Pete Maravich ESPN SportsCentury | 2001 | The Career And The Tragic Life Of 'Pistol Pete'

down [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] won their six nba championships [Music] [Applause] don't believe what i just saw [Music] hello i'm chris fowler for sports century if pete maravich hadn't played basketball he might have played vegas as a sleight of hand artist either on the stage or at the gaming tables he could make anything disappear even a basketball with his lightning moves beyond his ball handling skills pistol pete shot with deadly accuracy becoming the most prolific scorer in the history of college basketball a droopy eyed virtuoso marovich was born to entertain you're looking at pistol pete maravich in my opinion the greatest play maker playing today excitement enthusiasm greatness that was pete maravich he was unstoppable it was as if you had melted down all 12 harlem globetrotters and then filled up this skinny 6'6 white frame with everything they had everything just stopped it was like wait a second did he just do what i think he did you were never quite sure what he was going to do with the ball in the open court because he had a thousand moves to either shoot it or pass it give him that much room and he'll burn you he faked with his right hand like he was going to the player on his left and he just whipped it and then he tipped it with his left hand to the player on his right he went in for a layup and the officials caught traveling and pete went crazy he went to the official and said you can't call that you've never seen that move before nobody handled the ball better than pistol but he wasn't just satisfied with that he had to put a little show on for the fans i asked him once if he'd ever played a perfect game he said no but i'm going to so some night i'm going to take 40 shots and i'm going to make them all he was an entertainer at heart and his ability to pass the ball and dribble the ball and do outlandish things on the court which sometimes even overruled the game that was pete maravich pete maravich was showtime before there was showtime i think that the only problem with pete maravich was the four other guys he just didn't relate to the rest of the team he was the ultimate outsider he was the great white player in a black man sport he was a an individualist in a team game he didn't really understand basketball other than the dribbling ball through his legs behind her back and passing behind the back which almost everyone could do he didn't understand the game of basketball people just salivated by getting him on a one-on-one situation he had 250 players in the league that he was going to compete against they were going to try to knock him down every time he put the ball between his legs or did something that was flamboyant pistol was way ahead of the game pistol got the reputation of being a hot dog because he was so talented that he was bored with the game people would point fingers at him well he's too selfish he takes too many shots that's why they don't win drafted by atlanta in 1970 pete maravich entered the pros as a high dollar high profile player whose flamboyant talent belied the pressures that were building within i can remember him in training camp in baton rouge one year when he was with the hawks and how isolated he was from the rest of the team pete was in his own world with teammates he was aloof with opposing players like myself he was a look he just knew of the legend of pistol p but you didn't know pete marriage there was a wild streak in him and you could tell it the pr man at lsu said you know something if he doesn't change something's going to happen he'll never live to be 30. he got wrecked in in the cocktail lounge and he's ratting and raving and because he jumps up and cracks his head on the table splits his head wide open i remember waking up early in the morning to a phone call and heard the girl that i was with talking and she said that was my husband on the phone and i said your husband she said yes i'm separated and so is the other girl i immediately hollered upstairs for pete finally got him to wake up i said man we got to get out of here so we got our clothes on and we're running and we're starting to go out the front door and we see this car pulling up here i think it was a pickup truck actually with two guys in it so we go running and it was on the second floor already so we opened this window and we're looking down and it's about a 10 foot 12 foot drop to the ground and so we didn't have any choice boom we're out there i've thought about suicide many times in my life it would've been easy for me i used to take my porsche 135 miles an hour across a bridge called the lake pontchartrain just to air myself out and air the car out it's been so easy just to take that wheel and turn to the right just about 10 degrees in a bit of history for me in a lifelong search for stability marovich wandered into bizarre realms he claimed that he believed in visitors from outer space and that on his condo in atlanta he had gone up on the roof and painted in red paint take me ufos karate transcendental meditation vitamins fasting being a vegetarian he was always searching for some kind of piece that he couldn't find in basketball he tried to change his personality and he tried to please so many people that he was a different person all the time and when that happens you eventually lose your identity and that's what happened to pistol at one point he lost his identity and because of it things start falling