And what a fascinating concept that was. Rob Collie (00:00:29): It probably won't surprise you if I confess that 11-year-old me was not particularly good at sports, but I was still fascinated and captivated by them. 11-year-old kids in my neighborhood were especially prone to associating sports with their tribal identity. Everyone had their favorite teams, their favorite sports stars. And invariably, this led to arguments about which sports star was better than the other sports star, who was going to win this game coming up and who would win a tournament amongst all of these teams and things of that sort. Rob Collie (00:01:01): Now that I've explained it that way though, I guess being an adult sports fan isn't too terribly different, is it? Those arguments, of course, aren't the sorts of arguments where there's anything resembling a clear winner. But in practice, the person who won was usually the one with the loudest voice or the sickest burn that they could deliver to their friends. And then in 1985, the idea was planted in my head by Jeff Sagarin's column in USA Today, that there actually was a relatively objective way to evaluate teams that had never played against one another and likely never would. Rob Collie (00:01:33): I wasn't into computers at the time. I certainly wasn't into the concept of data. I didn't know what a database was. I didn't know what a spreadsheet was. And yet, this was still an incredibly captivating and powerful idea. So in my life, Jeff Sagarin is the first public figure that I encountered in the sports analytics industry long before it was cool. And because it was sports, a topic that was relevant to 11-year-old me, he's really also my first brush with analytics at all. Rob Collie (00:02:07): It's not surprising then, that to me, Jeff is absolutely a celebrity. As a guest, in insider podcasting lingo, Jeff is what we call a good get. We owe that pleasure, of course, to him being close friends with Wayne Winston, a former guest on the show, who also joined us today as co-guest. Rob Collie (00:02:28): Now, if none of that speaks to you, let's try this alternate description. He's probably also the world's most famous active FORTRAN programmer. I admit that I was so starstruck by this that I didn't even really push as hard as I normally would, in terms of getting into the techniques that he uses. I didn't want to run afoul of asking him for trade secrets. At times, this conversation did devolve into four dudes sitting around talking about sports. Rob Collie (00:02:59): But setting that aside, there are some really, really interesting and heartwarming things happening in this conversation as well. Again, the accidental path to where he is today, the intersection of persistence and good fortune that's required really for success in anything. Bottom line, this is the story of a national and highly influential figure at the intersection of the sports industry and the analytics industry for more than three decades. It's not every day you get to hear that story. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:03:34): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Announcer (00:03:39): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast with your host, Rob Colley and your co-host, Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:04:02): Welcome to the show, Jeff Sagarin. And welcome back to the show. Wayne Winston. So thrilled to have the two of you with us today. This is awesome. We've been looking forward to this for a long time. So thank you very much gentlemen, for being here. Jeff Sagarin (00:04:16): You're welcome. Rob Collie (00:04:18): Jeff, usually we kick these things off with, "Hey, tell us a little about yourself, your background, blah, blah, blah." Let's start off with me telling you about you. It's a story about you that you wouldn't know. I remember for a very long time being aware of you. Rob Collie (00:04:35): So I'm 47 years old, born in 1974. My father had participated for many years in this shady off-the-books college football pick'em pool that was run out of the high school in a small town in Florida. Like the sheets with everybody's entries would show up. They were run on ditto paper, like that blue ink. It was done in the school ditto room and he did this every year. This was like the most fascinating thing that happened in the entire year to me. Like these things showing up at our house, this packet of all these picks, believe it or not, they were handwritten. These grids were handwritten with everyone's picks. It was ridiculous. Rob Collie (00:05:17): He got eliminated every year. There were a couple of hundred entries every year and he just got his butt kicked every year. But then one year, he did his homework. He researched common opponents and things like that or that kind of stuff. I seem to recall this having something to do timing wise with you. So I looked it up. Your column first appeared in USA Today in 1985. Is that correct? Jeff Sagarin (00:05:40): Yeah. Tuesday, January 8th 1985. Rob Collie (00:05:44): I remember my dad winning this pool that year and using the funds to buy a telescope to look at Halley's Comet when it showed up. And so I looked up Halley's Comet. What do you know? '86. So it would have been like the January ballgames of 1986, where he won this pool. And in '85, were you power ranking college football teams or was that other sports? Jeff Sagarin (00:06:11): Yes. Rob Collie (00:06:12): Okay. So when my dad said that he did his research that year, what he really did was read your stuff. You bought my dad a telescope in 1986 so that we could go have one of the worst family vacations of all time. It was just awful. Thank you. Jeff Sagarin (00:06:31): You're very welcome. Rob Collie (00:06:39): I kind of think of you as the first publicly known figure in sports analytics. You probably weren't the first person to apply math and computers to sports analytics, but you're the first person I heard of. Jeff Sagarin (00:06:51): There is a guy that people don't even talk about very much. Now a guy named Earnshaw Cook, who first inspired me when I was a sophomore in high school in the '63-'64 school year, there was an article by Frank Deford in Sports Illustrated about Earnshaw Cook publishing a book called Percentage Baseball. So I convinced my mom to let me have $10 to order it by mail and I got it. I started playing around with his various ideas in it. He was the first guy I ever heard of and that was in March of 1964. Rob Collie (00:07:28): All right, so everyone's got an origin story. Jeff Sagarin (00:07:31): The Dunkel family started doing the Dunkel ratings back I believe in 1929. Then there was a professor, I think he was at Vanderbilt, named [Lipkin House 00:07:41], he was I think at Vanderbilt. And for years, he did the high school ratings in states like maybe Tennessee and Kentucky. I think he gave Kentucky that Louisville courier his methodology before he died. But I don't know if they continue his work or not. But there were people way before me. Rob Collie (00:08:03): But they weren't in USA Today. Jeff Sagarin (00:08:04): That's true. Rob Collie (00:08:06): They weren't nationally distributed, like on a very regular basis. I've been hearing your name longer than I've even been working with computers. That's pretty crazy. How did you even get hooked up with USA Today? Jeff Sagarin (00:08:23): People might say, "You got lucky." My answer, as you'll see as well, I'd worked for 12 years to be in a position to get lucky. I started getting paid for doing this in September of 1972 with an in-house publication of pro football weekly called Insider's Pro Football Newsletter. Jeff Sagarin (00:08:45): In the Spring of '72, I'd written letters to like 100 newspapers saying because I had started by hand doing my own rating system for pro football in the fall of 1971. Just by hand, every Sunday night, I'd get the scores and add in the Monday night. I did it as a hobby. I wasn't doing it for a living. I did it week by week and charted the teams. It was all done with some charts I'd made up with a normal distribution and a slide rule. So I sent out letters in the spring of '72 to about 100 papers saying, "Hey, would you be interested in running my stuff?" Jeff Sagarin (00:09:19): They either didn't answer me or all said, "No, not interested." But I got a call right before I left to go to California when an old college friend that spring. It was from William Wallace, who was a big time football correspondent for The New York Times. That anecdote may be in that article by Andy Glockner. He called me up, he was at the New York Times, but he said also, "I write articles for extra money for pro football weekly. I wanted to just kind of talk to you." Jeff Sagarin (00:09:49): He wrote an article that appeared in Pro Quarterback magazine in September of '72. But during the middle of that summer, I got a phone call from Pro Football weekly, the publisher, a guy named [inaudible 00:10:04] said, "Hey Jeff. Have you seen our ad in street and Smith's?" It didn't matter. It could have been their pro magazine or college. I said, "Yeah, I did." And he said, "Do you notice it said we've got a world famous handicapper to do our predictions for us?" I said, "Yeah, I did see that." He said, "How would you like to be that world famous handicapper? We don't have anybody." Jeff Sagarin (00:10:25): We just said that because he said William Wallace told us to call you. So I said, "Okay, I'll be your world famous handicapper." I didn't start off that well and they had this customer, it was a paid newsletter and there was a customer from Hawaii. He had a great name, Charles Fujiwara. He'd send letters every week saying, "Sagarin's terrible, but he's winning a fortune for me. I just reverse his picks every week." So finally, finally, my numbers turn the tide and I had this one great week, where I went 8-0. He sent another letter saying, "I'm bankrupt. The kid destroyed me." Because he was reversing all my picks. That's a true story. Rob Collie (00:11:07): At least he had a sense of humor. It sounds like a pretty interesting fellow on the other end of that letter. Jeff Sagarin (00:11:13): He sounds like he could have been like the guy, if you've ever seen reruns of the old show, '77 Sunset Strip. In it, there this guy who's kind of a racetrack trout gambler named Roscoe. He sounds like he could have been Roscoe. Rob Collie (00:11:26): We have to look that one up. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:11:27): It's before your time. Rob Collie (00:11:28): I don't think I saw that show. Jeff Sagarin (00:11:29): Yeah. Wayne's seen it though. Rob Collie (00:11:31): Yes. I love that. There are things that are both before my time and I have like old man knees. So I've heard this kind of thing before, by the way. It's called the 10-year overnight success. Jeff Sagarin (00:11:47): I forgot. How did I get with USA Today? I started with Pro Football weekly and continued with them. I was with them until actually why don't we say sometime in the fall of '82. I ended up in other newspapers, little by little: The Boston Globe, Louisville Courier Journal. And then in the spring of '81, I got into a conversation over the phone with Jim van Valkenburg, who is the stat guy at the NCAA. I happened to mention that going into the tournament, I had Indiana to win the tournament. They were rated like 10th in the conventional polls. Jeff Sagarin (00:12:23): And so he remembered that and he kept talking behind the scenes to people in the NCAA about that. And so years later, in 1988, they called me out to talk to them. But anyhow, I had developed a good reputation and I gave him as a reference. Wayne called me up excitedly in let's say, early September of 1984. He said, "Hey, Jeff. You've got to buy a copy of today's USA Today and turn to the end of the sports section. You're going to be sick." Jeff Sagarin (00:12:53): I said, "Really? Okay." So I opened to where he said and I was sick. They had computer ratings by some guy. He was a good guy named Thomas Jech, J-E-C-H. And I said, "Damn, that should be me. I've been doing this for all these years and I didn't even know they were looking for this." So I call up on the phone. Sometimes there's a lot of luck involved. I got to talk to a guy named Bob Barbara who I believe is retired now there. He had on the phone this gruff sounding voice out of like a Grade B movie from the film, The War. "What's going on Kitty?" It sounds like he had a cigar in his mouth. Jeff Sagarin (00:13:30): I said, "Well, I do these computer ratings." [inaudible 00:13:33] Said "Well, really? That's interesting. We've already got somebody." He said, "But how would you even send it to us?" I said, "Well, I dictate over the phone." He said, "Dictate? We don't take dictation at USA Today, kid. Have you ever heard of personal computers and a modem?" I said, "Well, I have but I just do it on a mainframe at IU and I dictate over the phone to the Louisville Courier and the local..." Jeff Sagarin (00:13:58): Well, the local paper here, I gave them a printout. He said, "Kid, you need to buy yourself a PC and learn how to use a modem." So I kind of was embarrassed. I said, "Well, I'll see." So about 10 days later, I called him up and said, "Hey, what's the phone number for your modem?" He said, "Crap. You again, kid? I thought I got rid of you." He says, "All right. I'll give you the phone number." So I sent him a sample printout. He says, "Yeah, yeah, we got it. Keep in touch. We're not going to change for football. But this other guy, he may not want to do basketball. So keep in touch. Who knows what will happen for basketball?" Jeff Sagarin (00:14:31): So every month I'd call up saying, "It's me again, keeping touch." He said, "I can't get rid of you. You're like a bad penny that keeps turning up." So finally he says look, after about five of these calls, spreading out until maybe late November, "Look kid, why don't you wait... Call me up the first Sunday of the new year," which would have been like Sunday, January 6 of 1985 I believe. So I waited. I called him up. Sure enough, he said, "You again?" I said, "You told me you wanted to do college basketball." Jeff Sagarin (00:15:04): He said, "Yeah, you're kind of right. The other guy doesn't want to do it." So he said, "Well, do you mind if we call it the USA Today computer ratings? We kind of like to put our own name on everything." I said, "Well, wait a minute. During the World Series, you had Pete Rose as your guest columnist, you want not only gave his name, but you had a picture of him." He said, "God damn it." He said, "I can't..." He said, "You win again kid. Give us a bio." Jeff Sagarin (00:15:32): An old friend of both me and Wayne was on a business trip. He lived in California, but one of the companies he did work for was Magnavox, which at the time had a presence in Fort Wayne. So he had stopped off in Bloomington so we could say hi. We hadn't seen each other for many years. So he wrote my bio for me, which is still used in the agate in the USA Today. So it's the same bio all these years. Jeff Sagarin (00:15:56): So they started printing me on Tuesday, January 8 of 1985. On the front page that day and I got my editor of a couple years ago, he found an old physical copy of that paper and sent it to me and I thought that's pretty cool. And on the front page, they said, "Well, this would be the 50th birthday of Elvis Presley." I get, they did not have a banner headline at the top, "Turn to the sports and see Jeff Sagarin's debut." That was not what they did. It was all about Elvis Presley. And so people will tell me, "Wow! You got really lucky." Jeff Sagarin (00:16:30): Yeah, but I was in a position. I'd worked for 12 years since the fall of '72 to get in position to then get lucky. They told me I had some good recommendations from people. Rob Collie (00:16:42): Well, even that persistence to keep calling in the face of relatively discouraging feedback. So that conversation took place, and then two days later, you're in the paper. Jeff Sagarin (00:16:54): Well, yeah. He said, "Send us the ratings." They might have needed a time lag. So if I sent the ratings in on a Sunday night or Monday morning, they'd print them on Tuesday. They're not as instant. Now, I update every day on their website. For the paper, they take whatever the most recent ones they can access off their website, depending on I've sent it in, which is I always send them in early in the morning like when I get up. So they print on a Tuesday there'll be taking the ratings that they would have had in their hands Monday, which would be through Sunday's games. Rob Collie (00:17:26): That Tuesday, was that just college basketball? Jeff Sagarin (00:17:28): Then it was. Then in the fall of 85. They began using me for college football, not that they thought I was better or worse one way or the other than Thomas Jech who was a smart guy, he was a math professor at the time at Penn State. He just got tired of doing it. He had more important things to do. Serious, I don't mean that sarcastically. That was just like a fun hobby for him from what I understand. Rob Collie (00:17:50): I was going to ask you if you hadn't already gone and answered the question ahead of time. I was going to ask you well, what happened to the other guy? Did you go like all Tonya Harding on him or whatever? Did you take out your rival? No, sounds like Nancy Kerrigan just went ahead and retired. Although I hate to make you Tonya Harding in this analogy and I just realized I just Hardinged you. Jeff Sagarin (00:18:10): He was just evidently a really good math professor. It was just something he did for fun to do the ratings. Rob Collie (00:18:17): Opportunity and preparation right where they intersect. That's "luck". Jeff Sagarin (00:18:22): It would be as if Wally Pipp had retired and Lou Gehrig got to replace him in the analogy, Lou Gehrig gets the first base job but actually Wally Pipp in real life did not retire. He had the bad luck to get a cold or something or an injury and he never got back in the starting lineup after that. Rob Collie (00:18:38): What about Drew Bledsoe? I think he did get hurt. Did we ever see him again? Thomas LaRock (00:18:43): The very next season, he was in Buffalo and then he went to Dallas. Rob Collie (00:18:46): I don't remember this at all. Thomas LaRock (00:18:47): And not only that, but when he went to Dallas, he got hurt again and Tony Romo came on to take over. Rob Collie (00:18:53): Oh my god! So Drew Bledsoe is Wally Pipp X2. Thomas LaRock (00:18:58): Yeah, X2. Rob Collie (00:19:02): I just need to go find wherever Drew Bledsoe is right now and go get in line behind him. Thomas LaRock (00:19:08): He's making wine in Walla Walla, Washington. I know exactly where he is. Rob Collie (00:19:12): I'm about to inherit a vineyard gentlemen. Okay, so Wayne's already factored into this story. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:19:23): A little bit. Rob Collie (00:19:23): A bit part but an important one. We would call you Mr. Narrative Hook in the movie. Like you'd be the guy that's like, "Jeff, you've got to get a copy of USA Today and turn to page 10. You're going to be sick." Jeff Sagarin (00:19:37): Well, I was I'm glad Wayne told me to do it. If I'd never known that, who knows what I'd be doing right now? Rob Collie (00:19:44): Yeah. So you guys are longtime friends, right? Dr. Wayne Winston (00:19:47): Yeah. Jeff, should take this. Jeff Sagarin (00:19:49): September 1967 in the TV room at Ashdown Graduate's House across from the dorm we lived, because the graduate students there had rigged up, we call it a full screen TV that was actually quite huge. It's simply projected from a regular TV onto a maybe a 10 foot by 10 foot old fashioned movie projector screen. We'd go there to watch ballgames. Okay, because better than watching on a 10 inch diagonal black and white TV in the dorm. And it turned out we both had a love for baseball and football games. Thomas LaRock (00:20:26): So just to be clear, though, this was no ordinary school. This is MIT. Because this is what people at MIT would do is take some weird tech thing and go, "We can make this even better, make a big screen TV." Jeff Sagarin (00:20:38): We didn't know how to do it, which leads into Wayne's favorite story about our joint science escapades at MIT. If Wayne wants to start it off, you might like this. I was a junior and Wayne was a sophomore at the time. I'll set Wayne up for it, there was a requirement that MIT no matter what your major, one of the sort of distribution courses you had to take was a laboratory class. Why don't we let Wayne take the ball for a while on this? Dr. Wayne Winston (00:21:05): I'm not very mechanically inclined. I got a D in wood shop and a D in metal shop. Jeff's not very mechanically inclined either. We took this lab class and we were trying to figure out identifying a coin based on the sound waves it would produce under the Scylla scope. And so the first week, we couldn't get the machine to work. And the professor said, "Turn it on." And so we figured that step out and the next week, the machine didn't work. He said, "Plug it in." Jeff can take it from there. Jeff Sagarin (00:21:46): It didn't really fit the mathematical narrative exactly of what metals we knew were in the coin. But then I noticed, nowadays we'd probably figure out this a reason. If we multiplied our answers by something like 100 pi, we got the right numbers. So they were correctly proportional. So we just multiplied our answers by 100 pi and said, "As you can see, it's perfectly deducible." Rob Collie (00:22:14): There's a YouTube video that we should probably link that is crazy. It shows that two boxes on a frictionless surface a simulation and the number of times that they collide, when you slide them towards a wall together, when they're like at 10X ratio of mass, the number of times that they impact each other starts to become the digits of pi. Jeff Sagarin (00:22:34): Wow. Rob Collie (00:22:35): Before they separate. Jeff Sagarin (00:22:36): That's interesting. Rob Collie (00:22:36): It's just bizarre. And then they go through explaining like why it is pi and you understand it while the video is playing. And then the video ends and you've completely lost it. Jeff Sagarin (00:22:49): I'm just asking now, are they saying if you do that experiment an infinite amount of times, the average number of times they collide will be pi? Rob Collie (00:22:57): That's a really good question. I think it's like the number of collisions as you increase the ratios of the weight or something like that start to become. It's like you'll get 314 collisions, for instance, in a certain weight ratio, because that's the only three digits of pi that I remember. It's 3.14. It's a fascinating little watch. So the 100 pi thing, you said that, I'm like, "Yeah, that just... Of course it's 100 pi." Even boxes colliding on a frictionless surface do pi things apparently. Jeff Sagarin (00:23:29): Maybe it's a universal constant in everything we do. Rob Collie (00:23:29): You just don't expect pi to surface itself. It has nothing to do with waves, no wavelength, no arcs of circles, nothing like that. But that sneaky video, they do show you that it actually has something to do with circles and angles and stuff. Jeff Sagarin (00:23:44): Mutual friend of me and Wayne, this guy named Robin. He loves Fibonacci. And so every time I see a particular game end by a certain score, I'll just say, "Hey, Robin. Research the score of..." I think it was blooming to North against some other team. And he did. It turned out Bloomington North had won 155-34, which are the two adjacent Fibonacci, the two particular adjacent Fibonacci. Robin loves that stuff. You'll find a lot of that actually. It's hard to double Fibonacci a team though. That would be like 89-34. Rob Collie (00:24:18): I know about the Fibonacci sequence. But I can't pick Fibonacci sequence numbers out of the wild. Are you familiar with Scorigami? Jeff Sagarin (00:24:26): Who? I'd never heard of it obviously. Rob Collie (00:24:29): I think a Scorigami is a score in the NFL that's never happened. Jeff Sagarin (00:24:32): There was one like that about 10 years ago, 11-10, I believe. Pittsburgh was involved in the game or 12-11, something like that. Rob Collie (00:24:40): I think there was a Scorigami in last season. With scoring going up, the chances of Scorigami is increasing. There's just more variance at the higher end of the spectrum of numbers, right? Jeff Sagarin (00:24:50): I've always thought about this. In Canada, Canadian football, they have this extra rule that I think is kind of cool because it would probably make more scores happen. If a punter kicks the ball into the end zone, it can't roll there. Like if he kicks it on the fly into the end zone and the other team can't run it out, it's called a rouge and the kicking team gets one point for it. That's kind of cool. Because once you add the concept of scoring one point, you make a lot more scores more probable of happening. Rob Collie (00:25:21): Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. You can win 1-0. Thomas LaRock (00:25:25): So the end zone is also... It's 20 yards deep. So the field's longer, it's 110 yards. But the end zone's deeper and part of it is that it's too far to kick for a field goal. But you know what? If I can punt it into the end zone and if I get a cover team down there, we can get one point out. I'm in favor of it. I think that'd be great. Jeff Sagarin (00:25:43): I think you have to kick out on the fly into the end zone. It's not like if it rolls into it. Thomas LaRock (00:25:47): No, no, no. It's like a pop flop. Jeff Sagarin (00:25:50): Yeah. Okay. Rob Collie (00:25:50): If you punt it out of the end zone, is it also a point? Thomas LaRock (00:25:52): It's a touch back. No, touch back. Jeff Sagarin (00:25:54): That'd be too easy of a way to get a point. Rob Collie (00:25:57): You've had a 20 yard deep target to land in. In Canadian fantasy football, if there was such a thing, maybe there is, punters, you actually could have punters as a position because they can score points. That would be a really sad and un-fun way to play. Rob Collie (00:26:14): But so we're amateur sports analytics people here on the show. We're not professionals. We're probably not even very good at it. But that doesn't mean that we aren't fascinated by it. We're business analytics people here for sure. Business and sports, they might share some techniques, but it's just very, very, very different, the things that are valuable in the two spaces. I mean, they're sort of spiritually linked but they're not really tools or methods that provide value. Rob Collie (00:26:39): Not that you would give them. But we're not looking for any of your secrets here today. But you're not just writing for USA Today, there's a number of places where your skills are used these days, right? Jeff Sagarin (00:26:51): Well, not as much as that. But I want to make a favorable analogy for Wayne. In the world of sports analytics, whatever the phrases are, I consider myself to be maybe an experimental applied physicist. Wayne is an advanced theoretical physicist. I do the grunt work of collecting data and doing stuff with it. But Wayne has a large over-viewing of things. He's like a theoretical physicist. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:27:17): Jeff is too modest because he's experimented for years on the best parameters for his models. Rob Collie (00:27:27): It's again that 10-year, 20-year overnight success type of thing. You've just got to keep grinding at it. Do the two of you collaborate at all? Jeff Sagarin (00:27:35): Well, we did on two things, the Hoops computer game and Win Val. I forgot. How could I forget? It was actually my favorite thing that we did even though we've made no money doing the randomization using Game Theory of play calling for football. And we based it actually and it turned out that I got great numerical results that jive with empirical stuff that Virgil Carter had gotten and our economist, named Romer, had gotten and we had more detailed results than them. Jeff Sagarin (00:28:06): But in the areas that we intersected, we had the same as them. We used a game called Pro Quarterback and we modeled it. We had actually, a fellow, I wasn't a professor but a fellow professor of Wayne's, a great guy, just a great guy named Vic Cabot, who wrote a particular routine to insert the FORTRAN program that solved that particular linear programming problem that would constantly reoccur or else we couldn't do it. That was the favorite thing and we got to show it once to Sam White, who we really liked. And White said, "I like this guy. I may have played this particular game," we told him what we based it on, "when I was a teenager." Jeff Sagarin (00:28:46): He said, "I know exactly what you want to do." You don't make the same call in the same situation all the time. You have a random, but there's an optimal mix Game Theory, as you probably know for both offense and defense. White said, "The problem is this is my first year here. It was the summer of '83." And he said, "I don't really have the security." Said, "Imagine it's third and one, we're on our own 15 yard line. And it's third and one. And the random number generator says, 'Throw the bomb on this play with a 10% chance of calling up but it'll still be in the mix. And it happens to come up.'" Jeff Sagarin (00:29:23): He said, "It was my eight year here. I used to play these games myself. I know exactly." But then he patted his hip. He said, "It's mine on the line this first year." He said, "It's kind of nerve wracking to do that when you're a rookie coach somewhere, to call the bomb when it's third and one on your own 15. If it's incomplete, you'll be booed out of the stadium." Rob Collie (00:29:46): Yeah, I mean, it's similar to there's the general reluctance in coaches for so long to go for it on fourth and one. When the analytics were very, very, very clear that this was a plus expected value, +EV, move to go for it on fourth and one. But the thing is, you've got to consider the bigger picture. Right? The incentives, the coaches number one goal is actually don't get fired. Jeff Sagarin (00:30:14): You were right. That's what White was telling us. Rob Collie (00:30:14): Yeah. Winning a Super Bowl is a great thing to do. Because it helps you not get fired. It's actually weird. Like, if your goal is to win as many games as possible, yes, go for it on fourth and one. But if your goal is to not get fired, maybe. So it takes a bit more courage even to follow the numbers. And for good reason, because the incentives aren't really aligned the way that we think they are when you first glance at a situation. Jeff Sagarin (00:30:41): Well, there's a human factor that there's no way unless you're making a guess how to take it into account. It may be demoralizing to your defense if you go for it on fourth and one and you're on your own 15. I've seen the numbers, we used to do this. It's a good mathematical move to go for it. Because you could say, "Well, if you're forced to punt, the other team is going to start on the 50. So what's so good about that? But psychologically, your defense may be kind of pissed off and demoralized when they have to come out on the field and defend from their own 15 after you've not made it and the numbers don't take that into account. Rob Collie (00:31:19): Again, it's that judgment thing. Like the coach hung out to dry. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:31:22): Can I say a word about Vic Cabot, that Jeff mentioned? Jeff Sagarin (00:31:26): Yeah, He's great. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:31:27): Yeah. So Vic was the greatest guy any of us in the business school ever knew. He was a fantastic person. He died of throat cancer in 1994, actually 27 years ago this week or last week. Jeff Sagarin (00:31:43): Last week. It was right around Labor Day. