Basketball GOAT?

[Stretch 74]

There is a good argument for it. I stumbled across this ~10 minute video on Pistol Pete Maravich today. The guy was absolutely phenomenal, a wizard with the ball, a magician before there was Magic. I had the great pleasure of seeing him play the Sonics in Seattle way back when, maybe his rookie year. Still have two plays from that game burned into my brain!

Averaged ~44 PPG in his three years of college, and it was before the 3 point line. With the 3 point line he would have averaged 50-55. The video said that in his last year, playing with 2 bad knees on the Celtics during Larry Bird's rookie season, the Pistol shot 67% from behind the 3 point line. With all of his scoring exploits, they reminded us that this was all done back when palming and traveling violations were actually enforced.

RIP, Pete- you WERE the greatest!

I think you will enjoy the video.

 

[SaveFerris]

Since he was such a prolific scorer and ball handler I don't think he received enough credit for his passing ability.

A basketball savant without question.

 

[mikalalas]

Just think, what a 67% from 3, would do today, with the focus on 3 point shooting.

He would have averaged at least 50 points per game, and would have broken all of Jordan's, Kobe Bryant's, LeBron James, Reggie Miller's, etc, scoring, 3 point records, and would have had at least 1, 100+ point game.

And his teammates, Bigs, would score a lot easily, and would be hard to stop, because if guard him at 3 line, he would pass it to teammates, Bigs, and if double up bigs, he would make them pay.

Can you imagine players like Shaq, Pete on same team? It would have been impossible to stop.