Book Review: "Pistol"

Review: Published: Mar 04, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Mar 04, 2007 02:22 AM

How 'Pistol Pete' became Peter

Tim Stevens, Staff Writer

The week before he died of a sudden heart attack in 1988, the basketball legend "Pistol Pete" Maravich told me he wanted to move back to Raleigh.

In town to have his basketball jersey retired at Broughton High, Maravich said he spent many of the happiest days here while his father, Press Maravich, was the head basketball coach at N.C. State. That was before his personal demon -- the one who told this magnificent star he was never quite good enough -- began tormenting him as he rose to fame in college and the NBA. Looking back, Maravich said his days as "Pistol Pete" seemed like a lifetime ago. Peter was how he introduced himself now. "I like Peter," he said. "It is a good biblical name."

He also liked Peter Maravich, the man he had grown to be.

In 1982, after years of contemplating suicide (his mother had killed herself while he was in the NBA), Maravich desperately called out to God to save him. Maravich believed God answered audibly, "Be strong and lift thine own heart."

Maravich embraced Christianity with the same fervor that he had shown to basketball. He became an evangelist; he wrote his autobiography; a movie was planned and he had developed a series of basketball videos. All of it revolved around his faith.

When he made his last visit to Raleigh, he looked emaciated with his eyes sunk deep in their sockets and his skin had a pallor, but he smiled readily and he said he was content for the first time in memory.

Sportswriter Mark Kriegel maps that road to contentment in "Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich," a remarkable book that is the best researched biography yet of this revolutionary basketball player.

"Pistol" actually is two biographies. You cannot write about Maravich without focusing on his father, Press -- a fact the son acknowledged when he titled his autobiography, "Heir to a Dream." The second of Press' two sons, Pete Maravich was destined to pursue his father's dreams of transforming basketball.

The two, father and son, pursued those dreams for almost all of Maravich's life. It was in Raleigh that Maravich's last hope of avoiding the pain that plagued most of his adult life disappeared. As Kriegel notes, Pete wanted to play college basketball at West Virginia. Press had taken the head coaching job at LSU with the clear understanding that his son was coming, too. Press' threat that Pete could never visit his home again if he went to West Virginia was Pete's denouement. The die was cast. Pete's fate sealed.



At LSU he teamed with inferior players. Kriegel reports the nation's best prospects, including future UNC-Chapel Hill all-America Charlie Scott, were turned off by Press' appeals "to come play with my son."

Pistol Pete had one of the most storied college careers of all time. He holds the NCAA career record for most points (3,667 points, 44.2 points per game for a three-year varsity career) in 83 games. He also shot an NCAA record 3,116 times and made a record 1,387 shots. He scored 50 or more points 28 times and was selected as one of the top 50 NBA players of all time.

But the perception developed that the show was more important than the outcome of the game. If not to Pete, then to others. When it came time to sign his professional contract, he went to the NBA's Atlanta Hawks, who dismantled a championship-caliber team to showcase the amazing Maravich. In an era before ESPN's highlights, the Hawks chose a virtual highlight film.

He fulfilled his father's dream by changing the way basketball was played and was enjoyed, but Pistol might not have liked all the changes. He was at Campbell University's famed basketball camp in Buies Creek once when he wrapped up a 35-minute demonstration of passing and dribbling drills with a dunk. Hundreds of children roared approval. "I show them how to play basketball and all they care about is a dunk," Maravich grumbled to me.

He was a five-time NBA All-Star, scored 15,948 professional points and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. But the success came at a great personal cost, leading to alcohol abuse and various attempts to find contentment in vegetarianism, Hinduism, extraterrestrialism and survivalism. None of the records or the various "isms" brought him peace.




Maravich never played on a championship team -- not at Broughton, not at LSU, not in the NBA.

But on Dec. 28, 1987, at Broughton's Holliday Gymnasium, Peter Maravich had returned home. He waved to the crowd, held a jersey that is still in the Broughton trophy case, thanked the school for remembering and smiled.

A week later, on Jan. 5, 1988, Maravich was playing in a pickup basketball game with Dr. James Dobson, an internationally known Christian counselor.

During a break, he was asked how he felt. The last words he spoke before collapsing to the floor as his heart ruptured were, "I feel great."

(Tim Stevens covers high school sports for The News & Observer.)