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:31:46): Right. But I want to mention, basically, when he died, his daughter was working in the NYU housing office. After he died, she wrote a little book called The Princess Diaries. She's worth how many millions of dollars now? But he never got to see it. Jeff Sagarin (00:32:06): He had a son, a big kid named Matt Cabot, who played at Bloomington South High School. I got a nice story about Matthew. I believe the last time I know of him, he was a state trooper in the state of Colorado. I used to tell him when I was still young enough and Spry enough, we'd play a little pickup or something. I'd say, "Matthew, forget about points. The most important thing, a real man gets rebounds." Jeff Sagarin (00:32:32): They played in the semi state is when it was just one class. In '88, me and Wayne and a couple of Wayne's professor buddies, we all... Of course, Vic would have been there but we didn't go in the same car. It was me, Wayne and maybe [inaudible 00:32:48] and somebody else, Wayne? Jeff Sagarin (00:32:49): They played against Chandler Thompson's great team from Muncie Central. In the first three minutes, Chris Lawson, who was the star of the team went up for his patented turn around jumper from six feet away in the lane and Chandler Thompson spiked it like a volleyball and on the run of Muncie Central player took it with no one near him and laid it in and the game essentially ended but Matt Cabot had the game of his life. Jeff Sagarin (00:33:21): I think he may have led the game of anyone, the most rebounds in the game. I compliment him. He was proud of that. And he's played, he said many a pickup game with Chandler Thompson, he said the greatest jumper he's ever been on the court within his entire life. You guys look up because I don't know if you know who Chandler Thompson. Is he played at Ball State. Look up on YouTube his put back dunk against UNLV in the 90 tournaments, the year UNLV won it at all. Look up Chandler Thompson's put back dunk. Rob Collie (00:33:52): Yeah, I was just getting into basketball then, I think. Like in the Loyola Marymount days. Yeah, Jerry Tarkanian. Does college basketball have the same amount of personalities it used to like in the coaching figures. I kind of doubt that it does. Rob Collie (00:34:06): With Tark gone, and of course, Bob Knight, it'll be hard to replace personalities like that. I don't know. I don't really watch college basketball anymore, so I wouldn't really know. But I get invited into those pick'em pools for the tournament March Madness every year and I never had the stamina to fill them out. And they offer those sheets where they'll fill it out for you. But why would I do that? Jeff Sagarin (00:34:28): I've got to tell you a story involving Wayne and I. Rob Collie (00:34:31): Okay. Jeff Sagarin (00:34:31): In the 80 tournament, I had gotten a program running that would to simulate the tournament if you fed in the power ratings. It understood who'd play who and you simulate it a zillion times, come up with the odds. So going into the tournament, we had Purdue maybe the true odds against him should have been let's say, I'll make it up seven to one. Purdue and Iowa, they had Ronnie Lester, I remember. Jeff Sagarin (00:34:57): The true odds against them should have been about 7-1. The bookmakers were giving odds of 40-1. So Wayne and I looked at each other and said, "That seems like a big edge." In theory, well, odds are still against them. Let's bet $25 apiece on both Purdue and Iowa. The two of them made the final four. Jeff Sagarin (00:35:20): In Indianapolis, I'll put it this way, their consolation game gave us no consolation. Rob Collie (00:35:30): Man. Jeff Sagarin (00:35:31): And then one of the games, Joe Barry Carroll of Purdue, they're down by one they UCLA. I'm sure he was being contested. I don't mean he was all by himself. It's always easy for the fan who can't play to mock the player. I don't mean... He was being fiercely contested by UCLA. The net result was he missed with fierce contesting one foot layup that would have won the game for Purdue, that would have put them into the championship game and Iowa could have beaten Louisville, except their best player, Ronnie Lester had to leave the game because he had aggravated a bad knee injury that he just couldn't play well on. Jeff Sagarin (00:36:11): But as I said, no consolation, right Wayne? Dr. Wayne Winston (00:36:14): Right. Jeff Sagarin (00:36:15): That was the next to the last year they ever had a consolation game. The last one was in '81 between LSU and Virginia. Rob Collie (00:36:23): Was it the '81 tournament that you said that you liked Indiana to win it? Jeff Sagarin (00:36:28): Wait, I'm going to show you how you get punished for hubris. I learned my lesson. The next year in '82, I had gotten a lot of notoriety, good kind of notoriety for having them to win in '81. People thought, "Wow! This is like the Oracle." So now as the tournament's about to begin in '82, I started getting a lot of calls, which I never used to do like from the media, "Who do you got Jeff?" I said confidently, "Oregon State." I had them number one, I think they'd only lost one game the whole year and they had a guy named Charlie Sitting, a 6'8 guy who was there all American forward. Jeff Sagarin (00:37:06): He was the star and I was pretty confident and to be honest, probably obnoxious when I'd be talking to the press. So they make the regional final against Georgetown and it was being held out west. I'm sort of confidently waiting for the game to be played and I'm sure there'll be advancing to the final four. And they were playing against freshmen, Patrick Ewing. Jeff Sagarin (00:37:29): In the first 10 seconds of the game, maybe you can find the video, there was a lob pass into Ewing, his back was to the basket, he's like three feet from the basket without even looking, he dunks backwards over his head over Charlie Sitton. And you should see the expression on Charlie Sitton's face. I said, "Oh my god! This game is over." The final score was 68-43 in Georgetown's favor. It was a massacre. It taught me the lesson, never be cocky, at least in public because you get slapped down, you get slapped down when you do that. Rob Collie (00:38:05): I don't want to get into this yet again on this show. But you should call up Nate Silver and maybe talk to him a little bit about the same sort of thing. Makes very big public calls that haven't been necessarily so great lately. Just for everyone's benefit, because even though I'd live in the state of Indiana, I didn't grow up here. Let's just be clear. Who won the NCAA tournament in 1981? Jeff Sagarin (00:38:29): Indiana. Rob Collie (00:38:30): Okay. All right, so there you go. Right. Jeff Sagarin (00:38:33): But who didn't win it in 1982? Oregon State. Rob Collie (00:38:38): Yeah. Did you see The Hunt for Red October where Jack Ryan's character, there's a point where he guesses. He says, "Ramy, as always, goes to port in the bottom half of the hour with his crazy Ivan maneuvers and he turns out to be right." And that's how he ends up getting the captain of the American sub to trust him as Jack Ryan knew this Captain so well, even knew which direction he would turn in the crazy Ivan. But it turns out he was just bluffing. He knew he needed a break and it was 50/50. Rob Collie (00:39:08): So it's a good thing that they were talking to you in the Indiana year, originally. Not the Oregon State year. That wouldn't be a good first impression. If you had to have it go one way or the other in those two years, the order in which it happened was the right order. Jeff Sagarin (00:39:22): Yeah, nobody would have listened to me. They would have said, "You got lucky." They said, "You still were terrible in the Oregon State year." Rob Collie (00:39:28): But you just pick the 10th rated team and be right. The chances of that being just luck are pretty low. I like it. That's a good story. So the two of you have never collaborated like on the Mark Cuban stuff? On the Mavs or any of that? Jeff Sagarin (00:39:43): We've done three things together. The Hoops computer game, which we did from '86-'95. And then we did the Game Theory thing for football, but we never got a client. But we did get White to kind of follow it. There's an interesting anecdote, I won't I mentioned the guy who kind of screwed it up. But he assigned a particular grad assistant to fill and we needed a matrix filled in each week with a bunch of numbers with regarding various things like turnovers. Jeff Sagarin (00:40:13): If play A is called against defense B, what would happen type of thing? The grad assistant hated doing it. And one week, he gave us numbers such that the computer came back with when Indiana had the ball, it should quick kick on first down every time it got the ball. We figured it out what was going on, the guy had given Indiana a 15% chance of a turnover, no matter what play they called in any situation against any defense. Jeff Sagarin (00:40:44): So the computer correctly surmised it were better to punt the ball. This is like playing Russian roulette with the ball. Let's just kick it away. So we ended up losing the game in real life 10-0. White told us then when we next saw him, we used to see him on Monday or Tuesday mornings, real early in the day, like seven o'clock, but that's when you could catch him. And he kind of looked at us and said, "You know what? We couldn't have done any worse said had we kicked [inaudible 00:41:14]." Rob Collie (00:41:13): That's nice. Jeff Sagarin (00:41:14): And then we did Mark Cuban. That was the last thing. We did that with Cuban from basically 2000-2011 with a couple of random projects in the summer for him, but really on a day to day basis during a season from 2000-2011. Rob Collie (00:41:30): And during that era is when I met Wayne at Microsoft. That was very much an active, ongoing project when Wayne was there in Redmond a couple of times that we crossed paths. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:41:43): And we worked for the Knicks one year, and they won 54 games. Jeff Sagarin (00:41:47): Here with Glen Grunwald. So they won more games than they'd ever won in a whole bunch of years. And like three weeks before the season starts or so in mid September, the next fire, Glen Grunwald. Let's put it this way, it didn't bother us that the Knicks never made the playoffs again until this past season. Rob Collie (00:42:10): That's great. You were doing, was it lineup optimization for those teams? Jeff Sagarin (00:42:15): Wayne knows more about this than I do. Because I would create the raw data, well, I call it output, but it needed refinement. That was Wayne's department. So you do all the talking now, Wayne. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:42:26): Yeah. Jeff wrote an amazing FORTRAN program. So basically, Jeff rated teams and we figured out we could rate players based on how the score of the game moved during the game. We could evaluate lineups and figure out head to head how certain players did against each other. Now, every team does this stuff and ESPN has Real Plus-Minus and Nate Silver has Raptor. But we started this. Jeff Sagarin (00:42:58): I mean, everybody years ago knew about Plus-Minus. Well, intuitively, let's say you're a gym rat, you first come to a gym, you don't know anyone there and you start getting in the crowd of guys that show up every afternoon to play pickup. You start sensing, you don't even have to know their names. Hey, when that guy is on the court, no matter who his teammates are, they seem to win. Jeff Sagarin (00:43:20): Or when this guy's on the court, they always seem to lose. Intuitively since it matters, who's on the court with you and who your opponents are. Like to make an example for Rob, let's say you happen to be in a pickup game. You've snuck into Pauley Pavilion during the summer and you end up with like four NBA current playing professionals on your team and let's say an aging Michael Jordan now shows up. He ends up with four guys who are graduate students in philosophy because they have to exercise. You're going to have a better plus-minus than Michael Jordan. But when you take into account who your teammates were and who's his were, if you knew enough about the players, he'd have a better rating than you, new Michael Jordan would. Jeff Sagarin (00:44:08): But you'd have a better raw plus-minus than he would. You have to know who the people on the court were. That was Wayne's insight. Tell them how it all started, how you met ran into Mark Cuban, Wayne, when you were in Dallas? Dr. Wayne Winston (00:44:20): Well, Mark was in my class in 1981, statistics class and I guess the year 1999, we went to a Pacers Maverick game in Dallas. Jeff Sagarin (00:44:31): March of 2000. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:44:33): March of 2000, because our son really liked the Pacers. Mark saw me in the stands. He said, "I remember you from class and I remember you for being on Jeopardy." He had just bought the team. And he said, "If you can do anything to help the Mavericks, let me know." And then I was swimming in the pool one day and I said, "If Jeff rates teams, we should rate players." And so we worked on this and Jeff wrote this amazing FORTRAN program, which I'm sure he could not rewrite today. Jeff Sagarin (00:45:04): Oh, God. Well, I was motivated then. Willingness to work hard for many hours at a time, for days at a time to get something to work when you could use the money that would result from it. I don't have that in me anymore. I'm amazed when I look at the source code. I say, "Man, I couldn't do that now." I like to think I could. Necessity is the mother of invention. Rob Collie (00:45:28): I've many, many, many times said and this is still true to this day, like a previous version of me that made something amazing like built a model or something like that, I look back and go, "Whoo, I was really smart back then." Well, at the same time I know I'm improving. I know that I'm more capable today than I was a year ago. Even just accrued wisdom makes a big difference. When you really get lasered in on something and are very, very focused on it, you're suddenly able to execute at just a higher level than what you're typically used to. Jeff Sagarin (00:46:01): As time went on, we realized what Cuban wanted and other teams like the next would want. Nobody really wanted to wade through the monster set of files that the FORTRAN would create. I call that the raw output that nobody wanted to read, but it was needed. Wayne wrote these amazing routines in Excel that became understandable and usable by the clients. Jeff Sagarin (00:46:26): The way Wayne wrote the Excel, they could basically say, "Tell us what happens when these three guys are in the lineup, but these two guys are not in the lineup." It was amazing the stuff that he wrote. Wayne doesn't give himself the credit that otherwise after a while, nobody would have wanted what we were doing because what I did was this sort of monstrous and to some extent boring. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:46:48): This is what Rob's company does basically. They try and distill data into understandable form that basically helps the company make decisions. Rob Collie (00:46:58): It is a heck of a discipline, right? Because if you have the technical and sort of mental skills to execute on something that's that complex, and it starts down in the weeds and just raw inputs, it's actually really, really, really easy to hand it off in a form that isn't yet quite actionable for the intended audience. It's really fascinating to you, the person that created it. Rob Collie (00:47:23): It's not digestible or actionable yet for the consumer crowd, whoever the target consumer is. I've been there. I've handed off a lot of things back in the day and said, "The professional equivalent of..." And it turned out to not be... It turned out to be, "Go back and actually make it useful, Rob." So I'm familiar with that. For sure. I think I've gotten better at that over the years. As a journey, you're never really complete with. Something I wanted to throw in here before I forget, which is, Jeff, you have an amazing command of certain dates. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:47:56): Oh, yeah. Jeff Sagarin (00:47:57): Give me some date that you know the answer about what day of the week it was, and I'll tell you, but I'll tell you how I did it. Rob Collie (00:48:04): Okay, how about June 6, 1974? Jeff Sagarin (00:48:08): That'd be a Thursday. Rob Collie (00:48:10): Holy cow. Okay. How do you do that? Jeff Sagarin (00:48:11): June 11th of 1974 would be a Tuesday, so five days earlier would be a Thursday. Rob Collie (00:48:19): How do you know June 11? Jeff Sagarin (00:48:19): I just do. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:48:23): It's his birthday. Rob Collie (00:48:24): No, it's not. He wasn't born in '74. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:48:27): No, but June 11th. Jeff Sagarin (00:48:29): I happen to know that June 11 was a Tuesday in 1974, that's all. Rob Collie (00:48:34): I'm still sitting here waiting what passes for an explanation. Is one coming? Jeff Sagarin (00:48:39): I'll tell you another way I could have done it, but I didn't. In 1963, John Kennedy gave his famous speech in Berlin, Ich bin ein Berliner, on Wednesday, June 26th. That means that three weeks earlier was June 5, the Wednesday. So Thursday would have been June 6th. You're going to say, "Well, why is that relevant?" Well, 1963 is congruent to 1974 days of the week was. Rob Collie (00:49:07): Okay. This is really, really impressive. Jeff, you seem so normal up until now. Thomas LaRock (00:49:16): You want throw him off? Just ask for any date before 1759? Jeff Sagarin (00:49:20): No, I can do that. It'll take me a little longer though. Thomas LaRock (00:49:22): Because once they switch from Gregorian- Jeff Sagarin (00:49:25): No, well, I'll give it a Gregorian style, all right. I'm assuming that it's a Gregorian date. The calendar totally, totally repeats every possible cycle every 400 years. For example, if you happen to say, "What was September 10, of 1621?" I would quickly say, "It's a Friday." Because 1621 is exactly the same as 2021 says. Rob Collie (00:49:52): Does this translate into other domains as well? Do you have sort of other things that you can sort of get this quick, intuitive mastery over or is it very, very specific to this date arithmetic? Jeff Sagarin (00:50:02): Probably specific. In other words, I think Wayne's a bit quicker than me. I'm certain does mental arithmetic stuff, but to put everybody in their place, I don't think you ever met him, Wayne. Remember the soccer player, John Swan? Dr. Wayne Winston (00:50:14): Yeah. Jeff Sagarin (00:50:15): He had a friend from high school, they went to Brownsburg High School. I forgot the kid's name. He was like a regular student at IU. He was not a well scholar, but he was a smart kid. I'd say he was slightly faster than me at most mental arithmetic things. So you should never get cocky and think that other people, "Oh, they don't have the pedigree." Some people are really good at stuff you don't expect them to be good at, really good. This kid was really good. Rob Collie (00:50:45): As humans, we need to hyper simplify things in order to have a mental model we can use to navigate a very, very complicated world. That's a bit of a strength. But it's also a weakness in many ways. We tend to try to reduce intelligence down to this single linear number line, when it's really like a vast multi dimensional coordinate space. There are so many dimensions of intelligence. Rob Collie (00:51:11): I grew up with the trope in my head that athletes weren't very bright. Until the first time that I had to try to run a pick and roll versus pick and pop. I discovered that my brain has a clock speed that's too slow to run the pick and roll versus pick and pop. It's not that I'm not smart enough to know if this, than that. I can't process it fast enough to react. You look at like an NFL receiver or an NFL linebacker or whatever, has to process on every single snap. Rob Collie (00:51:45): It's amazing how much information they have the processor. Set aside the physical skill that they have, which I also don't have and never did. On top of that, I don't have the brain at all to do these sorts of things. It's crazy. Jeff Sagarin (00:52:00): With the first few years, I was in Bloomington from, let's say, '77 to '81, I needed the money, so I tutored for the athletic department. They tutored math. And I remember once I was given an assignment, it was a defensive end, real nice kid. He was having trouble with the kind of math we would find really easy. But you could tell he had a mental block. These guys had had bad experiences and they just, "I can't do this. I can't do this." Jeff Sagarin (00:52:25): I asked this defensive end, "Tell me what happens when the ball snap, what do you have to do?" I said, "In real time, you're being physically pulverized, the other guy's putting a forearm or more right into your face. And your brain has to be checking about five different things going on in the backfield, other linemen." I said, "What you're doing with somebody else trying to hurt you physically is much more intellectually difficult, at least to my mind than this problem in the book in front of you and the book is not punching you in the face." Jeff Sagarin (00:52:57): He relaxed and he can do the problems in the room. I'd make sure. I picked not a problem that I had solved. I'd give him another one that I hadn't solved and he could do it. I realized, my God, what these guys they're doing takes actually very quick reacting brainpower and my own personal experience in elementary school, let's say in sixth grade after school, we'd be playing street football, just touch football. When I'd be quarterback, I'd start running towards the line of scrimmage. Jeff Sagarin (00:53:26): If the other team came after me, they'd leave a receiver wide open. I said, "This is easy." So I throw for touchdown. Well, in seventh grade, we go to junior high. We have squads in gym class, and on a particular day, I got to be quarterback. Now, instead of guys sort of leisurely counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi, they are pouring in. It's not that you're going to get hurt, but you're going to get tagged and the play would be over. It says touch football, and I'd be frantically looking for receivers to get open. Let's just say it was not a good experience. I realized there's a lot more to be in quarterback than playing in the street. It's so simple. Jeff Sagarin (00:54:08): They come after you and they leave the receivers wide open. That's what evidently sets apart. Let's say the Tom Brady's from the guys who don't even make it after one year in the NFL. If you gave them a contest throwing the ball, seeing who could throw it through a tire at 50 yards, maybe the young kid is better than Tom Brady but his brain can't process what's happening on the field fast enough. Thomas LaRock (00:54:32): As someone who likes to you know, test things thoroughly, that student of yours who was having trouble on the test, you said the book wasn't hitting him physically. Did you try possibly? Jeff Sagarin (00:54:45): I should have shoved it in his face. Thomas LaRock (00:54:49): Physically, just [crosstalk 00:54:50]. Rob Collie (00:54:50): Just throw things at him. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:54:52): Throw an eraser, a piece of chalk. Just something. Jeff Sagarin (00:54:56): I'll tell you now, I don't want to name him. He's a real nice guy. I'll tell you a funny anecdote about him. I had hurt my knuckle in a pickup basketball game. I had a cast on it and I was talking to my friend. And he had just missed making a pro football team the previous summer and he was on the last cut. He'd made it to the final four guys. Jeff Sagarin (00:55:18): He was trying to become a linebacker I think. They told him, "You're just not mean enough." That was in my mind. I thought, "Well, I don't know about that." He said, "Yeah, I had the same kind of fractured knuckle you got." I said, "How'd you get it?" "Pick up [inaudible 00:55:32]. Punching a guy in the face." But he wasn't mean enough for the NFL. And I heard a story from a friend of mine who I witnessed it, this guy was at one point working security at a local holiday inn that would have these dances. Jeff Sagarin (00:55:47): There was some guy who was like from the Hells Angels who was causing trouble. He's a big guy, 6'5, 300 whatever. And he actually got into an argument with my friend who was the security guy. Angel guy throws a punch at this guy who's not mean enough for the NFL. With one punch the Jeff Sagarin tutoree knocked the Hell's Angels guy flat unconscious. He was a comatose on the floor. But he wasn't mean enough for the NFL. Rob Collie (00:56:17): Tom if I told my plus minus story about my 1992 dream team on this show, I think maybe I have. I don't remember. Thomas LaRock (00:56:24): You might have but this seems like a perfect episode for that. Rob Collie (00:56:27): I think Jeff and Wayne, if I have told it before, it was probably with Wayne. Dr. Wayne Winston (00:56:31): I don't remember. Rob Collie (00:56:32): Perfect. It'll be new to everyone that matters. Tom remembers. So, in 1992, the Orlando Magic were a recent expansion team in the NBA. Sometime in that summer, the same summer where the 1992 Dream Team Olympic team went and dominated, there was a friend of our family who ran a like a luxury automotive accessories store downtown and he basically hit the jackpot. He'd been there forever. There was like right next to like the magic practice facility. Rob Collie (00:57:09): And so all the magic players started frequenting his shop. That was where they tricked out all their cars and added all the... So his business was just booming as a result of magic coming to town. I don't know this guy ever had ever been necessarily terribly athletic at any point in his life. He had this bright idea to assemble a YMCA team that would play in the local YMCA league in Orlando, the city league. Rob Collie (00:57:35): He had secured the commitment of multiple magic players to be on our team as well as like Jack Givens, who was the radio commentator for The Magic and had been a longtime NBA star with his loaded team. And then it was like, this guy, we'll call this guy Bill. It's not his real name. So it was Bill and the NBA players and me and my dad, a couple of younger guys that actually I didn't know, but were pretty good but they weren't even like college level players. Rob Collie (00:58:07): And so we signed up for the A league, the most competitive league that Orlando had to offer. And then none of the NBA players ever showed up. I said never, but they did show up one time. But we were getting blown out. Some of the people who were playing against us were clearly ex college players. We couldn't even get the ball across half court. Jeff Sagarin (00:58:33): Wayne, does this sound familiar to you? Dr. Wayne Winston (00:58:35): Yes, tell this story. Jeff Sagarin (00:58:38): Wayne, when he was a grad student at Yale, and I'm living in the White Irish neighborhood called Dorchester in Boston, I was young and spry. At that time, I would think I could play. Wayne as a grad student at Yale had entered a team with a really intimidating name of administration science in the New Haven City League, which was played I believe at Hill House high school at night. So Wayne said, "Hey Jeff, why don't you take a Greyhound bus down. We're going to play against this team called the New Haven All Stars. It ought to be interesting." Rob Collie (00:59:14): Wayne's voice in that story sound a little bit like the guy at USA Today for a moment. It was the same voice, the cigar chomping. Anyway, continue. Jeff Sagarin (00:59:25): They edged this out 75-31. I thought I was lined up against the guy... I thought it was Paul Silas who was may be sort of having a bus man's holiday playing for the New Haven all-stars. So a couple weeks later, Paul Silas was my favorite player on the Celtics. He could rebound, that's all I could do. I was pitiful at anything else. But I worked at that and I was pretty strong and I worked at jumping, etc. Jeff Sagarin (00:59:53): So a few weeks later, Wayne calls me up and says, "Hey Jeff, we're playing the New Haven All-Stars again. Why don't you come down again and we'll get revenge against them this time?" Let's just say it didn't work out that way. And I remember one time I had Paul Silas completely boxed out. It was perfect textbook and I could jump. If my hands were maybe at rim level and I could see a pair of pants a foot over mine from behind, he didn't tell me and he got the rebound and I'm at rim level. Jeff Sagarin (01:00:24): We were edged out by a score so monstrous, I won't repeat it here. I'm not a guard at all. But I ended up with the ball... They full court pressed the whole game. Rob Collie (01:00:34): Of course, once they figure out- Jeff Sagarin (01:00:36): That we can't play and I'm not even a guard. It was ludicrous. My four teammates left me in terror. They just said, "We're going down court." So I'm all alone, they have four guys on me and my computer like my thought, "Well, they've got four guys on me. That must mean my four teammates are being guarded by one guy down court. This should be easy." I look, I look. They didn't steal the ball out of my hands or nothing. I'm still holding on to it. They're pecking away but they didn't foul me. I give them credit for that. I was like, "Where the hell are my teammates?" Jeff Sagarin (01:01:08): They were in terror hiding in single file behind the one guy and I basically... I don't care if you bleeping or not, I said, "Fuck it." And I just threw the ball. Good two overhand pass, long pass. I had my four teammates down there and they had one guy and you can guess who got the ball. After the game I asked them, I said, "You guys seem fairly good. Are you anybody?" The guy said, "Yeah, we're the former Fairfield varsity we were in the NIT about two years ago." Jeff Sagarin (01:01:39): I looked it up once. Fairfield did make the NIT, I think in '72. And this took place in like February of '74. It taught me a lesson because I looked up what my computer rating for Fairfield would have been compared that to, let's say, UCLA and NC State and figured at a minimum, we'd be at least a 100-200 point underdog against them in a real game, but it would have been worse because we would never get the ball pass mid-court. Rob Collie (01:02:10): Yeah, I mean, those games that I'm talking about in that YMCA League, I mean, the scores were far worse. We were losing like 130-11. Jeff Sagarin (01:02:19): Hey, good that's worse than New Haven all-stars beat us but not quite that bad. Rob Collie (01:02:24): I remember one time actually managing to get the ball across half court and pulling up for a three-point shot off of the break. And then having the guy that had assembled the team, take me aside at the next time out and tell me that I needed to pass that. I'm just like, "No. You got us into this embarrassment. If I get to the point where like, there's actually a shot we can take like a shot, we could take a shot. I'm not going to dump it off to you." Thomas LaRock (01:02:57): Not just a shot, but the shot of gold. Rob Collie (01:03:00): The one time we did get those guys to show up, we were still kind of losing because those guys didn't want to get hurt. It didn't make any sense for them to be there. There was no upside for them to be in this game. I'm sure that they just sort of been guilted into showing up. But then this Christian Laettner lookalike on the other team. He was as big as Laettner. Rob Collie (01:03:25): This is the kind of teams we were playing against. There was a long rebound and that Laettner lookalike got that long rebound and basically launched from the free throw line and dunked over Terry Catledge, the power forward for the Magic at the time. And at that moment, Terry Catledge scored the next 45 points in the game himself. That was all it was. Rob Collie (01:03:50): He'd just be standing there waiting for me to inbound the ball to him, he would take it coast to coast and score. He'd backpedal on defense and he would somehow steal the ball and he'd go down and score again. He just sent a message. And if that guy hadn't dunked over Catledge, we would have never seen what Catledge was capable of. So remember, this is a team th

