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Pete - What if?

Imagining Pistol Pete playing in today's college basketball is quite the compelling hypothetical.

What if…

NCAA rules had been different for Pete Maravich?

Pete Maravich at LSU (Photo source: Total Pro Sports)

The numbers are beyond staggering.

■3,667 career points – most ever.

■44.2 points per game – most ever.

■28 games with 50 points – most ever.

■56 games with 40 points – most ever.

■30 FTs in one game (off 31 attempts) – most ever.

For most players, those stats would tell the story, finish the story, and cement the legacy.

But with Pistol Pete, they are only scratching the surface.

Pete was a guy who legendarily laughed at his opponents after he broke them down off the dribble.  Magic Johnson admitted that he stole the phrase "Showtime" from Maravich.

The guy even inspired Bob Dylan songs!

And really, without a whole lot of imagination, those numbers could look like this:

■5,822 career points – BY FAR the most ever.

■57.2 points per game – RIDICULOUS.

■Who knows what else?

We are only left to ponder, What if…?

What if the NCAA Tournament had been different when the Pistol played?

When Maravich was at LSU, the NCAA Tournament only featured from 22-25 teams.  Beyond that, only one team from each conference was allowed to go to the dance.

Sharing a league with Kentucky in the late sixties was not the best way to get to the tournament.

This rule didn't affect just Pete Maravich.  There were several instances when many people thought that the two best teams in the nation were in one conference, but they couldn't both go to the Dance.  However, just think about what might have been had Pete been able to play in the Tournament.

The NCAA Tournament, as we know, is so often decided by good guard play.  Would LSU have had a chance to be successful with Pistol Pete running the show?  Most definitely.

The other characteristic of the Tourney is that it so often rewards a team that gets hot at just the right time.  Is it at least plausible that Pete may have been able to lead his team to one or two Final Fours?  Of course it is.

Now, we can't get carried away too much.  Pete happened to play during UCLA's incredible run of dominance.  To insinuate that he might have been able to win a championship is probably a stretch. But wouldn't his legend be that much greater if he had led LSU on a few tournament runs even if they ended with the Maravich Tigers being knocked out by UCLA a few times?  He could always say, "The greatest team of all time was the only thing standing between me and a championship," rather than a poorly structured NCAA Tournament.

And boy…what if he had been able to knock off UCLA just once?  Wow.

With today's rules, what could Pete's records possibly look like?

One of the most remarkable things about Pete is that he was only allowed to play for three full seasons, yet he still holds the all-time record for scoring. And he probably always will.

If a player played 30 games a year for all four years, he would need to average 30.56 points per game for his entire career in order to break Pete's scoring record.  Interestingly enough, nobody has even approached this average for a single season since 1991.

Add to that the fact that if a freshman did come in averaging 31 points a game, he would most assuredly leave college after only one or two seasons.

Let's just agree that Pistol's scoring record is safe.

But could it have been even more safe?

As you probably know, Pete played before the 3-point line had been invented.  In the 60s, long shots were "bad shots" even if you made them.  Why would anybody shoot from 25-feet when it counted the same as a layup?

Well, Pistol Pete helped to crush that "logic."

For years, the legend of Pistol Pete just grew and grew.  Players, coaches, and old fans would laud his amazing shooting ability, even quipping that he might have averaged 60 points a game had there been a three-point line.

Finally, former LSU Coach Dale Brown wanted to put such talk to rest.

He watched every single game of Pistol Pete's career, and charted every single shot he ever took.  What he found out will absolutely blow you away.

Brown discovered that with a three-point line of 19'9″ (the distance it was for over 20 years), Maravich would have averaged 13 three-pointers a game.

Let me quickly point out that the college record for three-pointers in one game is 15, held by a guy named Keith Veney in 1996.  The Pistol's average would have only been two below the all-time record.

So by adding an additional 13 points per game to Pistol's average, he's now averaging over 50 points per game for his entire college career.

We hold Wilt Chamberlain's NBA-record 50.4 points per game as an untouchable standard of scoring excellence.  Pete would have shattered that…in college games that were eight minutes shorter!

For anyone who has ever played basketball, it is easy to postulate that had there been a three-point line, than teams would have been forced to guard him more closely out there, and he would have been able to get around his opponents even more easily.

In a weird sort of way, you could also argue that the lack of a three-point line may actually have helped his scoring because of how he was defended. We will never know.

Pete

Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics called Maravich the best ball-handler in the history of basketball.

Ralph Wiley, longtime Sports Illustrated writer, once said, “It was if you had melted down all 12 Harlem Globetrotters and you filled up this skinny, 6-6 white frame with everything they had.”

David Thompson v. George Gervin

4/9/1978  Sunday

Thompson scored 73 pts against Detroit.

Gervin was napping/sleeping during that afternoon game.  His game at night.

He scored 63 to win the scoring title.  I listened on WOAI.

Growing up

• Anyone who was BORN in the 50's -60's-70's... We are the last generation who played in the street. We are the 1st who played video games & the last to record songs off the radio on a cassette tape. We walked over a mile w/ no worries on being taken...learned how to program the VCR before anyone else..played from Atari ...to Nintendo..We are the generation of Tom and Jerry/Looney Toons & Captain Kangaroo..We traveled in cars w/out seat belts or air-bags & lived without cell phones. We did not have flat screens, surround sound, iPods, Facebook, Twitter, computers & the Internet...But nevertheless we had a GREAT time ♥ Re-post if you're a 50's, 60's or 70's baby

Quote from Abe Lincoln about those that have and those that don't

“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” — Abraham Lincoln.