apart for the seeds of marovich's eventual disconnection were planted in childhood by a father whose only means of self-expression was a game when i was seven years old my dad sat me down and he said pete if you listen to me you might be able to get a scholarship in basketball because we can't pay your way and maybe you not only get a scholarship but maybe you'll go to the pro level and you'll play on a team that wins a world championship and you'll make a million dollars playing basketball and they'll give you a big diamond ring and i'll have your name on it and say world champions and to a seven-year-old my eyes lit up and i said dad that's what i want he said you let me teach you you just commit you dedicate your life to basketball and that's all you have to do and you'll live happily the rest of your life and that's what i did i became a human basketball i was a basketball android [Music] pete maravich's father press grew up in pennsylvania steel country back in aliquippa there were you really had three things you had the steel mill you had the family and you had sports first stick up basketball from the day he first knew how to bounce it completely obsessed with the game loved it played it with all his heart press was really known as mr basketball around aliquippa if anything we all looked at him as a basketball hero after a short professional career in the 1940s press moved on to coaching high schools and small colleges he was very precise in everything he did he knew what he was doing and he knew what he wanted and he played for him that way and you practiced for him that way everybody thought presbyter is this mock scientist about basketball i mean he was so involved in the game you know about the fundamental parts of the game and how it should be played already a stepfather when his firstborn son pete arrived in 1947 presmarovich chartered a course straight to the gym chris was talking one time about how some people are born to play a piano some people are born to be painters some people are born to be writers he said he thought pete was going to play basketball because he had basketball jeans pete would come on the court in the backyard and say let me shoot give me the ball and press would say no go back in the house you're too small and press said on one occasion he left the ball on the court and went back in the house and looked back through the kitchen one day and he saw that peter slipped onto the court picked up the ball and started shooting and press says i knew at that moment i had him it was like his dad was dangling something out in front of him and would intrigue him and pete would get interested in it and then his dad would take another step and then another step until he was hooked and he was obsessed by the game of basketball when he was 12 years old he opened the window to his room jumped out of the window and spent the night in the woods cuddling the basketball when press was at the wheel of the car pete would sit in the back seat by the window put the window down and as press drove slowly pete would dribble the ball now i mean that's an eerie connection with basketball in 1956 the marovich family moved to south carolina where press went to coach clemson while he built a reputation in the acc pete was building one of his own playing on the high school varsity as a 12 year old in 1959 he threw a pass between his legs and the crowd went berserk it was a small crowd but they went nuts and at that time something clicked in them very much like any entertainer when practice was over at high school he would stay another hour or two just ball handling and shooting hook shots from half court stuff like that he was about five foot weighed about 80 pounds when he's in the eighth grade he used to sit out there from 20 25 feet shoot from the hip that's when he got that pistol name when press became assistant coach at north carolina state in 1962 the family moved to raleigh at broughton high school it was clear that press's passion had transferred to his son pete was always the last one to leave the court and when press would be there to pick him up he would say well come on pete and pete would always put him off dad i've got a little bit more to work on you know i've got something else i need to do and press would look at me and he'd say how about that kid he said oh jack the the world wants this kid he said what do you see in place he's just a marvelous player he does everything sees the floor makes the pass can handle can shoot it long i said press can he defend well yeah he can do that too the thing that really was impressive that he never took his eye off the basket i mean you could turn him upside down and he'd always look at him and he says i would still be on the basket he was in his little dream world on that basketball court but as we would you know venture out and go to clubs and stuff like that he would be tagged along behind when i knew him in high school he was this jittery jerky kind of a guy the kind of guy that a you know probably some psychologist today would have him on riddle and you know he was probably just too jerky he couldn't concentrate he couldn't sit still trying to be friendly to pete was kind of hard because he would he would start looking down and moping around he wouldn't really care and particularly there were girls involved pete led broughton to the state semifinals in 1965 press in his first year as north carolina state's head coach won the acc tournament father and son stood together on the brink of a dream