Pittsburgh's dean of sportswriters Jim O'Brien (Looking Up: From the ABA to the NBA the WNBA to the NCAA - A Basketball Memoir; Looking Up Again - A Basketball Memoir) has seen it all in his more than 50 years of chronicling stories across the pro and collegiate sports landscape - but perhaps no more deeply than in basketball, and in more detailed fashion than during the old American Basketball Association.   Throughout the life of the league, you could find O'Brien's reliable ABA reportage and musings seemingly everywhere: essential weekly columns in The Sporting News; meticulous pre-season team & player profiles in the annual Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball; and the hugely influential Street & Smith's Basketball Yearbook (which he co-founded in 1970) - where he strove to ensure the challenger circuit's coverage was equal to that of the legacy NBA's.   We merely scratch the surface of O'Brien's treasure trove of stories from the old "red-white-and-blue" in this week's episode - where you'll hear personal reminiscences of legendary ABA figures like Connie Hawkins, Julius Erving, and (Episode 132 guest) Dan Issel; the significance of the former league's recent fiftieth anniversary; and why Pittsburgh was (both in the antecedent American Basketball League, and thrice-versioned in the ABA), and then wasn't a great pro hoops city.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Dispatch over Zoom video! Celebrated roots rock band Dispatch have announced the release of their anticipated 8th studio album Break Our Fall out May 28th on Bomber Records/AWAL Recordings. Marking the band’s eighth studio release, the songs on this record speak not only to Chadwick Stokes’ and Brad Corrigan’s personal evolution, but to human nature itself, charting a course from denial and resistance to growth and acceptance through deep introspection and empathetic character studies. For Stokes and Corrigan, the only constant these past few years has been change – marriage, birth, death, departure – add to that an exceedingly tense political climate, long-overdue reckonings on racial justice/gender equality and a runaway global pandemic and you’ve got Break Our Fall, an album that enriches Dispatch’s distinguished legacy, on which the depth and breadth of the band’s stunning songwriting is displayed in full force. The band has been teasing details of the album’s launch in recent months, having released six singles including fan favorite “May We All,” which is currently climbing at AAA Radio. The music on Break Our Fall is pure Dispatch – blending infectious roots rock with hints of reggae, folk, and blues, and the production is similarly lean and energetic, leaving plenty of space for some of the group’s most pointed, political lyrics to date. The result is a timely and essential album from a band still breaking new ground two-and-a-half decades into its storied career, an ode to resilience and survival that manages to find hope and joy on even the darkest of days. The album finds Stokes and Corrigan more explicit and outspoken than ever, working with frequent collaborators Mike Sawitzke (Eels) and John Dragonetti (The Submarines) to craft a wide-ranging collection of cathartic songs. The album works its way through a litany of modern fears and frustration on the driving “May We All” and laments the direction of the country in no uncertain terms on the simmering “All This Time” (featuring soulful vocal contributions from The White Buffalo). Reality sets in with the heartache of missed opportunities and lost loved ones coming into sharp focus on songs like the bittersweet “As Old As I” and epic “Connie Hawkins,” which tips its cap to everything from Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen to The Cars and Violent Femmes. We want to hear from you! Please email Tera@BringinitBackwards.com. www.BringinitBackwards.com #podcast #interview #bringinbackpod #dispatch #zoom #aspn #americansongwriter #americansongwriterpodcastnetwork Listen & Subscribe to BiB Follow our podcast on Instagram and Twitter! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bringinbackpod/support

