Basketball Legend “Pistol Pete” Maravich Shares His Life Story… Just Days Before His Death

This is Our American Stories. Pistol Pete Maravich is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in basketball history, also one of my personal hoops heroes. Maravich starred in college with the LSU Tigers while playing for his father, head coach Press Maravich, with 3,667 points, and he averaged 44.2 points per game. All of his accomplishments were achieved before the adoption of the three-point shot and the shot clock, and despite being able to play varsity as a freshman under the NCAA rules. That’s crazy. Maravich played ten years in the NBA and is considered by many to be the best ball handler of all time. Just days before his death on January 8, 1988, the 40-year-old Pistol Pete spoke to guests who gathered near the poolside of Jimmy Walker’s house, an NBA All-Star. We’d like to thank Vision Video for giving us special access to this rare bonus footage you are about to hear from their fantastic, uplifting movie, “The Pistol: The Birth of a Legend.” Here’s Pete Maravich looking back on his life just days before his death.

I grew up in Clemson, South Carolina. When I was four years old, the only thing I ever knew was basketball. By the time I was five years old, I was already playing organized basketball. My parents baded me into the game. They never forced me in. When I was seven years old, my dad came to me, and he says, ‘Pete, I don’t have any money to send you to college. You’re going to have to get a scholarship. And if you get a scholarship, they’ll pay your way. I only make $2,900 a year, and that’s just not going to pay your way by the time you get there. And if you’re good enough, Pete, you might even make it to the pro basketball. That’s where the greatest players play, and there are so few. And if you get there, you might play on a team that wins a world championship, and you’ll get a big diamond ring, Pete, so big, and it has on there, “World champions,” and you’ll be declared, as the rest of the team, one of the greatest at that particular time. Not only that, Pete, you’ll be able to make money. They’ll pay you for doing it. They’ll pay you for playing something that you enjoy doing.’ Well, from that day, I decided to commit my life totally to basketball. I was dedicated, possessed, and obsessed. I was so dedicated to it. I’ll tell you some of the things I used to do. We lived two and a half miles outside of town in Clemson, South Carolina, and I used to get the basketball, and I’d dribble in all the way. I would not accept the ride. I would dribble in with my right hand and dribble back home with my left hand, five miles a day to the gym, where I’d play eight to ten hours a day. When I finally got a bicycle when I was about 11 years old. 10, 11 years old, I learned to dribble the basketball on my bicycle all the way. And it made it a lot easier to get into town too, and I got there quicker, and I dribbled the ball by riding the bicycle. It got so bizarre that my dad came to me one day, and he says, ‘Pete, come on, get your basketball on us. Go in the car.’ ‘So where are we going?’ He says, ‘I’ll tell you when we get there.’ He went over it, and he went on this specific highway, and there weren’t many cars there, and he said, ‘Now look, I want you to get in the back. See, stick yourself out that back window there, and you start dribbling the ball. I’m gonna drive at various speeds. I want to see if you can really control this.’ And so I did that, and he’d go five, ten, fifteen miles an hour, and twenty miles an hour. And of course, if you realize when you’re trying to drive a basketball out of a car or on a bicycle, you got to throw away out in front because he’s going, and it’s coming back. It really comes back quick, along with a lot of rocks. And to see the faces on the people that just happened to be driving by was something in itself. It really was. I used to take the basketball to bed with me. I slept with a basketball till I was about 13 years old. I would get in bed and I’d lay in the bed for one hour before I ever went to sleep, and I would repeat three things: fingertip control, backspin, follow-through; fingertip control, backspin, follow-through, as I released it laying down. I was completely possessed by the game. I used to go around my house blindfolded, dribbling the ball because I knew where everything was. Of course, to the dismay of my mother, sometimes I didn’t. And I knew how to dribble the ball very fast. Out of the house. I used to get the basketball, and I would dribble out in thunderstorms, lightning, everything else; you couldn’t even see. I used to sneak out of my back window. I’d go to this little spot where there was a mudhole. It was kind of a real hard mud, and I’d start dribbling the balls; mud and everything splashed up on me, and I was literally scared to death because of the thunder and lightning. Because I felt like if I could dribble in that mud and that water and everything else, control it, I could certainly do it on a court when some of it was guarding me. See. I was so committed to the game of basketball. In fact, from the time I was five years old, I was 17 years old. I played over 20,000 hours of basketball. And in the March Reader’s Digest, they had a story in there about television and how it affects young people’s minds, or any person. It wasn’t for television, it was just how it affects one’s mind. And