Remembering Pete Maravich on What Would Have Been His 78th Birthday

Photo: Pete Maravich looks to get a shot off as a member of the Utah Jazz. Photo credit: Paul Shane, Associated Press.

Before Kyrie Irving, Jason Williams, and Rod Strickland dazzled with their dribbling and dime-ing. Before flash was a thing in the NBA. Before Magic and Bird. Before highlight culture and handles. 

Before all of that, there was “Pistol” Pete Maravich.

Maravich was born on June 22, 1947 in Aliquippa, Pa., a town that bred gridiron talents Tony Dorsett, Mike Ditka, Ty Law, and Darrelle Revis. Maravich chose basketball. Or maybe basketball chose him. 

His father, Press, was his coach, and in learning the game and honing his craft Maravich would dribble a basketball on pavement through an open car window as his father drove along. 

Maravich was a superstar at Louisiana State University playing for Press. In three years as a Tiger he ran up 43.8, 44.2, and 44.5 points per game. His collegiate average over his four seasons was 44.2 points per game. He was the 1970 Associated Press Player of the Year, and in each of his collegiate seasons was a 3-time consensus All-American, 3-time All-SEC and 3-time SEC Player of the Year. He also won the Naismith Award in 1970 as college basketball’s best player. 

The 1970 NBA Draft is one of the most talent-rich in NBA history, perhaps the richest. Twelve all-stars were extracted from it, with Maravich joined by Tiny Archibald, Dave Cowens, Dan Issel, Bob Lanier, Calvin Murphy, Rudy Tomjanovic, Charlie Scott, Randy Smith, Geoff Petrie, John Johnson, and Sam Lacey. Archibald, Cowens, Issel, Lanier, Murphy, Scott, and Maravich are in the Hall of Fame as players. Tomjanovic is enshrined for his coaching successes. 

Maravich was drafted third, behind Lanier (1st) and Tomjanovic. He averaged 23.2 points, 4.4 assists, and 3.7 rebounds as a rookie. Third in Rookie of the Year voting. In 1972-73, Maravich averaged 26.1 points, 6.9 assists, and 4.4 rebounds. His efforts that season earned him 2nd team All-NBA and an All-Star nod. 

The following season, Maravich averaged 27.7 points, 5.2 assists, and 4.9 rebounds on 45.7% shooting. After a trade in 1974 to the New Orleans Jazz for his fifth season, Pistol averaged 21.5 points, 6.2 assists, and 5.3 rebounds. In the 1975-76 season, Maravich averaged 25.9 points, 5.4 assists, and 4.8 rebounds on 45.9% shooting. His best season came in 1976-77, his first of three consecutive being an all-star. Maravich posted 31.1 points, 5.4 assists, and 5.1 rebounds in a career-high 41.7 minutes per game, shooting 43.3%. He made All-NBA 1st team and finished third in MVP voting to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. 

For the last fifty-six games of 1976-77 and his last two full seasons in New Orleans, Maravich was coached by Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor. Pistol averaged 27.0 points and 22.6 points in his final two New Orleans seasons and was named an all-star each season.

In his final season of 1979-80, Maravich played 17 games for the now Utah Jazz, averaging 17.1 points in 31 minutes per game on seventeen attempts per game. Maravich spent the final twenty-six games of his career with the Boston Celtics, a 61-win team with a rookie Bird. The now 32-year-old started four games for the Celtics and averaged 11.5 points on 49.4% shooting in seventeen minutes per game. 

Over his ten seasons, Maravich played 658 games, 330 with the Jazz and 302 with the Hawks, and was a career 24.2 point per game scorer on 44.1% shooting, averaging twenty-one shots per game. With the Jazz, he averaged 25.2 points, 5.6 assists, and 4.3 rebounds on 43.4% shooting in thirty-eight minutes per game. As a Hawk, he averaged 24.3 points, 5.6 assists, and 4.2 rebounds on 44.8% shooting in thirty-seven minutes per game. He averaged twenty-three shots with the Jazz and twenty-one with the Hawks. Maravich was also a career 82% free-throw shooter, leading the NBA in makes and attempts from the stripe (6.9 and 8.2) in 1976-77. 

Maravich’s 3,667 NCAA points are a men’s record. In March of 2024, now Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark broke Maravich’s single-season overall record, establishing a new record for men and women. Maravich was the overall record holder for fifty-four years. 

On January 5, 1988, Maravich tragically passed away at the age of 40, after a pick-up game at the First Church of Nazarene’s Parker Gymnasium in Pasadena, Calif. Maravich lived without a left coronary artery, something that went undetected throughout his life. 

Maravich’s last organized game was the annual Maurice Stokes’ benefit game at Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello, N.Y. For decades, the NBA’s best played in the game, from Wilt to Oscar to Pistol, that raised money for the paralyzed former NBA forward Stokes. 

It was the summer of 1987, six months before Maravich’s passing. Playing in that game was basketball columnist (and eventual Hall of Fame columnist) Peter Vecsey. At one stage in the game, Maravich in only the way that he could gave Vecsey a behind-the-back pass. Vecsey converted the layup. 

“Don’t say I never gave you nothin,” quipped Maravich. 

In a sad coincidence, Maravich’s son Josh passed away in June of 2024 at age 42. At the 1997 All-Star 50 Greatest celebration in Cleveland, Josh and Maravich’s other son Jaeson represented their father. 

It is a cliche, but it fits here - that Maravich was gone far too soon. A showman with style who indirectly created the style that Magic and Bird brought and whose influence you see today with Irving and others. Maravich was an original showman. Gilbert Arenas, like Irving, is another player that drew inspiration from Pistol. 

In one of his segments of “Red on Roundball”, the legendary Celtic coach Auerbach has Maravich, at the time a member of the Jazz, demonstrate ball handling and the drills Maravich, who had his own instructional videos, did to better his game. It is quite mind boggling to see Maravich rifle the ball down to the floor between his legs and catch it just below his back on the other side of his body. 

Maravich became a born-again Christian in 1983 and gave public testimonies. He had dealt with and overcame alcohol issues in his life. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1987.

Truly one of the greats. Perhaps basketball’s greatest showman. Flash. Flair. Style. Pistol had it all. 

Continue to rest, Pete Maravich.