Hello Old Sports is part of the https://sportshistorynetwork.com/ (Sports History Network - The Headquarters For Your Favorite Sport's Yesteryear). EPISODE SUMMARY This week we discuss professional basketball leagues throughout the years. The American Basketball Association (ABA), National Basketball League (NBL), and Basketball Association of America (BAA) are just some of the leagues we'll discuss. The cast of characters includes George Mikan, Julius Erving, Connie Hawkins, and even George Steinbrenner! Hear about the Original Celtics (in New York) and the ABA's Spirits (in St. Louis). Also, which league once thought about dividing basketball games into innings? Listen and find out. Books to Complement This Episode: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002STNBBG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 (Mr. Basketball: George Mikan, the Minneapolis Lakers, and the Birth of the NBA) https://www.amazon.com/Cages-Jump-Shots-Basketballs-Early/dp/0803287720 (Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years ) https://www.amazon.com/Tall-Tales-Played-Coached-Basketball/dp/1476748640/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=tall+tales+nba&qid=1614049388&s=books&sr=1-1 (Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball) https://www.amazon.com/Loose-Balls-American-Basketball-Association/dp/141654061X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=loose+balls&qid=1614049440&s=books&sr=1-1 (Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association) https://www.amazon.com/Basketball-Love-Story-Jackie-MacMullan/dp/1524761796/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=basketball+a+love+story&qid=1614049516&s=books&sr=1-1 (Basketball: A Love Story) https://www.amazon.com/Basketball-Love-Story-Jackie-MacMullan/dp/1524761796/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=basketball+a+love+story&qid=1614049516&s=books&sr=1-1 (Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball) HELLO OLD SPORTS BACKGROUND Each week on “Hello, Old Sports” Andrew and Dan Neumann examine a different sports history topic—baseball, basketball, football, hockey, boxing, and anything else that comes to mind. We'll travel back to 1920 to relive the founding of the Negro Leagues and Babe Ruth's first season with the New York Yankees. Or to 1967 to relive the closing drive of the “Ice Bowl” between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys. Maybe even all the way back to 1884 and the first “World Series” between the Providence Grays of the National League and the New York Metropolitans of the American Association. Andrew and Dan Neumann are your hosts and these brothers know a thing or two about living in some crazy sport's towns. Contact the show at HelloOldSports@gmail.com and find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HelloOldSports (www.facebook.com/HelloOldSports)

