Tom Hawkins (basketball)

Thomas Jerome Hawkins (born December 22, 1936 in Chicago, Illinois; also known as Tom or Tommy Hawkins) is an American former professional basketball player.

A 6'5" forward, Hawkins starred at Chicago's Francis W. Parker School before playing at the University of Notre Dame, where he became the school's first African American basketball star and gained national recognition in 1958 for his 43-point game against the United States Air Force Academy [1]. He was then selected by the Minneapolis (later Los Angeles) Lakers in the first round of the 1959 NBA Draft, and he would have a productive ten-year career in the league, playing for the Lakers as well as the Cincinnati Royals as he registered 6,672 career points and 4,607 career rebounds. He later served as a college basketball analyst on NBC during the 1970s, and he has recently worked in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization as director of communications.