Connie Hawkins

Um, all right.

So we established that Connie Hawkins and Amar'e Stoudemire are the two greatest dunkers in Suns history.

Yes, neither of them won a dunk contest, but they didn't have to.

I'm talking about in-game dunkers.

Let us get to, we're going to wrap this up tonight because unless you say otherwise, we all were voting on who was the greatest Suns dunker of all time.

Stoudemire, Connie Hawkins, Larry Nance, and Sean Marion pretty much tied for it.

They were the ones that got mentioned the most.

Cedric Sabalis did not get as many mentions, although he got one giant bro out from somebody.

They're very different style dunkers.

They could both be very powerful and very stylish.

I think as far as the wow factor and originating stuff, Connie Hawkins wins it because it was guys like Michael and Dr. J and LeBron, and they all followed his lead.

Connie Hawkins was just absolutely the smoothest dunker you ever saw and could get it in the hole with as much finesse as anybody.

All right, so, uh, we brought this up last week, and now it's gaining some momentum.

So, uh, Jason Richardson, Cedric Ceballos, Connie Hawkins, Maurice Stoudemire, Dan Majerle, Sean Marion, Gerald Green, Larry Nance, Tom Chambers, KJ.

I'm going to add, because you guys asked me to, Alvin Adams and Michael Finley.

Which one do you think is the best dunker in Suns history? Uh, so far it's still Stoudemire kind of leading the way, then Matrix, then Nance, then Gerald Green.

Um, Sun, SunScriber Gerald Hall said Elliot Perry, [laughs] who is a good dunker.

I don't know if he's the best in Suns history.

Orlando, Orlando No Sleep wrote, "Connie Hawkins and Michael, Michael Finley deserve mention, but Stoudemire wins." I mentioned Connie Hawkins.

Thank you for mentioning Michael Finley.

My wife found me an original copy of this.

It's the story of Connie Hawkins when he got blacklisted from the NBA and had to bounce around.

playing in frigging Pittsburgh with the, I think it was the Pittsburgh Papers or some nonsense.

But yeah, so I'll give a shout out to this one.

Mm-hmm.

And Dr. J and Connie Hawkins.

Uh, but just a, just a tough situation.

He's doing good now.

I knew, I knew it was a wrap when he was like, "No alumni in the locker room."

Mm.

I was like, "Damn." Like [laughs] you know what I mean? 'Cause I loved the fact that Connie Hawkins was around.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Do you remember those? And the big one was filed the Connie Hawkins story where I saw the F word for the first time in print.

But yeah, so it was there was a lot of reading in elementary school and it set the foundation for both of us loving writing and what I call turning a phrase.

No doubt.

Never.

Yet people were calling him the next Magic Johnson, the next Connie Hawkins.

He was that good.

Recruited by Jerry Tarkanian to UNLV, he got kicked off the team before playing a single minute.

And they've rarely, even in a cameo form, been featured on the show.

I think SNL Network put up a graphic about how Bill Bradley was in the second episode of the show all time to give Paul Simon a one-on-one trophy for beating Connie Hawkins, Hall of Famer, rest in peace.

And then you didn't see anybody else until Carmelo Anthony, when he was playing for Knicks, cameoed one time.

And that's it.

Jalen Brunson dumped more in this damn high school music than he's ever dumped in his NBA career.

We just got...

This was very much not Paul Simon, Connie Hawkins, all right? Like, they made Jalen Brunson the, like...

super villain basketball version of himself in this sketch.