press was determined to coach pete all of us who knew press knew that that was his lifetime goal to coach beat in college but unfortunately he didn't hit those books as hard as he should have when he was a young man consequently he didn't quite make the grade on the sats while pete spent a year at a nearby prep school his father let it be known in the college coaching fraternity that a package deal was possible he didn't have to wait long press was making around 12 500 head coach at nc state and i think he got around 15 000 to go to lsu and pete wasn't accepted in nc state so both of them you know they go to lsu and then it's history from there i can remember the first day i saw press maribich at a press conference at lsu the first one he had as a coach and before he got halfway through he said boy there's going to be a guy next year lsu is going to be the greatest basketball player in the world my son pete [Music] i think one of the toughest sells in america was to sell basketball in louisiana it wasn't until pete showed up on campus and started playing it i mean it was like the word spread like wildfire that here was a bona fide superstar and it'd be five six thousand people would show up for the freshman game just to see them and then they had the bossy game and it would be like six seven hundred after averaging 44 points on a freshman team that lost just once pete joined his father on the lsu varsity in 1967. in his first game he took 50 shots pete was there to bring in the people pete was there to to do the scoring and we were there to do whatever we could to help that along press recruited players at least in my opinion that had the body to set good screens and pete was very good at stepping around those screens somebody asked me what it was like trying to guard pete i said imagine yourself in a big dark pitch black room and they put you in there and it's full of refrigerators and there's a house fly in there and they try to try to catch it you run around you keep running into all these big refrigerators you don't see them and boom boom boom and it's impossible to even try as soon as he touched the ball people went to the edge of their seat and there was this great rumor that was circulating that he had developed a shot that he was going to dribble down the court and right before the basket give it a hard dribble and a ball on a bounce would go in the basket people of pete maravich's generation all wanted to play basketball like he did guys were in the low-cut sneakers and the trim white socks and the tight-fitting pants and pete showed up with his hair flopping all around and he had these ugly old high sweat socks that just flopped all over the [Music] and gone floor shot his way up to the top he's played his way into the heart of almost everyone and down in louisiana the pistol is top gun those of us that were close to press could tell how proud he was of pete and behind pete's back he would just say glorious things about pete he would never tell pete that he was that great part of what pete was searching for was his father's approval and i don't think he got it very often he was so obsessed by the boy and his talent that he would take the films home and would play them over and over and over and over and over again all night they had strong wills short fuses and on the court at time outs that chew each other out press usually won but pete would go out after a timeout and do something so spectacular the old man would throw up his hands and say you know what can i do i remember one game in particular during a timeout where press said we're going to do this and pete said well why don't we try that and he basically ended up you know smacked him on top of the head and said pete he said i'm the coach you're the player we're going to do it the way i say to do it while pete interacted with his father on the basketball court his mother helen was finding it increasingly difficult to live in the shadow of their mutual obsession she was agoraphobic which is she was afraid of crowds and afraid to leave the house i was in school four years with with press as the coach the four years she was at state all four years and probably saw helen a half a dozen times she she most the time didn't even come to games the sad thing about that was when she was in public she was just absolutely marvelous a wonderful lady but she just i think crawled within herself his mother was an alcoholic i don't think anybody identified that problem at the time nobody talked about that problem at the time but you could put things together press had a hard life because he'd go on the road with the lsu team and come back and and the house is in disarray she was a lonely woman because her husband and her son were basketball that was it they were always involved in basketball i used to find it in a washing machine i bought a scotch down in the washing machine or the dryer i think it made him mad and i think it frustrated my dad too part of it was they were so happy and i guess it upset that she was not so she was just so unhappy pete became more consumed with basketball he withdrew from the family he avoided helen knowing the problems that his mother had i was concerned and other players were concerned as to whether or not pete would over indulge in his drinking to where could become a problem you would wake up in the morning to go to class and go out there and see how did he get his car in this spot you could almost sense and feel him hitting the front bumper and then backing up to the back