Posted on 04/19/2024 12:13:17 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Walton is adamant "Pistol Pete" would do the unprecedented things under today's rules.
To this day, Pete Maravich remains one of the most underrated players in NBA history purely due to the era he played in. Maravich was ahead of his time, especially as a scorer, and Hall of Famer Bill Walton made sure to remind people how great Pete really was.
During a TV appearance in 2007, Walton discussed the incredible Maravich biography written by Wayne Federman and Marshall Terrill. But while recognizing the former New Orleans Jazz guard's greatness, "Big Red" might've taken his praise too far.
"The amazing thing about Pete is 44 points per game, in his career, for three straight years in an era with no three-point line. Dale Brown, who coached LSU after Press and Pete were there, went back and charted all the games with the running score – Maravich free-throw, Maravich 22-foot jumper, Maravich layup – and he calculated that with the current college 3-point line rule at 19'9" Pete Maravich would have averaged 13 three-point makes per game, which would have given him a career average of 57 points per game under today's rules!" Walton said.
That guy was unbelievable! We love him, we miss him terribly, what a great man, what a great human being," he added.
An all-time scorer
While Maravich's numbers don't jump off the page, his career average of 24.2 points per game is nothing to sniff at.
Where Pete really made his mark was in college, as he grew into an NCAA legend at a time when college basketball was just as popular as the NBA. Maravich spent four productive seasons at LSU before being selected third overall in the 1970 draft and setting the league on fire.
His best season as a pro came in 1977, when "Pistol Pete" was crowned the league's scoring champion, averaging 31.1 points per contest in one of his five All-Star campaigns.
An outrageous claim
Despite Maravich undoubtedly being an all-time great, Walton's claim he would average 57 points per game in today's NBA is utterly ludicrous.
Although he suggests the math was done to validate his claim, there are multiple factors he hasn't considered when trying to project what players in the '70s would average in the modern league landscape.
For one, there is an assumption that the level of scoring would translate when it's clear that the league has never been more talented in scoring the ball, coupled with advanced defensive schemes and vastly different rules. More importantly, it's rare in today's game that any player would average close to 30 points per game without developing a three-point shot.
While Walton's comments may have been in good faith, they do add stigma to casual fans who take comments like this for the Bible when comparing eras.
IIRC, Walton and Maravich were teammates on the Celtics in the latter part of their careers.
Could have been the first white Globetrotter. He was invited.
Could Jason Willims be a “white Globetrotter?”
I would tend to agree with Walton.
Overall, although there was no official 3-point stat for most of his career ( the 3 point shot became rule near the end of his career), Pete Maravich’s reputation and playing style strongly suggest he would have been a phenomenal outside shooter in today’s game.
Many players today though have duplicated his legendary ball handling skills ( Kyrie Irving, Stephen Curry, just to name two ).
Well, if you are comparing him to those two, I think that speaks highly of him.
Walton was a bit later than Pete in Boston
I had breakfast with Bill at the Parker house in late 82 there
A Dead thing lol
He was very pleasant and talked to everyone
He didn’t join till 84 or 85
Interesting character, to say the least. Definitely marches to beat of his own drum.
My BIL was a taxi driver in Eugene, Or. He picked up Walton at the airport several times to visit his orthopedic surgeon. He said that Bill was friendly and talked with him like an average person, not at all like a celebrity.
i was a student at Tulane in the 60’s and was able to watch him play in college. His charisma and personality, flamboyant style, and showmanship drew large crowds and made him a fan favorite. He could create his own shot and was nearly impossible to stop.
Pete Maravich was the greatest scorer in college basketball history. And it’s not even close.
There is a lot of discussion today about Pete because of Clark breaking the Division 1 womens and mens record. But that’s a good thing. A new generation should be introduced to Pistol.
The problem with sports is we get into these generational discussions comparing like Babe Ruth to Hank Aaron and so on.
In basketball, in college we have players who were not allowed on the varsity freshman year like Jabbar. So some play 4 years and some play 3. Also there was the anti-Jabbar rule in college, no dunking.
Then there is the record you have to pay attention to. Clark is the DIVISION 1 record holder, not the all time college record holder. That belongs to two guys who went to the same school. Here is the leading career scorer in college basketball, all divisions and organizations men and women and the number two whose record he broke in mentioned:
John Pierce is living proof of the old saying, “Good things come to those who sit and wait.” After a redshirt freshman year for the Lipscomb University basketball team, John started rewriting the record books on both the school and national level. John is all-time leading scorer in the history of college basketball, scoring 4.230 points from 1990 to 1994. Ironically, his former roommate Phillip Hutcheson held the title at the time.