On The Rampage w/ Don Lichterman discusses how Trump takes Questions today for the First time Since the Riot, Trump being a step closer to his second impeachment, how amazing its been without Trump's tweets, Antifa is spelled this way (not Antiffa which is how I spell it), George Soros is not real (and neither is Antiffa), How the people in the riot spiraled out of control, Uma Thurman, Ashley Parker and Nicole Wallace, realize the difficulties with sound broadcast, Connie (Hawkins), about dividing the country in certain ways, things to do in '21, Big Cat Public Safety Act now in Congress, Arctic at $25 an acre, the Barbi Twins...Plus, much more things are discussed today!

Original airdate: 12/22/14Since 1947, when the New York Knicks battled the Providence Steamrollers on Christmas Day, professional basketball played on Christmas Day became an annual tradition. For every year, with the lone exception of 1998, has seen an NBA game on Christmas Day. Unlike the NFL on Thanksgiving Day, the NBA doesn't feature one particular team but rather the best and brightest in the NBA on a given year, sometimes NBA Finals rematches, sometimes the biggest rivalries — either way it's a great tradition that's given us some of the best games of the season. As only we can do here at the Over and Back podcast, we break down five classic NBA Christmas Day games, discuss the background of the teams, highlights of the game and how each team's season fared. We begin the loopback with the 1970 matchup between the Atlanta Hawks vs. Phoenix Suns featuring Pete Maravich battling Connie Hawkins, the Chicago Bulls taking on the Detroit Pistons in 1990 just as the Pistons are fading while the Bulls, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were emerging as a dynasty. We then jump all the way to 2002 to see Tracy McGrady take on Detroit with one of the best single-game performances in Christmas Game history, 2004 sees the first meeting between ex-teammates Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant and we end with a look at the 2011 season-opener (Chicago Bulls vs. Los Angeles Lakers). Did you enjoy this show or any of our others?