bumper and front bumper back bumper until he gets in he drank a lot when he was in college with the reports we were getting couple of wrecks and of course you know daddy wasn't gonna kick him off the team but he might bat him around a little bit you know if you're going to go out and do something really crazy or stay out make sure pete's with you you know probably wouldn't get kicked off for the severe punishment however hard pete played off court he never let up once the whistle blew averaging 44 points a game in his sophomore and junior years but scoring was only part of the pistol's arsenal we felt like his ball handling and his assist abilities overshadowed his scoring abilities that sounds crazy when a guy averages 40 some points a game so we made the decision that we were going to play him straight up and guard the heck out of the rest of the people coach rupp didn't think that pete could beat us all by himself and so we would play him one on one the six games that we played against each other in college i think pete averaged over 50 points a game but we won all six games so coach rupp was right managing just three victories the season before pete's arrival on the varsity lsu played a combined two games above 500 during his first two seasons as he entered his senior year marovich was just under 700 points short of oscar robertson's ncaa scoring record more and more people wanted to be around him one of a part of them wanted to talk to him want to get his autograph just wanted to get as close to him as they could he really started becoming a loner he quit going to class he basically for all practical purposes moved out of the dorm just wanted to be by himself on the floor pete stayed on pace in the second half against ole miss in late january of 1970 the pistol was a point short of the big o there must have been 50 photographers at the game and every time he would you know shoot the ball all these cameras would go off and he must have missed six or seven year old before he finally made the shot that broke the record and when he did it was just you know it was an unbelievable huge burden off his back we were there to create magic and he was there to create magic and he created it that night leading lsu to a 22 and 10 record marovich broke his own division 1 record by averaging 44 and a half as a senior he finished his college career with 3667 points well what i do every year my first notes column of the year is is i just remind people of what pete marriage did that he averaged 44 points a game for three seasons and i don't think people understand what that number is and that's a number that will never be approached ever again in college basketball i think without a doubt he was the greatest offensive player ever to play the game if you want to break his record that was with no three-point shot all you have to do is score 15 three-pointers every game you play your entire college career and you'll break pistol's record no one's ever going to do it as the all-time college scoring champion maravich would face a new challenge in the nba without his father on the sidelines [Music] we're most happy to announce that pete maravich will play professional basketball for the atlanta hawks out maneuvering the aba's carolina cougars the hawks signed the collegiate sensation for five years at nearly two million dollars but it wasn't only money that set merovich apart when i first came here and announced the starting lineups the first time i got about three death threats because the people were complaining because i just mentioned black guys well those are guys that were starting but once marovich arrived the color green became the dominant issue my reaction was thank god for pete marriage over the six years i was in the nba they told all of us that if you were six five and under you can't make any money so at the time bill russell and will chamberlain were the only two guys that making money when pete came in he changed the whole pace structure buoyed by marovich's deal caldwell applied for a serious raise i tried to explain to joe that john barrymore was a better actor than john wayne but john wayne was paid more because he drew more fans i understand the system said you you got to have a so-called white superstar that stuff should have went out when the civil rights movement ended i don't believe it would have made any difference particularly what color he was don't take away from pete's ability by introducing the color joe corwell jumped he went to carolina where there was a lawsuit in this and that the other thing because he wanted more money couldn't get the money those grumblings about it so there was an arrest that was starting because they wanted some money here's a white kid who hasn't played a day as a pro making more than triple the salary of anyone else on that team and it caused some dissent they didn't have sixty thousand dollars to pay lenny wilkins they couldn't pay me fifty thousand dollars but still didn't get paid a million so is that race or what unfortunately pete maravich was uh in my opinion the great white hope here in atlanta and i think that that hurt him tremendously because his teammates for the most part were black and were terrific guys but when they got pete maravich it was like he was going to do it all by himself they got along with pete great off the court on the court they had some problems with him because if he had a 301 break pete might go down and give it behind the back and go out of bounds and you know they're running down