Aiming for the Pistol
Clark’s success helps bring attention back to Maravich
BATON ROUGE, La.— LSU’s dome-roofed basketball stadium, the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, is named for a supremely crafty, skilled and mesmerizing player who has been known since 1970 for scoring more career points than any player in NCAA history.
That could change very quickly.
Those who played with, followed or knew the late Maravich sound conflicted about the inevitable moment — likely Sunday afternoon — when “Pistol Pete” is supplanted by Iowa women’s basketball sensation Caitlin Clark atop the NCAA’s all-time scoring list.
“What Caitlin’s done has been amazing. She’s a fantastic player, great for the women’s game and basketball in general,” Maravich’s eldest son, Jaeson told The Associated Press this past week.
Clark’s on-court panache — she is a whirlwind and has piled up as many triple-doubles as she has highlight-reel shots — and even her appearance remind Jaeson of his father, a member of both the College Basketball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“A lanky build and dark eyes,” he said. “And very fun to watch.”
He roots for her, but Maravich also will regard her career scoring total as “totally separate” from that of his father.
Clark is in her fourth and final season, and if she scores more than 17 points at home against Ohio State, she will have surpassed Maravich’s 3,667 career points in 130 games.
In 1966, when Maravich arrived at LSU, where his father Press Maravich coached, freshmen were not permitted to play for the varsity squad because of NCAA rules. Maravich’s all-time scoring mark was set during just 83 games across three seasons from 1967 to 1970 — and during an era when there was no shot clock and no 3-point line.
Maravich averaged 44.2 points per game. He scored more than 60 in a game four times, topping out at 69 against Alabama on Feb. 7, 1970.
Former LSU coach Dale Brown noted that recordings of Maravich’s games make clear he routinely shot from beyond 20 feet. He and retired Baton Rouge-area sports writer Sam King concluded that Maravich would have averaged about 54 points per game had a 3-point line — adopted by the NCAA in 1986 — existed when he played. Maravich died in 1988 at the age of 40 after collapsing during a pickup basketball game.
“It bothers me a little bit,” Brown, who didn’t coach Maravich but knew him well, said of Clark inevitably surpassing Maravich on the scoring list. “What he did will never be equaled.”
Brown, whose college players at LSU included Shaquille O’Neal and Mahmoud AbdulRauf (then known as Chris Jackson), described Maravich as “beyond any imagination.”
“I’ve seen some great players, but I’ve never seen a better offensive player than him on any level,” Brown said. “I coached 44 years, and there’s never been anyone like him.”
Maravich often was described as a magician with the ball, whether he was shooting, dribbling or passing. Some of his college highlights can be found online. He’d switch hands while hanging in the air to get off contested shots — and make them. He’d appear to be dribbling at full speed and suddenly pull up for a jumper on the wing.
“I don’t know how he didn’t break his ankles,” said former LSU teammate Ralph Jukkola. “You’d sit there scratching your head, thinking, ‘How did he do that? I didn’t think you could do that with your body.’”
Like Clark, his passes were precise, whether he was flinging the ball the length of the court or whipping a no-look ball behind his back or between his legs.
“If he was looking straight at me, I didn’t have to worry about getting the basketball,” Jukkola said. “But he may turn, and the split-second he turns, the ball may be there.”
And he recalled running the floor with Maravich thinking this: “That poor defensive guy has no clue what’s going to happen.”
Jukkola, who was a year ahead of Maravich at LSU, remembered crowds packing arenas for junior varsity games when Maravich was a freshman — and then filing out when the varsity squad came out to warm up. After Maravich joined the varsity team, home and road games were almost always packed, and even road crowds would give Maravich standing ovations after some of his circus shots or passes.
At 6-foot-5, Maravich was relatively tall for a guard during his time. If a defender played close, he had the ball-handling skills and explosiveness to get around him, Jukkola said. If a defender backed off, Maravich could shoot over him.
During the 1996-97 basketball season, when the NBA celebrated its 50th anniversary by listing the 50 greatest players in its history, Maravich was included. His sons represented him at an event where players including Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Larry Bird and Isaiah Thomas told them that their father inspired the creativity with which they played.
Johnson told them Pete “was the original Showtime.” Bird told them Maravich handled the ball like someone performing yo-yo tricks. Thomas called Maravich the greatest showman in the NBA and most entertaining player he’d ever seen.
Maravich played in the NBA from 1970 to 1980, spending five seasons with the Atlanta Hawks at the start of his pro career but going on to play for the New Orleans/Utah Jazz and wrap up his playing days with the Boston Celtics.
Jaeson Maravich, now 44, was a talented scorer at the junior college level, topping out at 55 points in a game. His younger brother, Josh, was a reserve at LSU for three seasons.
Jaeson is generally eager to discuss his father’s legacy, and he appreciates that Clark’s exploits have given him a chance to do that again, much like last year, when Detroit Mercy men’s star Antoine Davis came within a 3-pointer of matching his father’s scoring mark, albeit in 143 games over five seasons.
Jaeson first saw Clark play during last season’s NCAA Final Four. He was visiting his mother, Jackie, who was watching on TV as Iowa upset top-seeded South Carolina — the Hawkeyes would lose to LSU in the final — and raving about Clark, who announced Thursday that she will skip her final season of eligibility and enter the WNBA draft pool.
She’s expected to be the No. 1 pick overall for the Indiana Fever in April.
“I thought I was going to watch for two minutes and it ended up being a lot longer,” he recalled.
“I get why the media is making a big deal” of Clark approaching an all-time NCAA points mark that’s stood for more than half a century, Jaeson said. “Fifty-four years is a long time.”