Thanks For The Memories Pete
By: Dan Hardesty
LSU Basketball
Peter Press Maravich 1947-1988
It would be difficult for any basketball fan in the Assembly Center tonight, who was not in the Baton Rouge area when Pete Maravich played at LSU, to understand or appreciate fully the collegiate career of Pistol Pete. Or, for that matter, to believe it.
Come to think of it, some of the folks who saw Pete play didn’t believe it.
Perhaps only in basketball can one player personally dominate the game, dominate the sport, the way Pete Maravich dominated it at LSU. It couldn’t happen in something like football, but only in a sport played in a relatively confined area, sport in which every player is allowed to handle the ball and attempt to score at any time, and one which at the same time is based on great skill, timing and finesse. That is basketball.
In the light of the past few seasons of considerable success for Tiger basketball teams and high demand for tickets to the games, it might be hard to imagine a time when LSU home games were played before thousands of empty seats; you couldn’t give away a ticket. That’s the way it was, when Pete Maravich was hired from North Carolina State to become LSU’s coach in the spring of 1966.
Things didn’t stay that way very long.
During that summer, word began to get around and people began to talk about a boy Press Maravich had brought here with him—his son Pete. The coach himself didn’t make any rash predictions but he did comment once, with a big smile, to a sportswriter, “Wait ‘til you see Pete play!” So everyone waited, and when Pete played his first freshman game, a large crowd showed up at the old John M. Parker Ag Center, the Tiger basketball “Cow Barn” of that era, to see what the talk was all about.
In those days, college freshman weren’t eligible for varsity sports, and each school had separate freshman teams. The usual arrangement was for the freshman to play a preliminary game prior to the varsity encounter. LSU’s first scheduled opponent in Pete’s freshman season was Southeastern Louisiana College from nearby Hammond, and it was against the Lion frosh that the younger with the floppy socks made his collegiate debut.
Pistol Pete scored 50 points that night, made 11 assists, grabbed 11 rebounds, the Tiger frosh won easily, and then a strange thing happened. Most of the spectators got up and went home! They simply ignored the upcoming varsity game, and perhaps something could be said for their judgment, considering that Southeastern beat the LSU varsity that night.
This was the pattern for the season. Excited spectators crowded into the Ag Center, which seated about 9,500 to watch the freshman play. Or more correctly, to watch Pete Maravich play. Then they got up and went home, and the varsity won only three games all season while the freshman lost only one.
Maravich played three varsity seasons at LSU. A list of his scoring statistics and records seems unnecessary; surely everyone knows them now. Pete Maravich on a basketball court represented far more than just a collection of impressive numbers.
Pete was the son of a first-rate basketball coach, but he certainly didn’t just inherit all those magical skills. For one thing, Press didn’t have them to give. What he did give his son was early instruction in how to handle and dribble and shoot the ball, plus encouragement to practice, and the son took it from there. Pete got his skills by early dedication and by many long hours of hard work, by thousands upon thousands of repetitions of every dribble and every pass and every shot at the basket. Taken in the light of a well known TV commercial, he worked for his skill, he earned it.
Every story and every TV commentary on Maravich tends to start with the notation that he was the highest scoring player in collegiate history. He shot the ball often and scored astonishing numbers of points. That’s the first thing that attracts attention, now as well as then, and early in his LSU days it attracted the attention of a sportswriter who gave him the nickname “Pistol Pete.” It’s a good name, but it really might have been more appropriate if the writer had chosen a word to go with this superstar’s last name. How does “Magic Maravich” grab you?
Magic is what it was. Sure, he shot the ball 3,166 times in three seasons, but the real magic was in the way he brought the ball down the court, moved around defenders, flipped sudden pass to his teammates, dribbled like the best Globetrotter, and simply created an electrifying atmosphere in any arena in which he played.
There was even magic in some of his shots. His favorite scoring move was a remarkably high vertical jump with the ball in one hand overhead, and a shot fired at the top of the jump. But if a defender leaped and posed a threat to the shot, Maravich descended toward the court, held the ball in its overhead position, and lifted his feet with bent knees so that he had an extra split-second before touching the court for a traveling violation. In that split-second, with the defender already grounded, Pistol Pete fired.
Basketball fans here and elsewhere had never seen anything like Maravich. They jammed every arena in which he played, and lined up outside the locker room door after the games to get his autograph. Even for some road games, fans lined up at arena doors in early morning to be sure they got in to see him play that night.
Pistol Pete scored his 1,000th point on Feb. 21, 1968; the 2,000th on Feb. 15, 1969, and on Jan. 31, 1970, he hit his favorite jump shot to pass Oscar Robertson’s NCAA career scoring record of 2,973 points. Two nights later, Pete became the first college player to score 3,000, and he went on to a record total of 3,667 for his varsity career (plus 741 as a freshman).
Don’t look for that record to be broken anytime soon, and never in what now would be a short career of 83 games in three seasons. Nor should you look in future for such a magician on the court, or a player who so dominates the game and captivates the audience. It happened once—but Pistol Pete Maravich was one of a kind. |