the court trying to get a layup and so they got tested sometimes with pete i would have liked to have seen pete sacrifice a little bit more for the team during the course of his professional career because i think his teens would have had greater success and he would have had greater success the ball didn't get to him as often as it had on other teams and frankly there was a little clique that kept the ball away from him when he played with the hawks i think they felt like pete probably got a little more publicity and press especially uh and favor in atlanta because atlanta was a predominantly white southern city i can't believe it his hair's still dry it's still thick it's still natural his hair goes up incredible that's just got to be the best hair in the league despite his national following and 24 point average marovich wasn't adding wins to atlanta's effort to upgrade although they had reached the western division finals the year before he arrived the hawks never won a playoff round in his four seasons it seemed that without his father to guide him marovich was drifting pistol idolized press maravich so you better be very careful and never once say well now you shouldn't do it that way what if press had told him to do it that way there would be points where he would go you know three four five games passing up wide open shots when he should have shot the ball it was more management's handling of the situation than it was the personal relationship between the players nobody could tell pete anything if uh if p did something then uh they would take care of it if he would have been more disciplined within his own life not just in basketball he'd have been way ahead of the game but at this point this was a troubled angry difficult to coach pete maravich who also would take out his sorrows you know in alcohol i don't think pistol could ever drink in my opinion two beers and you have to get pistol off the wall he was a very carefree guy probably drank more than he should have during his playing career in february of 1974 maravich boiled over after being ejected from a game in houston for arguing with an official in about the middle of the night i get a call i need to go up in a hallway where he's staying very frustrated about his game about a lot of things next day everything was fine except he he was a little bit wild on the plane too and i had no other choice but two suspending cotton came to me at that point and said you know we got to start thinking about making a move here well i started doing that very quietly and you know it was very very interesting there was no interest interest did come from the new orleans jazz when the nba expanded to 18 teams the pistol was going home there was no bigger draw certainly not in louisiana than than pete marriage as long as pete was here they always called him the louisiana purchase pete then says what did you get for me and i told him trying not to be too elated but i reeled off the picks we were going to get laid the whole package there was a little pause and pete said is that all [Music] while marovich was drawing crowds to the superdome press had slipped into coaching obscurity fired by lsu in 1972 press now in his third season at appalachian state watched over his wife's downward slide press did everything he could to help her alcoholism and to help her get over it i remember the day very vividly where he came in the office and was very upset when she went back to alcohol he had that contract and he had plenty of money and he was trying to help her and get her straightened out it just seemed not to be working out and it was kind of frustrating to her i kept waiting for my wife to come home and she didn't and i said well that's not like her she's she must be overseeing helen and i called over there and actually a policeman answered the phone they said helen maravich shot herself and she was on the way to the hospital three hours later helen maravich was pronounced dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound she was 49. i saw a difference after his mother passed away i saw a difference in pistol i saw a a serene almost kind of a lost individual it was all the pressure that was placed upon him that wanted to chase him away from the game he didn't know if it was worth it anymore in 1974 new orleans celebrated the arrival of pete maravich as though he were a native son once people in this market saw pete play they suddenly became fans it was like baton rouge all over again if the jazz on the home games got a hundred points your ticket coupon would get you free french fries when it would be late in the game and it got up in the 90s man people would be yelling pistol pistol pistol free flies free fries free fight and so every time they come out of court they give the ball on my adventure to shoot it after adjusting to the vastness of the superdome maravich averaged over 21 points and six assists in his first season with the jazz his game was beginning to mature i think somehow instinctively he started to figure out that we were pretty good players we were a better team when he wasn't doing as much and there were a lot more nights where he would be you know eight for 14 score 25 points with some free throws and we'd win by 10. what he did in the second year that i had him changed his socks shaved his beard put a new number on threw bounce played defense on guys that if you put him on the right guy played the game of basketball it's the first year he made first team all-pro and he deserved it but the pistol