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Message
re: Pistol Pete Maravich died 27 years ago today.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 3:44 pm to AmericanHoop
Posted on 1/5/15 at 3:44 pm to AmericanHoop
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 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.
1
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:01 pm to AmericanHoop
I was fortunate to see Maravich in the old cow palace. He was truly a wizard with the ball. I can't tell you how many times the radio announcer would say "Maravich from 20, good!"
At the time there were two other big scorers in the nation. Calvin Murphy from Niagra and Rick Mount from (I can't remember) Purdue? Anyway, a friend of mine who grew up in NY was a huge Calvin Murphy fan. He hated Maravich. Murphy would score 35 points in a game, my friend would get excited only to read (in a newspaper) that Pete put up 45 the same night. 3M they were known in the day.
I have to be honest. Pete was a bit of a ball hog. Nobody cared, though. I remember the televised game in the nit, i believe. Artis Gilmore beat the tigers. Seems like yesterday
At the time there were two other big scorers in the nation. Calvin Murphy from Niagra and Rick Mount from (I can't remember) Purdue? Anyway, a friend of mine who grew up in NY was a huge Calvin Murphy fan. He hated Maravich. Murphy would score 35 points in a game, my friend would get excited only to read (in a newspaper) that Pete put up 45 the same night. 3M they were known in the day.
I have to be honest. Pete was a bit of a ball hog. Nobody cared, though. I remember the televised game in the nit, i believe. Artis Gilmore beat the tigers. Seems like yesterday
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:06 pm to Loveland Tiger
Of course he was a ball-hog. I assure you the coaches were telling the kids "Everything goes through Pete. Dish him the ball ASAP and then get ready for a pass."
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:08 pm to Tom Bronco
I don't remember for certain, but Pete never beat UK or TN (with Ray Mears)?
The Tigers didn't win a lot of big games, but everyone knew about Pistol Pete.
The Tigers didn't win a lot of big games, but everyone knew about Pistol Pete.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:17 pm to AmericanHoop
Pete had one coach, his father. The ball started and finished in Pete's hands. Pets was a great passer, but his first look was to score, not distribute the ball.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:22 pm to Loveland Tiger
Had the pleasure to meet and work with Pete after he left the Celtics and retired in Covington.I worked and helped him remodel his home in cov.Great guy and even greater player
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:40 pm to AmericanHoop
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.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:45 pm to soccerfüt
He was in my history class first semester freshman year and someone fixed us up on a date. My parents were from near where he is from in PA so I thought we'd have a lot in common. I ended up not being able to go and it wasn't until basketball season that I realized who he was. I dated Rich Lupcho who was on the team and Pete's brother's roommate. Loved going to Pete's games ~ pure magic. 
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:48 pm to Dennis McGee
My aunt was on the LSU faculty when Pistol played at LSU. When I was a sophomore in high school she got me tickets to see him play against Kentucky. I lived in north Louisiana at the time. I don't remember how I got to the game but I watched Pete hang 64 on Kentucky in the old Cow Palace. I was a high school thrower in Track and Field. Like many other kids back then I wore floppy socks over my tube socks. He was and is my all-time favorite athlete and I'm mainly a football fan.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:48 pm to CaLSUTigerFan
LSU is a football school.
But without argument, most everyone will agree that the greatest LSU athlete of all time was Pete Maravich.
But without argument, most everyone will agree that the greatest LSU athlete of all time was Pete Maravich.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:49 pm to AmericanHoop
RIP Pistol Pete ... a legend and a deserving one . Your PPG will NEVER be broken .. 
Posted on 1/5/15 at 4:52 pm to Tigersport2014
A fitting time on the anniversary of his death to read again the prologue of Mark Kriegel's biography, Pistol.
January 5, 1988.
They cannot see him, this slouched, ashen-faced man in their midst. To their oblivious eyes, he remains what he had been, unblemished by the years, much as he appeared on his first bubblegum card: a Beatlesque halo of hair, the fresh-faced, sad-eyed wizard cradling a grainy, leather orb.
