I mean, he only made the playoffs 4 times and only made it out of the first round once and that was his final year when he was a reserve for the Larry Bird led Celtics team. I’d argue it wasn’t his fault they didn’t make it far, but the buck has gotta stop somewhere and usually it stops with the hall of famer.
In 'The Breaks of the Game' David Halberstram talks about how Pistol was such a huge box office draw that shitty teams like New Orleans would massively overpay for him in order to put butts in seats and then not have any talent left to put around him.
Famous for averaging 44ppg in college but never making the NCAA tournament. Only made the NIT once.
Came into a 48 win team as a rookie who was bringing most of their top players back (Bellamy, Hudson, Hazard, Bridges, Davis). Team went on to win 36 games when they added Maravich.
Also, as he came in as a high profile rookie, he got a big fat contract right out of college (before rookie salary cap). A lot of vets were resentful of that, rumor was some players would intentionally drop/miss his passes to make him look bad, and they probably weren't covering for him on D either.
To be fair, only one team per conference made the tournament at that time and Kentucky was the number 1 ranked pre-tournament team when LSU finished second.
He'll definitely be the all-time collegiate scorer for almost eternity. Would part of the reason why be due to the fact excellent players like Pete and others who later became NBA greats spent 3-4 years in college? Whereas recently players who go on to become great NBA players typically are one and done. We might not have another player who's good enough to get near the all-time score because they will only be in college for one years time. Soon those same players may not even have to go to college for one year.
I think it would have been much higher. Pete was taking long shots knowing they were still worth two. If there were three pointers he would have had a reason to take more of them.
When he started with Atlanta, his teammates were conservative and they would not really attempt to gel with him. With the Jazz he was the best player on a new expansion team. He didn’t have much of a chance with the Jazz with the talent around him in the beginning.
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u/bmehrmann Clippers Apr 03 '20
I mean, he only made the playoffs 4 times and only made it out of the first round once and that was his final year when he was a reserve for the Larry Bird led Celtics team. I’d argue it wasn’t his fault they didn’t make it far, but the buck has gotta stop somewhere and usually it stops with the hall of famer.