After almost six years in storage, LSU reveals Pete Maravich's statue

“Pistol Pete” Maravich attempted an astounding 3,166 field goals during his 83-game LSU varsity basketball career from 1967 to 1970.

Sculptor Brian Hanlon, trying to decide on the design for the statue of college basketball’s all-time leading scorer, naturally thought he would sculpt the Pistol shooting a shot.

But before doing so, he asked Maravich’s sons Jaeson and Josh for their input.

“My dad was THE show,” the Maravich sons replied. “You have to sculpt him passing the ball behind his back.”

And so, when the late Maravich’s wife Jackie as well as Jaeson and Josh pulled off the sheet at a long-awaited statue reveal Monday evening in front of the LSU basketball practice facility, there was the Pistol in familiar full-fast break mode throwing a right-handed behind-the-back pass while staring straight ahead.

Former Maravich Tigers’ teammate Rich Hickman thought Hanlon’s sculpture captured the essence of the Pistol perfectly.

“If you were running on a fastbreak with him,” said Hickman, who was one of Maravich’s backcourt crew for four seasons starting on the freshman team in 1966-67, “you were like `OK, where’s it going to come from?’ It wasn’t going to be a straightforward two-handed bounce pass.

“Is it going to be between-the-legs, behind-the-back? Is it going to be thrown with a spin that starts here and ends up over there?”

Indeed, Maravich is widely regarded as the most creative passer and ball handler in college hoops history who was far ahead of his time. But as his wife noted, her husband who had an undetected heart defect and died of a heart attack playing a pickup game at age 40 in January 1988, believed basketball should be entertaining.

“Over Pete’s lifetime, many have described him as an entertainer, artist, showman, basketball assassin, wizard, genius, one of a kind,” Jackie Maravich McLachlan said at an invitation-only ceremony on LSU’s practice floor prior to the statue unveiling. “Whatever the adjective, they all represented the joy and excitement that Pete provided for the game of basketball.

“Every time a family member meets someone, and they find out Pete was a relative, they immediately smile and have a story about a memory of one of his many performances and the thrill of seeing him perform his magic.

“Pete and his dad Press (who coached Pete at LSU) fulfilled their dream of wanting to make basketball exciting, original and an entertaining competition. Seeing fans smile, cheer and shout ‘Showtime’ inspired Pete to be the court magician and entertain everyone.

“He could truly manipulate the ball to do anything he wanted. His unassuming look, tall and skinny with floppy hair and socks gliding up the court only made him more intriguing to watch.”

Fifty-two years after his final varsity season in 1969-70 when he was the unanimous national Player of the Year and a first-team All-America and SEC Player of the Year each for the third straight season, Maravich still holds 17 NCAA records, 16 SEC records and 20 LSU records. His most notable mark, one likely never to be broken, is his career scoring average of 44.2 points per game.

Former LSU basketball coach Dale Brown, who in 1972-73 succeeded Press Maravich as head coach after Maravich was fired, also spoke at Monday’s pre-statue reveal ceremony.

He noted the Pistol's scoring achievements, such as his SEC and school record 69 points at Alabama in 1970, were set without the benefit of a shot clock or a three-point shot which are used in today’s game.

“Pete tormented me one time,” Brown said with a smile. “One season, we lost at Alabama 70-67. I get back to the hotel after the game, pick up the box score and realize, `Damn, Pete Maravich scored 69 at Alabama. I’ve got a team with two (future) NBA players, and we only scored 67'.”

While LSU was just 49-35 in Maravich’s three varsity seasons (NCAA rules back then deemed freshmen ineligible to play on the varsity), the Tigers scored fewer than 70 points just four times during his career.

Teammates, such as Ralph Jukkola, who was a starting forward on Maravich’s first two varsity teams, learned to accept that Maravich was going to take most of the shots and adjusted their games accordingly.

“I used to say I made a living off rebounds,” said Jukkola, who attended Monday's ceremonies. “I'd joke and say if he (Maravich) missed a shot and I rebounded it, threw it back to him, he missed again and I rebounded it again, then I shot it.

“He created more shots than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

Maravich became the sixth former LSU athlete or coach to be honored with a statue.

He joined former Tigers’ women’s basketball coach Sue Gunter (February 2008), two-time consensus men’s basketball All-Americans Shaquille O’Neal (September 2011) and Bob Pettit (February 2016), 1959 Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon (September 2018) and five-time national college baseball Coach of the Year Skip Bertman (September 2019) who guided the Tigers to five national championships.

LSU officials announced this past April former Tigers' women's basketball star and two-time national Player of the Year Seimone Augustus will be the next athlete to be honored with a statue.

The unveiling of Maravich’s statue completed the three Tigers with statues (along with O’Neal and Pettit) who were named to the NBA’s 75th anniversary team this past season. Maravich (a four-time all-star who averaged 24.2 points in 10 NBA seasons with the Atlanta Hawks, the New Orleans/Utah jazz and the Boston Celtics), Pettit and O’Neal are already in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

There was a sigh of relief from statue sculptor Hanlon and the Maravich family when Maravich’s statue was revealed. It had been in storage for almost six years after the LSU Board of Supervisors finally greenlighted the creation of the statue.

Even after the approval, there still was bickering among Board members who believed Maravich didn’t deserve a statue because he never earned a college degree.

But as Brown said when he told dissenting state legislators and politicians who didn’t want to re-name the Assembly Center in Maravich’s honor shortly after his death – “Pete Maravich has done more for LSU basketball. . .just the publicity," he recalled – Maravich’s statue was finally made public even though there’s a consensus his statue should be in front of the building named for him.

“They (presumably LSU officials) said they’re going to move it,” Josh Maravich said. “When we get to that point, we’ll start talking about it. After the past six years of going on and off and on and off, this is good enough today.”