One of the regulars, a certified public accountant, had retrieved this very artifact the night before. He found it in a shoebox, tucked away with an old train set and a wooden fort in a crawlspace in his parents' basement. He brought it to the gym this morning to have it signed, or perhaps, in some way, sanctified. The 1970 rookie card of Pete Maravich, to whom the Atlanta Hawks had just awarded the richest contract in professional sport, notes the outstanding facts: that Maravich had been coached by his father, under whose tutelage he became "the most prolific scorer in the history of college basketball."
Other salient statistics are provided in agate type: an average of 44.2 points a game, a total of 3,667 (this when nobody had scored 3,000). The records will never be broken. Still, they are woefully inadequate in measuring the contours of the Maravich myth.
Even the CPA, for whom arithmetic is a vocation, understands the limitation in mere numbers. There is no integer denoting magic or memory. "He was important to us," the accountant would say.
Maravich wasn't an archetype; he was several: child prodigy, prodigal son, his father's ransom in a Faustian bargain. He was a creature of contradictions, ever alone: the white hope of a black sport, a virtuoso stuck in an ensemble, an exuberant showman who couldn't look you in the eye, a vegetarian boozer, the athlete who lived like a rock star, a profligate, suicidal genius saved by Jesus Christ.
Still, it's his caricature that evokes unqualified affection in men of a certain age. Pistol Pete, they called him. The Pistol is another relic of the seventies, not unlike bongs or Bruce Lee flicks: the skinny kid who mesmerized the basketball world with Globetrotter moves, floppy socks, and great hair.
Pistol Pete was, in fact, his father's vision, built to the old man's exacting specifications. Press Maravich was a Serb. Ideas and language occurred to him in the mother tongue, and so one imagines him speaking to Pistol (yes, that's what he called him, too) as a father addressing his son in an old Serbian song: Cuj me sine oci moje, Cuvaj ono sto je tvoje...Listen to me, eyes of mine, guard that which is thine...
The game in progress is a dance in deference to this patrimony. The Pistol is an inheritance, not just for the Maraviches, but for all the American sons who play this American game. The squeak of sneakers against the floor produces an oddly chirping melody. Then there's another rhythm, the respiration of men well past their prime, an assortment of white guys: the accountant, insurance salesmen, financial planners, even a preacher or two. "Just a bunch of duffers," recalls one. "Fat old men," smirks another.
But they play as if Pistol Pete, or what's left of him, could summon the boys they once were. They acknowledge him with a superfluous flourish, vestigial teenage vanity -- an extra behind-the-back pass or an unnecessary between-the-legs dribble. The preacher, a gentle-voiced man of great renown in evangelical circles, reveals a feverishly competitive nature. After hitting a shot, he is heard to bellow, "You get that on camera?"
The Parker Gymnasium at Pasadena's First Church of the Nazarene could pass for a good high school gym -- a clean, cavernous space with arching wooden rafters and large windows. At dawn, fully energized halogen lamps give off a glow to the outside world, a beacon to spirits searching for a game. As a boy, Maravich would have considered this a kind of heaven. Now, it's a way station of sorts.
Pete begins wearily. He hasn't played in a long time and moves at one-quarter speed, if that. He does not jump; he shuffles. The ball seems like a shotput in his hands, his second attempt at the basket barely touching the front of the rim.
But gradually, as the pace of his breath melds with the others' and he starts to sweat, Pete Maravich recovers something in himself. "The glimpse of greatness was in his ballhandling," recalls the accountant. "Every once in a while the hands would flicker. There would just be some kind of dribble or something. You could see a little of it in his hands, the greatness. Just the quickness of the beat."
There was genius in that odd beat, the unexpected cadence, a measure of music. The Pistol's talent, now as then, was musical. He was as fluent as Mozart -- his game rising to the level of language -- but he was sold like Elvis, the white guy performing in a black idiom. And for a time, he was mad like Elvis, too.
Once, in an attempt to establish contact with extraterrestrial life, he painted a message on his roof: "Take me."
Deliver me, he meant.