Included in the record are school career marks for free throws made with 881 and field goals made with 1,627. His 54 points on Nov. 14, 1992 set a school single-game scoring record. Known as much for his rebounding as for his scoring, John also holds the school career record with 1,497. He was a two time NAIA Player of the Year. He was named an All-American all four years he played with the Bisons, earning first-team honors for three seasons. John played five season of professional basketball in both Australia and Japan. He has also been inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame.
Pistol Pete would have averaged a much higher average game total than 57 if the 3-point shot were around at that time because Pistol would have simply shot more 3-pointers instead of driving in closer for 2 points.
it’s rare in today’s game that any player would average close to 30 points per game without developing a three-point shot.
May be rare but it’s been done.
Joel Embiid averaged 33.1 points, 10.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists in 66 games in 2022-23. He made 66 3- pointers for the year, less than 1/game
Unfortunately Pete’s autopsy revealed that he was born without a left coronary artery, it was miracle he even lived as long as he did.
Collapsed and died while playing a pick-up basketball game with the guys from Focus on the Family ministries (James Dobson et al).
No question Maravich was a great scorer of the basketball, but there’s this also:
Under his father’s watch, Maravich had an extraordinarily large role in the Tigers’ offense, averaging 38.1 shots per game over his career. In his three seasons with the Tigers, he was responsible for 3,166 of his team’s 6,284 shot attempts, or 50.4%.
Season FG FGA FG% Assists Rebounds Points
1967-68 16.6 39.3 42.3% 4 7.5 43.8
1968-69 16.7 37.5 44.4% 4.9 6.5 44.2
1969-70 16.8 37.7 44.7% 6.2 5.3 44.5
So analyzing those stats he shot the ball 38 times per game, more than half his teams field goal attempts. He averaged 6.4 rebounds per game and 5 assists per game. As the primary ball handler 5 assists per game does not necessarily impress me. Dude liked to shoot the ball, but didn’t pass much to his teammates and was not a particularly good rebounder at 6.4 per game. The two stats I would be interested in knowing is how many turnovers per game did he commit and what was his assist to turnover ratio. In my mind all those categories are important in determining what a great basketball player is.
PP’s unworldly ball handling skills weren’t entirely natural gifts, he earned them. At LSU, he was never without a b-ball. He dribbled everywhere he walked on campus.
The LSU varsity hated him when he was on the JV because the gym would fill for JV games (because PP was such a phenom), then be empty when the varsity played.
His LSU teammates stayed covered with bruises because his passes were lasers, and he never telegraphed that he was about to pass. One of his teammates commented that the only time you could be sure Maravich wasn’t going to pass to you is when he was looking at ya.
His specialty was HORSE. He was a high school underclassman when his father was coaching at Clemson, but that didn’t stop him beating his dad’s starting five at HORSE with regularity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations_of_basketball#H-O-R-S-E
When he was in the NBA, he proved he still was the master of HORSE.
Pete’s long hair annoyed my father to no end, especially because he constantly was brushing his bangs aside when he played. Dad said he could be twice the player if he’d only get a proper haircut (because then he could play with both hands!!).
What? For a shooting guard 6.4 rebounds/game seems like a lot. And 5 assists/game doesn’t necessarily seem bad for a 2 guard. (Would be roughly in line with Jordan or Bryant.)
The proto-Antifa, fellow traveller Bill Walton is the one that I remember...
“It is hard to imagine a superstar basketball player calling for resistance to the US government during a press conference. But that is what Walton did in the spring of 1975, when he appeared with his friends Jack and Micki Scott at San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church, the congregation pastored by the radical Black minister Cecil Williams. The Scotts had just resurfaced after going underground to avoid harassment from the FBI for harboring members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), including Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. After Walton apologized to the Scotts for agreeing to be interviewed by the FBI, he called upon Americans to undertake “the practice of noncooperation with the existing government because of the inherent evil of that government.”
“When Walton appeared with the Scotts at Glide Memorial, the Patty Hearst/SLA story was obscuring his own work as an activist himself. The press depicted Walton as a dupe of the Scotts. Yet even cursory observers of Walton’s career knew that the basketball star had developed his own political awareness. Since his college days, long before he met the Scotts, he refused to accept the role as the “great white hope” in a Black-dominated sport. Not only did he reject this position; he regularly highlighted the workings of white male privilege in press interviews. After his arrest at UCLA, he told sportswriter Billy Libby, “The Blacks have gotten a raw deal for a long time. A lot of my teammates are Black, and I really admire the way they’ve risen above their raw deal. They’re my friends and I feel for them. I know I’ve gotten twice as much as I deserve because I’m white.” He also told the startled sportswriter: “If a Black man gunned me down right now, I’d figure it was all right because of what whites have done to Blacks.” Just imagine a white athlete saying that today, especially in the aftermath of the Buffalo and Jacksonville massacres. They’d probably be driven from public life.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-walton-activism/
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