Pittsburgh-based The Athletic sportswriter Stephen J. Nesbitt (“How the Pipers, Condors and Pro Basketball in Pittsburgh Went Extinct”) joins to help us dig into the surprisingly rich (though mostly woeful) history of professional hoops in the Steel City. Though the game has long thrived at the collegiate level (Pitt’s Panthers began playing in 1905; the Duquesne Dukes in 1914), the city’s record of success at the pro level has been distinctly more fleeting.  In fact, some would argue it was never better than the pre-integration Black Fives era of the 1910s/20s, when eventual Naismith Hall of Famer Cumberland Posey led his Monticello (1912) and Loendi Big Five (1919-23) clubs to five “Colored” Basketball World Championships. As professional (and eventually integrated) leagues took root in the decades that followed, Pittsburgh’s attractive demographic profile made it a natural choice for inaugural – yet ultimately short-lived – franchises in virtually every major hardwood circuit that came calling, including: The never-playoff-qualifying Pirates (1937-39) and re-born Raiders (1944-45) of the NBA-precedent National Basketball League; The lamentable Ironmen (1947-48) of the NBA tributary Basketball Association of America; The Connie Hawkins-led Renaissance (“Rens”) of the one-and-a-half-season (1961-62) American Basketball League; and especially; The head-scratching Pipers of the legendary American Basketball Association – who, despite winning the league’s first championship behind regular-season and playoff MVP Hawkins in 1968 – relocated to Minneapolis, moved back to Pittsburgh, and finally re-branded as the “Condors” for two forgettable last seasons (1970-72). With a checkered pro history like that, it’s little wonder that the basketball team most memorably associated with the City of Bridges wasn’t even a real club – the Pittsburgh Pisces (née Pythons) of the 1979 sports/disco fantasy cult film classic The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.