Now the accountant tries to blow past Pete with a nifty spin move. Pete tells him not to believe his own hype.
The Pistol wears an easy grin. The men in this game are avid readers of the Bible. But perhaps the truth of this morning is to be found in the Koran: "Remember that the life of this world is but a sport and a pastime."
Pete banks one in.
That smile again. What a goof.
The game ends. Guys trudge off to the water fountain. Pete continues to shoot around.
And now, you wonder what he sees. Was it as he used to imagine? "The space will open up," he once said. "Beyond that will be heaven and when you go inside, then the space closes again and you are there...definitely a wonderful place...everyone you ever knew will be there."
Back on earth, the preacher asks Pete Maravich how he feels.
"I feel great," he says.
Soon the phone will ring in Covington, Louisiana. A five-year-old boy hears the maid let out a sharp piercing howl. Then big old Irma quickly ushers the boy and his brother into another room. The boy closes the door behind him and considers himself in the mirror. He has his father's eyes. That's what everyone says. Eyes of mine, guard that which is thine. Guard that which fathers give to their sons to give to their sons.
The boy looks through himself, and he knows:
"My daddy's dead."
January 5, 1988.
They cannot see him, this slouched, ashen-faced man in their midst. To their oblivious eyes, he remains what he had been, unblemished by the years, much as he appeared on his first bubblegum card: a Beatlesque halo of hair, the fresh-faced, sad-eyed wizard cradling a grainy, leather orb.
One of the regulars, a certified public accountant, had retrieved this very artifact the night before. He found it in a shoebox, tucked away with an old train set and a wooden fort in a crawlspace in his parents' basement. He brought it to the gym this morning to have it signed, or perhaps, in some way, sanctified. The 1970 rookie card of Pete Maravich, to whom the Atlanta Hawks had just awarded the richest contract in professional sport, notes the outstanding facts: that Maravich had been coached by his father, under whose tutelage he became "the most prolific scorer in the history of college basketball."
Other salient statistics are provided in agate type: an average of 44.2 points a game, a total of 3,667 (this when nobody had scored 3,000). The records will never be broken. Still, they are woefully inadequate in measuring the contours of the Maravich myth.
Even the CPA, for whom arithmetic is a vocation, understands the limitation in mere numbers. There is no integer denoting magic or memory. "He was important to us," the accountant would say.
Maravich wasn't an archetype; he was several: child prodigy, prodigal son, his father's ransom in a Faustian bargain. He was a creature of contradictions, ever alone: the white hope of a black sport, a virtuoso stuck in an ensemble, an exuberant showman who couldn't look you in the eye, a vegetarian boozer, the athlete who lived like a rock star, a profligate, suicidal genius saved by Jesus Christ.
Still, it's his caricature that evokes unqualified affection in men of a certain age. Pistol Pete, they called him. The Pistol is another relic of the seventies, not unlike bongs or Bruce Lee flicks: the skinny kid who mesmerized the basketball world with Globetrotter moves, floppy socks, and great hair.
Pistol Pete was, in fact, his father's vision, built to the old man's exacting specifications. Press Maravich was a Serb. Ideas and language occurred to him in the mother tongue, and so one imagines him speaking to Pistol (yes, that's what he called him, too) as a father addressing his son in an old Serbian song: Cuj me sine oci moje, Cuvaj ono sto je tvoje...Listen to me, eyes of mine, guard that which is thine...
The game in progress is a dance in deference to this patrimony. The Pistol is an inheritance, not just for the Maraviches, but for all the American sons who play this American game. The squeak of sneakers against the floor produces an oddly chirping melody. Then there's another rhythm, the respiration of men well past their prime, an assortment of white guys: the accountant, insurance salesmen, financial planners, even a preacher or two. "Just a bunch of duffers," recalls one. "Fat old men," smirks another.
But they play as if Pistol Pete, or what's left of him, could summon the boys they once were. They acknowledge him with a superfluous flourish, vestigial teenage vanity -- an extra behind-the-back pass or an unnecessary between-the-legs dribble. The preacher, a gentle-voiced man of great renown in evangelical circles, reveals a feverishly competitive nature. After hitting a shot, he is heard to bellow, "You get that on camera?"
