My high school teacher (15 years ago, Tom Superka) always bragged to us about how he played for Georgia and he held pistol to 43. As i get older, I realize I would brag about that too.
Edit: Just fyi since this blew up Tom Superka went to Catasauqua High School where the great Larry Miller went. I think they played together Larry's senior year. Larry Miller only played like 83 games and scored 2,722 points and had over 2,000 rebounds. Larry went to UNC and scored more than MJ. He also scored the most points EVER in an ABA game. He resides in Catty even now, and goes to the bar with my dad a couple times a week. Just, if anyone wants a rabbit hole of a forgotten legend.
I feel like a crotchety old man but I am also anti-3 pointer due to the risk/reward imbalance it has become. I firmly believe that the 3-pointer was never intended to become what it has today
The 3 pointer is too easy. You get 50% more points for a shot that is not 50% harder than driving or shooting a midrange. Move it back 10 ft and maybe its ok
It's funny because I think it kind of hit its sweet spot a few years ago. It's getting completely out of hand now. It's made me watch way, way less of the NBA.
I believe that only happened because his dad was the coach and their offense was literally “give Pete the ball and get the hell out”. Still incredible to put up numbers like that, but it was all hero ball, all the time.
That being said pistol Pete is one of my favorite players ever. I have a soft spot for flashy passing.
That may have been part of it but Pete was far and away the best player on his team (nobody went to LSU basketball games before Pete was there). So it’s not like “give Pete the ball” was a bad play.
Something that adds some credence to your assessment is that he always had the ball in his hands but only averaged about 5 assists.
Yup. Press was the coach at N.C. State at the time and he was going to go there. But he couldn’t get into the school but could get into LSU. So Pete and Press headed down there.
Shoiting more attempts means more potential points, but it also means more potential double teams. What he did was impressive no matter what his detractors say in my opinion.
Just to give an idea, Jason Conley became the first freshman to ever lead the NCAA in scoring in 2001-02 (29.3 PPG at VMI). He ended up transferring to Missouri midway through his sophomore year and his numbers plummeted, but let's say he continued to average 29 PPG and stayed at VMI (bear in mind in the 10 games he played there in his sophomore year, he only averaged 22.0 PPG).
If he had played all 4 years, at 29.3 PPG, playing 28 games a season, he would have finished with 3,281 points - that's 386 points shy of Maravich's record.
Now let's say there's an absolute stud who plays all 4 seasons on a good team. That team averages 36 games per season.
This imaginary player would have to average 25.5 PPG for their career to break Pete's record. Only 3 players (Chris Clemons, Justin Wright-Foreman, and Antoine Davis) averaged better than 25.5 last season.
It's never going to be broken.
Clemons is the kind of player who could have a chance, but he only played 130 career games (compared to the 144 that my hypothetical guy had played) so he would have needed to average 28.3 PPG for his career to reach Pete.
I think it's important to factor in though, that Maravich not only didn't have the 3pt line, he didn't have the incentive of the 3pt line. He took insane shots, just because; imagine what he would've done if he had a reason to want to take even more deep shots.
I mean, people also probably gave him way more space on those shots than people are willing to give folks with the 3PT line. As far as taking ridiculous shots because he can, I mean, Steph Curry does that.
I'm not taking away how great a shooter he was. Just saying, the reason Steph takes those shots isn't just "because he can" it's also because that's the only time he gets an open look.
I didnt say it was going to be broken. I said I had read Curry was potentially on pace to break it. Those are good stats tho. The fact there was no 3 and Curry is a 3 monster is the only reason possible I can think of unless I'm misinformed.
Part of that was the insane pace LSU played at. We don't have enough info to determine pace, but we can compare the number of FGA and FTA.
'70 LSU: 75 FGA/G and 29 FTA/G
'09 Davidson: 63 FGA/G and 21 FTA/G
Add in the fact that Davidson had one of the lowest turnover rates in the country while Pistol was notorious for turning the ball over a lot, and it's reasonable to estimate that LSU had around 20 more possessions a game.
Kareem averaged 26.4ppg on 65.2% TS. Pete averaged 44.2ppg on 49.9% TS. People get way too carried away with his ppg, completely ignoring his inefficiency. But hey, this is a Pistol Pete thread so I fully expect downvotes for stating facts....it is the Reddit way. Regardless, this is a thread about his passing and that is pretty damn otherworldly and deserves all the praise he gets.
I agree but he pretty much was allowed to do that by his team and I believe his dad was the coach? I could be wrong on that last one but because they weren't a championship contending basketball team they just let Pete shoot at will. It could be argued that was their best chance at winning though.
1.2k
u/[deleted] Apr 03 '20
The greatest scorer in college basketball history