James talks about the 5 biggest player signings of the wild and wacky ABA of the 70's. Rick Barry jumping leagues, Connie Hawkins finally getting his chance, Spencer Haywood changing how players turn pro forever. Dr. J to the sixers and how the ABA fumbled the opportunity to sign Kareem Abdul-Jabaar. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

For 61 years, Tom Konchalski searches far and wide to see a new crop of talent in the game of Basketball. At a park near his apartment in NYC, he discusses his love for watching Connie Hawkins dunk a basketball, his formula for evaluating Basketball players, his fondest memories, and what the game means to him. All that and more, my conversation with Tom, now.

For 61 years, Tom Konchalski searches far and wide to see a new crop of talent in the game of Basketball. At a park near his apartment in NYC, he discusses his love for watching Connie Hawkins dunk a basketball, his formula for evaluating Basketball players, his fondest memories, and what the game means to him. All that and more, my conversation with Tom, now.

For 61 years, Tom Konchalski searches far and wide to see a new crop of talent in the game of Basketball. At a park near his apartment in NYC, he discusses his love for watching Connie Hawkins dunk a basketball, his formula for evaluating Basketball players, his fondest memories, and what the game means to him. All that and more, my conversation with Tom, now.

PTCI is about halfway through their transition away from video service. Through "Streaming Care" and other efforts, they are working to help customers make the switch. Streaming Care details: https://www.ptci.net/digital-tv/streaming-care/

The newest installment in our ongoing series on 50-point games takes us to the late 60s and early 70s, a transformative period in NBA history and for 50-point games. Wilt Chamberlain’s scoring fades away, Jerry West bows out and new stars like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Rick Barry emerge. A new upstart pro basketball league (ABA) joins the fray and their inclusion of a 3-point line makes 50-point games easier than ever. During this period, the 50+ point club becomes less exclusive. Up to this point (1949-66), we’ve only had 18 players with 50+ in a game (169 times—116 by Wilt Chamberlain). All of the previous 50+ scorers were eventual Hall of Famers with the lone exception of 5-time All-Star Rudy LaRusso. In this time period though, we’ll have 35 new members of the club with only 21 of them eventually making it to the Hall of Fame. Overall from 1967-1974, we’ll see 84 50-point games overall with Barry leading the charge at 17, Kareem chipping in eight and Wilt still putting up 7 including a heroic final 50+ point game. From 1967-74, 1.06% of games featured a 50+ point game. In this episode we’ll spotlight some of the new scorers to emerge in this era including Larry Jones, Willie Reed, Louie Dampier, Elvin Hayes, Darel Carrier, Connie Hawkins, Mel Daniels, Lou Hudson, Billy Cunningham, Spencer Haywood, Roger Brown, John Brisk, Joe Caldwell, Walt Wesley, Dave Bing, Stew Johnson, Dan Issel, Steve “Snapper” Jones, Charlie Scott, Pete Maravich, Chet Walker, Zelmo Beaty, Tiny Archibald, Willie Wise, Larry Miller, Julius “Dr. J” Erving, George McGinnis, Phil Chenier, Geoff Petrie and John Havlicek.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

KC Music Talk #56 with Rob Foster interiewing Steve Hawkins: Guitar players. Recorded 12/12/18 in Kansas City. Music Podcasts, Music Discussion. Connie Hawkins and the Blues Wreckers. www.robmusicianfoster.com

“A leader shouldn’t just care about the job getting done but care about the person as a human being” In season 17 episode 1 we are joined by Connie Hawkins. She is a master encourager and shares lessons about the power of encouragement you can't find anywhere else.   In the episode we cover: - What is encouragement - Why is giving encouragement so important - How can we all be better encouragers - Why everyone needs encouragement - Why are so many people discouraged today - What happens when someone rejects discouragement - What role should a manager play in encouraging their people - What role a spouse should play in encouraging their husband or wife - Why spouses give up too early

Gambling Chalk Talk Podcast Episode 242, March Madness Picks 2nd Weekend- Connie Hawkins Episode Jeffrey “Coach” Belanger host of the Gambling Chalk Talk Podcast in Episode 242 Connie Hawkins episode.  Coach and Darth Wager give the picks for the games they like for Thursday and Friday of the 2nd weekend […] The post March Madness Picks 2nd Weekend appeared first on Gambling Chalk Talk Podcast.

As a continuation of our point shaving suite, this week we're digging into the backstory of a victim of the college point shaving hysteria - Connie Hawkins.

