Hero #5: “Pistol” Pete Maravich – Otherworldly
On the day of the 2009 NCAA Basketball Championship between Michigan State and North Carolina, this post is about one of the greatest basketball players to ever “lace ‘em up.”
There’s only one “Magic” in basketball, and he wore #32 for the Los Angeles Lakers. But this is a post about “Pistol” Pete Maravich, a man who averaged an astonishing 44 POINTS PER GAME while playing for his father at LSU, in the always tough SEC. Legendary LSU basketball coach Dale Brown has offered a notion that, if the 3-point line had been in effect during Pistol Pete‘s collegiate career, he would have averaged 57 points per game!
On February 25, 1977, my parents took me to see the struggling New Orleans Jazz playing at the Louisiana Superdome.
On this night, I had the great fortune of witnessing one of Pistol’s most famous performances, when he dropped 68 points on the New York Knicks — this is a full two years before the 3-point line was established in the NBA! I can still remember the announcer calling his name — “Pppiiiiisssssstttoooollll Pete!” — as the ball continually shredded the twine over and over and over again. It was like a joke. If Lebron and Michael are scoring machines, Pistol was a scoring god. Even Hall of Fame player/coach Elgin Baylor — then coach of the Jazz — remarked of the extreme level of achievement he was witnessing.
You can watch a legendary YouTube video of “Pistol” Pete Maravich putting on a “H-O-R-S-E” demonstration for NBA players and fans HERE.
“Pistol” Pete had a drinking problem from the time he was 16 years old, and his alcoholism eventually led to an early retirement from the NBA at the age of 33. What is amazing is the fact that Pistol Pete could achieve the tremendous level of physical and athletic mastery of the sport of basketball while being heavily influenced by his drinking. After his playing days ended, Pistol became a recluse for nearly two years, leaving his fans in confusion for his sudden disappearance. He was quoted as saying he was searching “for life.” Sad, but it goes without saying that many gifted people find themselves adrift when the source and medium of their power is removed. Pistol had been born with a basketball, and was lost without an audience to put on his show.
In his later years, Pistol Pete sought many paths to recovery, including yoga, Hinduism, fundamentalist Christianity, acupuncture, meditation, vegetarianism, and (my favorite) “ufology” — the study of Unidentified Flying Objects. Pistol Pete died, at the young age of 40, of cardiac arrest playing his favorite game with a few members of a church congregation, reportedly announcing he “feels great” moments before his collapse.
There will never be another “Pistol” Pete Maravich. I know, because I was a 7-year old kid who walked out of the Superdome that evening yelling, “Pppiiiiisssssstttoooollll Pete!,” until my mom told me to calm down. I wore that Pete Maravich jersey to sleep that night, thinking I had witnessed something akin to a superhero. As an adult I’ve come to realize, maybe like my hero also did later in his life, that “Pistol” Pete Maravich was simply otherworldly.