could still deliver showtime performances both guns were blazing on february 25th 1977. when you can use walt frazier and the knickerbockers like your private tool that's fabulous stuff boy he's got all kinds of moves what doesn't this guy have he just went off that night it was the most amazing thing i'll ever remember seeing as a player [Applause] only will chamberlain and elgin baylor had ever scored more in a game after leading the league with a 31 point average that season marovich and the jazz were in the hunt for the 1978 playoffs when pete was brought down the outlet pass came to peter midcourt and took one bounce behind his back and then raised his leg and flipped it through his legs perfect down at the other end to uh to aaron james for a layup and when he did he came down oddly on the knee and you could hear the crack like a rifle shot along the first few rows of the stadium he had to have knee surgery and it ended his season and the injury probably was the main reason the jazz never were able to stay in new orleans because i believe had they made the playoffs that year it might have taken off to a point where the franchise wouldn't have moved and would have stayed in new orleans in 1979 hindered by a knee brace marovich appeared in just 49 games averaging 23 points before diminishing crowds when the jazz moved to utah after the season marovich had worn out his welcome i don't think anyone disliked him but they could see that his game just wasn't you know what it used to be as a player and he ended up sitting on the bench not getting as much time when you're a legend kind of eats at you and i think it ate at peak quite a bit i think he was disillusioned after he got his knee hurt his own alcoholism was at work alcoholism is a disease and pete had access to his drug of choice and he had free time there was an unfortunate situation after the game in seattle where he had over imbibed and went to the wrong room and started knocking on the door kicking in the door and it was the wrong person it wasn't his room then it was decided it was best for pete to move on and he got together with the ownership and management of the team and worked out a settlement with his contract he was waived and picked up by the boston celtics joining the celtics in january of 1980 marovich came off the bench to help them post the best record in the nba he totally impressed me coming in because i thought he was mainly offensive player but he worked hard on the defensive end and that totally blew me away if we didn't win those last couple games we would not be uh in first place in the division and pistol just took over the game and shot us into the best record after the celtics lost to the 76ers in the eastern conference finals marovich took a hard look at what was left of his nba future at the very very end of his career uh marovich you know began to pass and to relate to other members of the team but by that time his skills had eroded too far it wasn't pete mavic anymore nba people far more knowledgeable than i say that if pete maravich had gone to the boston celtics out of college that the celtics and red arbok and the rest of that group would have made him into a team player and he might have been the greatest player of all time he goes back to boston and he realizes that he's not going to start he's not going to be perhaps even the number two shooting guard on that team so he's going to be on the bench and he admitted it his ego was crushed on september 20th 1980 pete maravich at 33 announced his retirement in boston and returned to his home outside new orleans according to pete these were the darkest two years of his life he basically holed up in the house he was incredibly depressed and he spoke about it as if he was a drug addict going through withdrawals and the withdrawal was the attention and the love that he had for basketball it didn't play out he didn't become a grand old man of basketball as a player because i think he just couldn't sustain it he needed to go off and you know find some other personality but pete maravich was about to be released from his demons how he gained his freedom would surprise all who knew him in 1982 the depressed son of a basketball father found someone else to believe in pete marriage believes that god spoke to him audibly and he said that from that day on for the rest of his life i was getting ready to go off my bed and god spoke to me he spoke to me out of it and he said be strong and lift that on heart it reverberated through my room i'll never forget it as long as i live just like i'm speaking in this microphone he was not in my spirit he was outside he had not come in yet god spoke to us personally and a lot of people can't understand that i don't understand it but he spoke to us horribly i'm saying that come on pete he says i promise you bob i was woken by a sound it was the lord speaking to me and at that time he dedicated his life to the lord he found that and he was more devoted to that than anything i've ever seen basketball included once he became a christian he would read his bible hours at a time every day he would go up and talk with anybody then where before he thought everybody was coming to talk to him all the time and he was always trying to convert somebody christianity pete also helped his father find religion together they continued their passion at the pistols basketball camp in clearwater florida he was ready to go at six o'clock in the morning and you know he shut it down at 12 or 1 o'clock in the morning