NFL, UFC, Donald Trump-V.P.Pence NFL, Connie Hawkins, Nelly rape charge, Jeremy Lin dreads, Jerry Jones NFL flag issues, SUBURBS, white supremacists, Man Defecating in Front of Manhattan Building, TV /MUSIC Comment, SHARE and SUBSCRIBE https://www.facebook.com/NetboyDoc/ https://twitter.com/netboydoc instagram@netboydoc ITunes.apple.com/us/podcast/OurWorldNetboyDoc --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/strange-talk-doc/message

NFL, UFC, Donald Trump-V.P.Pence NFL, Connie Hawkins, Nelly rape charge, Jeremy Lin dreads, Jerry Jones NFL flag issues, SUBURBS, white supremacists, Man Defecating in Front of Manhattan Building, TV /MUSIC Comment, SHARE and SUBSCRIBE https://www.facebook.com/NetboyDoc/ https://twitter.com/netboydoc instagram@netboydoc ITunes.apple.com/us/podcast/OurWorldNetboyDoc --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/strange-talk-with-doc/message

Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levin are joined by Ben Strauss to discuss why academically rigorous universities like Wesleyan are betting big on football. They also speak with Rick Telander about the life and legacy of hoops legend Connie Hawkins. Division III football (3:09): Ben Strauss joins to assess the trend of elite schools investing big in sports, and what happens on campus when universities prioritize football. Connie Hawkins (23:15): Rick Telander, the author of Heaven Is a Playground, explains how Connie Hawkins—who died back in October—became a mythical figure on the New York playground scene, and why he’s a tragic figure. Afterballs (33:33): Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levin are joined by Ben Strauss to discuss why academically rigorous universities like Wesleyan are betting big on football. They also speak with Rick Telander about the life and legacy of hoops legend Connie Hawkins. Division III football (3:09): Ben Strauss joins to assess the trend of elite schools investing big in sports, and what happens on campus when universities prioritize football. Connie Hawkins (23:15): Rick Telander, the author of Heaven Is a Playground, explains how Connie Hawkins—who died back in October—became a mythical figure on the New York playground scene, and why he’s a tragic figure. Afterballs (33:33): Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tennis on Broadway (The Last Match).  Connie Hawkins and Y. A. Tittle: better late than never.  More on Leonardo.  Who cleaned up Victorian hospitals?  Econs versus Humans.  Back to Vasari and crafting the Renaissance Master.  Anniversary bike ride.  Is it all uphill from here? Credits: Talent:  Tamsen Granger and Dan Abuhoff Engineer:  Ellie Suttmeier Art:  Zeke Abuhoff

We are joined by Curtis Harris of Pro Hoops History in discussing the life and career of Connie Hawkins, the New York City playground legend and ABA superstar who was unfairly blackballed by the NBA until his late 20s. We discuss Hawkins being one of the first above-the-rim offensive superstars, how his high-flying grace and acrobatics inspired Julius Erving and Michael Jordan, his incredibly huge hands and ball fakes, popularizing the finger roll, growing up in Brooklyn and his success on the playgrounds and at Boys High School, including a legendary battle against Roger Brown. We also talk about his recruitment to the University of Iowa, getting ensnared in a gambling scandal because of a tenuous association with gambler and former NBA star Jack Molinas, a false confession after weeks of interrogation by New York detectives, and being banned by the NBA despite never being charged with a crime. We also dig into Hawkins becoming MVP of the fledging rival league the ABL at age 19, playing with the Harlem Globetrotters, filing an antitrust lawsuit against the NBA, and winning a championship in the ABA with the Pittsburgh Pipers. We also discuss the settlement that led Hawkins to finally join the NBA, finding success with the Phoenix Suns, how he shined despite injuries taking their toll on his brilliance, his waning years with the Lakers and Hawks, finding meaning in his life after basketball, his sense of humor, and how much his Hall of Fame induction meant to him. We also play a what-if game for him joining the NBA in 1964 and how history might have changed. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Die neue Show kann es kaum glauben … kommt wirklich die Reform des Playoff-Formats? Außerdem im Programm: Beef in Houston, Vertragsverlängerungen in Toronto sowie Denver, Verletzungen, Connie Hawkins und vieles mehr! Übrigens … Abonniert den Podcast komplett kostenlos in iTunes HIER. (mehr …)

With 2 preseason games under the Knick's collective belts, the Hicks give a breakdown of how each player has performed thus far. Included in this episode: Abnormally long take on how to pronounce Frank's name, a Melo retrospective, The New Players first appearances, wax poetic on Connie Hawkins, impromptu bashing of Knicks media personality Tommy Dee and others in NYC radio, probably too many Major League references (yes the old baseball flick) and all of the other wonderful Hicks Talkin' Knicks crap you've come to expect and shake your head at. Buckle up, its a long season!

Kermit Washington was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers with the fifth overall pick in the 1973 NBA draft. He was one of only seven players in NCAA history to average 20 points and 20 rebounds throughout the course of their career.A big defensive forward, he was known rebounding ability. He averaged 9.2 points and 8.3 rebounds per game in ten (NBA) seasons and was an NBA All-Star Game , he also played for ,the Boston Celtics, San Diego Clippers, Portland Trail Blazers and Golden State Warriors, He joined Mark and AJ to talk about the passing of Connie Hawkins, Tune in each week on 540 am in NY NJ CT and streaming on www.sportstalknylive.com at 7pm Sundays for the live broadcast.Please take a moment to like our fan page WLIE 540 AM SPORTSTALKNY and follow us on twitter @sportstalkny

How do the Sooners lose at home to Iowa State??? Yankees do or die tonight after Girardi says my bad for Friday's fiasco. Giants first win today? Jets win #3?

We all expect actors to do well when they guest host Saturday Night Live. Performing is literally their job. And while it’s a different kind of performing, you can make the same case for musicians, who have to tell a story with their songs. But athletes? Meatheads? Jocks? They are going to bomb, right? Well, not always. Some of the best SNL skits of all time feature athletes stepping outside of their comfort zone and showing off comedic chops we didn’t know they had. Here’s our Rushmore of the most impressive and downright hilarious SNL sketches to involve athletes. SHOW NOTES 3:25 - Peyton Manning, “United Way” (Joint Choice) 7:30 -  Joe Montana, “Sincere Guy Stu” (Joint Choice) 17:58 - Kerri Strug, “Kerri and Kippy Strug (Michael’s Choice) 22:44 - Michael Jordan, “Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley” (Richard’s Choice) 30:58 - Shaquille “Shaq” O’Neal, “Bernard Gets a Spanking” (Michael’s Choice) 33:41 - Connie Hawkins, “One-on-One: Connie Hawkins vs. Paul Simon” (Richard’s Choice)

We discuss the formation of the ABA in 1967 and how it battled with the NBA for talent and in the courtroom in the late 1960s in the latest edition of Over and Back's Basketball Mysteries of the 1970s. Jason Mann is joined by Reinis Lacis (@lamarmatic) of The Handle Podcast to talk about how the ABA first got together, how the immediate goal was a merger with the NBA, George Mikan's role in giving the league credibility, the establishment of the 3-pointer and red, white and blue ball, the ABA finding talent through banned players like Connie Hawkins, how the ABA found it hard to entice NBA players to jump leagues, Rick Barry becoming the first major NBA star to jump over, the ABA filing an antitrust lawsuit against the NBA, Hawkins moving on to the NBA, Dave Bing and Lou Hudson signing with the ABA but running into legal entanglements, how the ABA and NBA did in luring college stars in the late 1960s, and the initial merger talks between the two leagues. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We look at key on-the-court battles between the warring NBA and ABA in the latest episode in Over and Back’s Basketball Mysteries of the 1970s with Reinis Lacis (@LamarMatic), host of The Handle podcast. Known for many legal battles off the court, the ABA and NBA battled often on the court, with two interleague all-star games and dozens of exhibition games throughout the 1970s. We discuss the NBA’s domination of the early games, how the ABA later caught up, how the games were promoted and publicized, different viewpoints on how intense the games really were, the first “Super Bowl of Basketball" between the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks and the ABA champion Utah Stars, the Indiana Pacers’ puzzling poor record in exhibition games, an incredible free-throw dunk by Julius Erving that almost no one has seen, Erving playing for the Hawks vs. ABA teams, a game with a combined 119 free throw attempts, a 1975 champion vs. champion matchup between the Colonels and Warriors, a duel between Rick Barry (49 points) and Erving (43), and George McGinnis returning to Indiana for the first time as a Pacer. We also looked at the matchups of potential “World Series of Basketball” between the ABA vs. NBA champions of each year between 1968-1976: how the Celtics’ defense would have handled Connie Hawkins, if Barry could have sent the Oaks past Boston, how the Pacers and the Knicks would have matched up, if the Stars could slow down Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, if the Pacers could have matched up with the Lakers, if Barry could have led the Warriors past the Colonels’ formidable front line of Dan Issel and Artis Gilmore, and if the Celtics would have had a chance to contain the Nets’ Erving. Original airdate: 9/21/16 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over and Back's Basketball Mysteries of the 1970s series continues with a look at the proliferation of the slam dunk in the 1970s. Topics on today's show include the origins of the slam dunk, how it was viewed in the 1950s and 1960s NBA, what the NCAA did to curtail its rise including the "Lew Alcindor Rule" banning the dunk, and the innovators who brought it to the next level including Elgin Baylor and Connie Hawkins. We then focus on the 1970s which saw a huge rise in the use of the dunk both in the ABA and NBA including the infamous ABA Slam Dunk Contest won by Julius Erving's free-throw line dunk, Dr. J's other dunk exploits, some unsung heroes of the dunk including Gus Johnson, David Thompson, Darnell "Dr. Dunk" Hillman, "The Helicopter" Charles Hentz breaking two rims in a single ABA game, a failed NBA dunk tournament involving Elvin Hayes, Alex English, Moses Malone, Darryl Dawkins, and much more! Original airdate: 8/29/16 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why the first two ABA champions immediately abandoned their cities is examined in the fourth episode of the Over and Back Classic NBA podcast’s summer series — Basketball Mysteries of the 1970s. Jason Mann and Rich Kraetsch discuss the 1967-68 Pittsburgh Pipers led by Connie Hawkins and the 1968-69 Oakland Oaks led by Rick Barry (and owned by famed singer Pat Boone). Discussion topics include: how much Hawkins dominated the first year of the ABA, the Pipers being the first team to embrace the 3-pointer, Pittsburgh’s inspiring Finals comeback after Hawkins injured his knee, the Pipers moving to Minnesota because Commissioner George Mikan wanted a team in his hometown, lots of dysfunction including a fistfight between the Pipers’ coach and chairman at an all-star banquet, why the Pipers failed there and then moved BACK to Pittsburgh, how the Oaks wooed Barry from the NBA, Warren Jabali’s penchant for fighting, how Larry Brown and Doug Moe couldn’t stay away from each other, the Oaks rolling despite a season-ending injury to Barry, how Boone almost got into financial trouble because of the Oaks, their move to Washington D.C. and how Barry fought to return to the NBA, and how the franchise eventually ended up in Virginia, with Barry forcing a trade to the Nets. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For 61 years, Tom Konchalski searches far and wide to see a new crop of talent in the game of Basketball. At a park near his apartment in NYC, he discusses his love for watching Connie Hawkins dunk a basketball, his formula for evaluating Basketball players, his fondest memories, and what the game means to him. All that and more, my conversation with Tom, now.