Pistol Pete Maravich died 27 years ago today.

Got to meet Pete the first time as a little kid at the Superdome before a Jazz game when I was little. Took a Polaroid of me sitting on his lap. Lost it in Katrina. Was in high school when he died. One of the mothers picking us up for carpool said he had died. Couldnt believe it. Was beyond sad. Pete and Archie were my heroes growing up (and a LOT of other kids in New Orleans).

An LSU icon. RIP

*Flipping Off Bama fans...
*Driving up to Superdome to watch him play for Jazz one night and girlfriend who became my wife talked me out of going... he dropped 61 or 63 that night... And yes we're divorced..
* Watching the piece Dale Brown did on Pete studying every shot he took for 3 years at LSU and determining that he would have averaged 7 3 pointers a game... FOR HIS CAREER and would have averaged 51 plus points a game for 3 friggin years!
* Floppy socks, passes that were unreal and floppy hair...
* Watching him astound Red Auerbach with his passing wizardry... He was the best passer of his era.

Good dude.

With all I now understand about Press, etc., it was hard to be him.

He was a better guy than most folks would have been in his same position.

I was at the game in the Superdome when he hurt his knee passing. The place got really quiet.

So many memories. I was a student at LSU the same time as Pete. Even had a couple of classes together although he didn't attend much.

I was a basketball fanatic, he was god! Tried to do everything I ever saw him do. I would pass behind my back even when there was no need to.

Remember being in the old gym armory in early August before Pete's freshman year and hearing Kenny Drost, who was a guard on the varsity, pointing Pete out to another guy and saying he tried a lot of fancy stuff but he wasn't impressed.

Final LSU memory that stands out is watching him play against Dan Issel and Kentucky in the cow barn in his senior year. Even though Issel was a center and Pete was a guard they had Issel guarding him much of the time.

Issel did a pretty good job but of course Pete got something like 64. But I remember watching that and thinking that as great as Pete was we would never beat Kentucky with one player and I was right.

I was a high school student at St. Paul's and played basketball at that time. Pete lived nearby and would run some drills in practice with us. He would also stay late after practice and played pickup game after pickup game with us. That memory is as fond of a memory that I have. We were devastated when we heard the news of his untimely death.

Went to Dale Brown's basketball camp when I was a kid. He told lots of stories about Pete. Some of them were really odd stories, but honestly I can't remember them all that well.

"Had my father put a wrench in my hand, I would have been a first-rate mechanic."

-Pistol Pete, the step-child of the human imagination