it said that the average person by the time he’s 20 years old sees 20,000 hours of television. And I kind of paralleled that with my life: 20,000 hours of people watching television. I’ve spent 20,000 hours of hard sweat playing the game of basketball. When I was 12 years old, was the first time I ever played in a regular game for junior varsity. I made the junior varsity when I was 12, and when I was 13, I started on my high school team and played five years of high school basketball. I was four feet nine and a half, and at that time, at 12, a reporter came up to me after the game, and I used to shoot the basketball from down here because I was too weak to shoot it from up here, and so I used to take the ball and take it and release it like this. And this reporter saw me, and he says, ‘What, looks like this guy is drawing a pistol,’ and he wrote that up, and that name stuck. Ever since. I just threw that in. I know that doesn’t interest you at all, but I just wanted to say that. But he asked me after the game. He came up and interviewed me. That was my first interview I ever had, and I wish that had been my last. But he said, ‘What are you going to do when you grow up, Pistol Pete?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna play pro basketball. I’m gonna be on a team that wins a world championship to get a diamond ring and make a million dollars.’ And he literally fell off his chair with laughter, and I said, ‘What are you laughing about?’ He said, ‘A million dollars!’ ‘They don’t make that kind of money.’ This was in the ’50s, and he was right. But I just felt like at some point in my life I would. My early church life was absolutely probably zero. I was not raised in a Christian home. I was raised in a church home. I was raised with telling Pete, ‘You got to go to church.’ ‘It’s good to go to church.’ ‘You gotta, you need church.’ But when I got into church, I didn’t ever hear anything. I never heard who Jesus Christ was when I was young because I didn’t want to hear, see. I would sit in there and literally count ticks in my head: one, two, three, up to a minute, and that would go for an hour until I got out of there. I felt that if I was in this church for an hour, or somebody in Philadelphia, L.A., Boston, or New York was playing basketball, and when it came down to getting that scholarship, I would not get it. See, and I progressed on into my teenage years. When I was 14 years old, was the first time I ever had my first taste of alcohol. I had a beer at 14 years of age on the steps of the Methodist Church in Clemson, South Carolina, and I liked it. I really did like it. I liked it a lot. If there’s something I can tell you young people here tonight, it’s this: Don’t ever take that first drink, and don’t ever take that first drug, because it’ll never be your last, and it’ll lead to destruction. Because that’s literally what almost happened in my own life. Ninety-eight percent of all people in jails today started with that first drink. Eighty-five percent of over 500,000 people in correctional institutions today committed their crimes while under the influence of a mind-altering substance. Drugs or alcohol. And all of a sudden, this tremendous commitment that I had, and everything else, I kind of went down the drain. I didn’t have it anymore. And I’d played so much up until that time when I was 14, 15, going to 16, 17, but all of a sudden, I had time on the weekends to do other things. I saw the opposite sex for the first time in life. You see, I was completely obsessed with basketball. I didn’t do whatever other people did. My god was basketball. Their god was sex, alcohol, and whatever else. But I didn’t see any of that until I was 14, and then my eyes opened up, and I enjoyed it, and I started getting into it. And then that toehold became a foothold, and the foothold became a stronghold, and that stronghold became an entire possession. I’m not scared to tell you here. I was an alcoholic. I can’t get people to write that up because I’ve never been to a clinic or anything. And all my friends drank just like I did, and they were alcoholics too. I enjoyed it a great deal because there’s a great pleasure and sin. There’s a lot of pleasure in it because if there wasn’t, nobody would do it. When I was 18 years old, I was asked to go out to Arrowhead in San Bernardino, California, to a Campus Crusade for Christ. They asked me to come out there and do what you just saw here, what was called ‘showtime.’ They said, ‘Would you come out here and do your clinic, Pete?’ I said, ‘Well, sure, that’d be great.’ ‘I’ll bring one of my friends, and we’ll just come out there California.’ ‘I’ve never been there.’ ‘It’ll be fun.’ So we got in the car, and I was just reaching my 18th birthday, literally right before what was to be called the Pistol Pete Era in Southeastern Conference basketball.

And you’re listening to Pistol Pete Maravich reflecting on his own life, his days before his tragic death — and a premature death at that. When we come back, more of his remarkable talk by Pistol Pete. Here are Our American Stories, and we’re back with Our American Stories and we’ll continue with Pistol Pete Maravich, one of the old-time greatest players and an idol of mine. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent watching him on television the rare times he would come on, and then trying to copy every single thing he did. Let’s go back to Pistol Pete.

