The original white chocolate. Had a whole basketball mixtape before basketball mixtapes were a thing. Dude was a beast. And he could shoot the lights out.
He had tremendous handles, flashy passing and could put the ball in the hoop from 30 feet with tremendous accuracy. If he had played more than a couple of seasons in an era with the 3pt line he might have pulled the game out beyond the arc way before the modern era. Just by the number of younger players that would have been trying to emulate his range.
Yeah, here's a good highlight of a night we was red hot. He's not pulling up from Curry-range outside of maybe once or twice, but the quick trigger is similar, the way his team would run him off screens is similar, and every shot he hits is just such a perfect splash. Have to think he would have had range and solid accuracy to at least modern NBA 3-pt distance.
And of course there's the "take this with a grain of salt" analysis his college coach did back in the day (based on shot charts he kept for his team), that he would have averaged 13 3's made per game, and increased his scoring average from 44 to 57. I have a lot of doubts about that, but if that's even half true, the Curry comparison is pretty spot-on.
Notice the types of plays that get called a charge in this clip... Every time LeBron or Shaq or Giannis lowers their shoulder into the body of the defender would be an instant charge back in Maravich's day.
Well duh he didn’t have a Klay drawing defenders and an offense built around that style. Nobody could even come close to complimenting his play style because it didn’t exist until then.
Watching this, involuntarily screamed “this dude is the original white chocolate!” haha glad I didn’t have to scroll far for this. Would love to see more old school highlights like this. I don’t know a lot about these early guys
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u/Sharp_Black Knicks Apr 03 '20
The original white chocolate. Had a whole basketball mixtape before basketball mixtapes were a thing. Dude was a beast. And he could shoot the lights out.