Wilt always had trouble against Bill, who was an incredible defender, and the only guy that had a clue as to slowing Wilt down.
As for pure basketball talent, it's hard not to make an argument for Pistol Pete Maravich as one of the all time greats..
Wilt always had trouble against Bill, who was an incredible defender, and the only guy that had a clue as to slowing Wilt down.
As for pure basketball talent, it's hard not to make an argument for Pistol Pete Maravich as one of the all time greats..
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Fact is, Russell gave Wilt fits, but, I never said he was the better player, he wasn't. Nobody was better at the center than Wilt. But he made Wilt work for everything, no one else did. Chamberlain was the most dominant big man ever.
Sage, I don't doubt your stats based conclusion.
Pete was a special guy though, especially as a college player.
I can still remember watching an LSU-Kentucky game in the late 1960's, not many games broadcast in those days so it was special, where Pete went off for a huge number of points. Great fun.
Parenthetically, Dan Issel goes to my church in suburban Denver. It's a big church and I don't really know him but I asked him if he remembered that game and he did. Even more parenthetically, Dan Issel is a pretty cool guy. I'd love to have a beer with him and hear his Kentucky and Adolph Rupp stories.
If you go to the stats site for Maravich and scroll wa-a-a-a-y down to the bottom, it shows "Similarity Profiles" -- players with comparable careers in "win shares" -- not just level but also shape. List includes Adams, Norm Van Lier, Latrell Sprewell, Ty Lawson, Brad Davis, Tom Gola and Jerry Stone.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Yeah, I'm familiar with the Basketball Reference similarity scores and they are often pretty darn flawed. Comparing Maravich (a shooter/scorer who averaged 24+ ppg in his career) to Ty Lawson (a PG who averaged 12.7ppg in his career and never had a season where he scored even 18 ppg) is just really inaccurate. I'm not sure what metrics Basketball Ref is using, but those comparisons make no sense.
Pistol Pete was a 5 time all-star and made the All-NBA first team twice (with 2 more 2nd team All-NBA awards). Lawson and Adams have 1 all-star game combined (Adams did it one year in Denver) and never came close to sniffing an All-NBA team.
You can certainly allege that Pistol Pete was not one of the top 100 players in league history (though I see some solid arguments against that notion), but saying he is little more than Ty Lawson and Michael Adams really hurts your credibility as a knowledgeable basketball fan.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Also, consider that he's the all-time leading scorer in division 1 basketball history (3,667 points in just 83 games, 44.2 points per game), despite not playing his freshman year (NCAA rules), not having a 3 point line, and not having a shot clock.
The guy was clearly a beast. He was forced to retire due to injuries just 11 years into his NBA career, but he's got a rock solid case for top 100 all-time.
[He says, as he pulls the arrow out of his heart:] I put the Similarity Scores in as a joke -- because it listed Ty Lawson, Michael Adams (whom I generally admired), and Latrell Sprewell (Coach Carlesimo says "Hi") as comparables to Pete.
As "one of the greatest of all time," I think Pistol Pete is a joke. His All-NBA plaudits are impressive, but his career was relatively short, and his teams never won anything. If he had conquered his inner demons, it might have been different. He passed away at age 40 with a heart damaged by his lifestyle.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Huh? I'm no Pistol Pete expert, but wasn't it because he was born with a rare heart defect? I don't think it was lifestyle related.
Here's the relevant line from his wikipedia page:
An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a rare congenital defect; he had been born with a missing left coronary artery, a vessel that supplies blood to the muscle fibers of the heart. His right coronary artery was grossly enlarged and had been compensating for the defect.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
That's even different than what I recall from when he died and details about his death were released, having heard that his left main coronary artery had an anomalous origin from his right coronary artery instead of from his aorta. He had sudden cardiac death while playing in/resting during a pick-up game around age 40. With either condition, it's still amazing he was able to compete as such an elite level of play.
[redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.
There is an apocryphal story that the rule that the shooter has to stay behind the free throw line originated because Wilt, with his length and incredibly jumping skill, was able to essentially turn a free throw into a finger-roll layup. I don't doubt that Wilt could do that, but I don't know whether that's why they changed the rule.
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
Yes, playing pick up games at Focus on the Family with their staff and Dr. James Dobson. As I recall, and this may not be accurate, his heart problems were diagnosed after his career was over, and people were astounded he could play at the level he did with that defect. I'm not really sure whether it was the same issue the caused his death or not.
It was a poignant and sad day.
Maravich in college was other-worldly.
I think one year he average over 40 a game, and that was before the 3-point line. His dribbling and passing skills were way ahead of his time. Put me down as a HUGE Maravich fan (but also remember that I am a college basketball junkie and only occasional NBA watcher).
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
Probably safe to say that any comparisons of Maravich to the very greatest of all-time - Wilt, Kareem, MJ, etc. - can be dismissed as a "joke." And because of his college scoring exploits, such comparisons are occasionally made.
But saying he is not even near the top 100 is quite another thing. That's a group far from Lebron, Russell, and Magic, and much closer to, let's say, Reggie Miller, Gail Goodrich, Joe Dumars, or Shareef Abdur-Rahim, to pick some names more or less at random. In the context of era, Maravich is certainly in the conversation for top 100, perhaps easily within that group.