so he was working 18 to 19 hour days had a hand in every part of the camp he had a big salad bar lots of watermelon no soft drink no ice cream no sugar that was the good diet for pete and we did that while he was at our camp those five years then in 1986 pete learned that his father was diagnosed with cancer he was going to do everything humanly possible to try to cure press he did not leave press's side he was with his dad probably the last six months of his life literally day and night he had some comfort about the fact that uh he was the one that had been used to bring press to a place of peace and precious life press maravich died on april 5th 1987. nine months later he was followed by his son on january 5th 1988 pete maravich was scheduled to be interviewed for a christian radio program but first there was a pickup basketball game with the first church of the nazarene gym in pasadena california i knew that he had really come through a difficult time in his life and there'd been a dramatic change in his life when he met jesus christ and i really wanted to hear him tell that story but i had not met him until that morning at seven o'clock when we met at the gym to play basketball i think he was going about half speed but there was a move or two that he made that took our breath away we played about three games and at that time some of the guys wanted to get a drink of water some went outside to get some fresh air and before i knew it was just dr dobson and pete on the court and i was underneath the basket rebounding for peta's the two of them talked he said you know i've loved being here today he said i i've really got to get back into basketball even if it's pick up stuff like this and i said how do you feel today and i promise you his last words to me were i feel great i just feel great and i turned to walk away and i don't know why but i looked back at him for some reason just in time to see him fall and he fell hard he didn't break his fall i mean his face hit the boards i walked over very carefully along with dr dobson thinking that pete was going to jump in our faces but as soon as we got close we could see his eyes rolling back and the color in his face starting to change and then i saw that he was in a seizure and i got down over him and i held his tongue and kept his air passage open for about 20 seconds and then he just he just writhed once like that his body moved once and he was gone the man died in my arms and i'll never forget that very morning that as that ambulance went over to st luke's hospital in pasadena california the siren wasn't going there was no red lights no sound and it wasn't going very fast and as tears poured down my face i kept saying no no but down deep i knew and it wasn't more than 20 minutes before the doctor came out and said i'm sorry guys pistol pete marovich the all-time scoring champ of college basketball who spent 10 years in the pros died as he lived playing basketball he was only 40 years old it wiped me out i was out i was out of it for about six months i think in another another dimension because really that's all i had was pete [Music] it just doesn't make sense that a guy could go through the rigors of an nba game let alone an nba season and not manifest any kind of symptoms at all and then all of a sudden in a pickup game have it explode at autopsy he had only one coronary artery now generally you have two coronary arteries he was able to play professional and college basketball at the highest possible levels with no symptoms and no problems until much later in life if you do remember some of pete's background there was some alcohol use at certain parts of his life the official autopsy says that the single coronary artery led to some of the problems but i think there'll always be debate about that maravich left behind his wife jackie and their two sons joshua and jason who represented their father at the nba's 50th anniversary ceremony in 1997 honoring the league's 50 greatest players charles barkley is the one that sticks sticks out most of my mind he's the one that came up pulled me and my brother to the side told us dad would have been real proud of us i've only met pete marriage one time in my life and he says you know what you were my favorite player and i wanted to make sure let them know that i acknowledged that and i appreciated that that's the one of the greatest compliments i ever got most artists when they are living people don't recognize them and recognize their great talent until after they're gone and i think this is what really happened to be marriage it seems like to me everybody wants to dwell on the sad times or depressed time he had a good life he had a great life he did what he wanted he played basketball that was his love and he ended up with his second love his wife and then he had his kids and then he found jesus i think he died a happy person if he was alive today he would probably be walking down bourbon street handing out leaflets for jesus he got one person out of a thousand he'd be happy [Music] hauntingly pete maravich foretold his own end in 1974 he said to a reporter i don't want to play 10 years and then i have a heart attack when i'm 40. yet that's exactly what happened he might not have had the world on a string but he sure had a basketball there for sports century i'm chris fowler [Music] you

Channel: SQUADawkins

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Id: tAu3LfD3uHE

Length: 43min 11sec (2591 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 23 2022