The Parker Gymnasium at Pasadena's First Church of the Nazarene could pass for a good high school gym -- a clean, cavernous space with arching wooden rafters and large windows. At dawn, fully energized halogen lamps give off a glow to the outside world, a beacon to spirits searching for a game. As a boy, Maravich would have considered this a kind of heaven. Now, it's a way station of sorts.
Pete begins wearily. He hasn't played in a long time and moves at one-quarter speed, if that. He does not jump; he shuffles. The ball seems like a shotput in his hands, his second attempt at the basket barely touching the front of the rim.
But gradually, as the pace of his breath melds with the others' and he starts to sweat, Pete Maravich recovers something in himself. "The glimpse of greatness was in his ballhandling," recalls the accountant. "Every once in a while the hands would flicker. There would just be some kind of dribble or something. You could see a little of it in his hands, the greatness. Just the quickness of the beat."
There was genius in that odd beat, the unexpected cadence, a measure of music. The Pistol's talent, now as then, was musical. He was as fluent as Mozart -- his game rising to the level of language -- but he was sold like Elvis, the white guy performing in a black idiom. And for a time, he was mad like Elvis, too.
Once, in an attempt to establish contact with extraterrestrial life, he painted a message on his roof: "Take me."
Deliver me, he meant.
Now the accountant tries to blow past Pete with a nifty spin move. Pete tells him not to believe his own hype.
The Pistol wears an easy grin. The men in this game are avid readers of the Bible. But perhaps the truth of this morning is to be found in the Koran: "Remember that the life of this world is but a sport and a pastime."
Pete banks one in.
That smile again. What a goof.
The game ends. Guys trudge off to the water fountain. Pete continues to shoot around.
And now, you wonder what he sees. Was it as he used to imagine? "The space will open up," he once said. "Beyond that will be heaven and when you go inside, then the space closes again and you are there...definitely a wonderful place...everyone you ever knew will be there."
Back on earth, the preacher asks Pete Maravich how he feels.
"I feel great," he says.
Soon the phone will ring in Covington, Louisiana. A five-year-old boy hears the maid let out a sharp piercing howl. Then big old Irma quickly ushers the boy and his brother into another room. The boy closes the door behind him and considers himself in the mirror. He has his father's eyes. That's what everyone says. Eyes of mine, guard that which is thine. Guard that which fathers give to their sons to give to their sons.
The boy looks through himself, and he knows:
"My daddy's dead."
Posted on 1/5/15 at 5:08 pm to AmericanHoop
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.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 5:28 pm to TopsInAmericaTim
quote:
* 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!
Actually, 57 points per game (see link). Personally, I think he's the greatest basketball player of all-time (yes, even better than MJ).
LINK
This post was edited on 1/5/15 at 5:30 pm
Posted on 1/5/15 at 5:30 pm to bluecouchstudios
quote:
Personally, I think he's the greatest basketball player of all-time
There's really no argument to be made here if you look at their pro careers
Posted on 1/5/15 at 5:31 pm to bluecouchstudios
Here is a GIF I made of Pete awhile back. It's not perfect but the original aspect ratio and color was off so I did my best to clean it up. Enjoy.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 5:36 pm to bluecouchstudios
And this is the best story I have ever heard about any basketball player. Crazy.
YouTube: Bill Walton on Pistol Pete
YouTube: Bill Walton on Pistol Pete
Posted on 1/5/15 at 6:40 pm to AmericanHoop
My daughter lives across the street from his old Covington house. He planted a camillia in her yard many years ago---it bloomed today. I knew him at LSU and he was a nice guy in addition to being the greatest basketball player I have ever seen.
Posted on 1/5/15 at 6:53 pm to bluecouchstudios
Very good
Posted on 1/5/15 at 6:57 pm to bayoubengal225
quote:
Great story. I didn't realize he ever played in the Maravich center
Played in an exhibition game with the Hawks in the PMAC...
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