And so I drove out there, and we partied all the way out, and we had fun, and we chased girls, and we just were in every bar we could find and everything else. Took us three or four days to get out there. And as I drove up on this campus, I noticed that there were people sitting around praying and holding hands under trees and things of this nature. And I became very embarrassed. I didn’t want any part of that, and I told my friend, I said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get out of here!’ ‘I’m gonna do this clinic and get out of here. These people are nuts! I mean, what are they smoking?’ And put that beer down. ‘We don’t want to, you know, we don’t want to see us with this, with this beer.’ So I checked into this place, and it was for three days, and I asked him, ‘When am I supposed to do my clinic?’ And they said, ‘Well, Pete, we’re not sure yet, but if you just bear with us, we’re gonna have you over here with this group.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘What am I gonna do?’ They said, ‘Well, nothing, there’s nothing to do.’ ‘We’ll just put you here, would you be all right?’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ So I stayed with this group, and my friend went with another group, and for three days I finally heard who Jesus Christ was. I wasn’t concerned about that. To me, it was just a story. It was a story. It was nice; that’s nice. But after the end of three days there, there was no impact on my life. We went out to the beach. Bill Battle, who was an All-American football player and with a bicep as large as my thigh, said, ‘We’re going out to the beach. I’m taking this group with me. We’re going to witness for Christ.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean, witness? What is this? Bill? What do you mean, witness? What were you talking about?’ He says, ‘Just come along, Pete. We just want to… we just want to show what we do here.’ So I went along with him, and we went out on the beaches out there, in California beaches, and he goes up to the worst-looking group. This is back during the ’60s. This is the most revolutionary time, the rebellious time in our history. Probably, it’s led to so much of the rebellion today. And yet he went up to the worst-looking group. Guy had tattoos, all of his own hair down here, was smoking a joint, drinking. There were about four or five of them. They were mean-looking, ugly; they didn’t smell very good, everything. And I stayed way in the background. But you know, the Lord has a way to use people. You see, he went up to this guy who was the meanest-looking guy, and right behind his head, he says, ‘You know something, I would really like to share something with you folks.’ And this guy was literally gonna turn around and punch him. I know, because he turned around. He said, ‘Look, go right ahead,’ because that advice was right in his face. Now, if anything impressed me, it was that. That did impress me. I said, ‘Wow, how God gets people’s attention, it’s amazing!’ So they witnessed, and I don’t remember. I think some of them left right away. They said, ‘Oh, you Jesus freaks and all this kind of stuff,’ and I just kind of turned my head. I don’t want to know part of it. At the end of three days, there were a thousand kids, and I was part of it. And Bill Bright, who’s founder of Campus Crusade, gave a message much like Billy Graham, and had an invitation for people to come receive Christ. Then he had them come publicly and receive Him. Lo and behold. My friend was sitting next to me. He got up. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He says, ‘Pete, I don’t know what to tell you.’ ‘I really don’t know what to tell you.’ ‘I’ve just received Christ — end of my life.’ I said, ‘Kenny, hey, man, was it something you ate or something?’ And I grabbed him by the arm. I literally tried to steal away his salvation. I said, ‘Don’t go up there!’ ‘It’s embarrassing!’ Then I remember saying that, and he pulled away, and he went up there. He says, ‘You don’t understand.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ And he walked up there, and I remember sitting there and saying, ‘Well, you’re not gonna get me, God. I’m gonna play Pro Basketball World championship team and make a million dollars.’ ‘Boy, that’s what I want in life.’ But you know, as I’ve reflected over that time, how many times I’ve cried and wished that I’d received Christ in my life! Then you know why: because God had sent me there for a purpose, not to do a clinic. I never did one. Nobody even asked me. But he put me there for one reason. ‘Pete, come home now! Come home now, because you’re about to embark on a tremendous amount of personal tragedy and destruction in your life.’ And it doesn’t have to be that way, but you can choose that way, and you don’t have to. And I went on into college, and I did a lot of things in college. I’ve set something like 50 basketball records from high school, college, and pro. The amount of trophies and awards and plaques that I have, the amount of honorary mayorships and keys to the cities that I have — except the time I go to those cities and try to get the keys, they don’t ever give them to me. It could literally, really — I could go around this entire pool area now. I have a trophy from 1972 in a box. It’s never been opened: 6 feet 5 inches and 6 feet 5 and one-quarter inch tall, the exact height of me. I’ve never seen it. I’ve never opened the box. But they’re all stored away. They don’t really do anything for me. But I’ve had all those trophies, awards; I’ve had popularity, I’ve had fame. I had a tremendous amount of fame back in the ’60s, a tremendous amount of popularity everywhere when we played before over a million people in college in three years, and that’s pretty good. And I had all this adulation, and people wrote me. I got thousands of letters a week from fans. ‘We idolize you, Pete Maravich! You’re my idol! You’re this! You’re that!’ And I wasn’t a role model at all, not at all. I wasn’t a role model for young people at all. None. Zero. And then after my college, I was All-American, and I was the leading scorer — I’m the leading scorer of all time in college basketball. It’ll be broken someday, but I’m the leading scorer. I averaged over 44 points a game for a three-year period. I just hold just all kinds of records. My high school records are still held. I still hold the record for the All-Star game. I scored 47 points in the East-West High School All-Star Game back in 1965. That’s still there. It hasn’t been broken, and some great players have come through there. And then I went into pros, you see. And I had a lot of fun in college, a lot of fun — too much fun. In fact, I was in nine accidents in college and walked away from every one of them. Not only that. One time I was coming home from putting on a clinic in Pennsylvania, and I drove 700 miles, and I stopped for the night. It was a halfway point. I went down to a local pub, a local little bar, sat in there and had about two beers, and a young lady came over to me. I said, ‘How are you?’