The Pistol
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Link to video
A short feature on Pete, with his interview taped a few months before his death. I remember Pete from the Cow Palace days. He was and is (for the moment) the all-time NCAA scoring leader. He'll be by-passed this season by Antoine Davis, if Davis' team gets a NCAA Tournament bid..,Which likely won't happen. If so, Davis would fall three points short.
Davis needs an asterisk by his name, if it does happen. He plays at a school - Detroit Mercy - from a lesser conference, in an era with a three-point shot. As of this writing, he has 588 three-pointers. Davis played in an era where freshman could play college varsity ball, Pete did not. Therefore, Pete scored his points in 83 games, averaging 44.2 ppg. Davis played in 144 games, averaging 25.4 ppg.
Researchers have gone back and looked at Pete's tapes from his college career at LSU. If Pete would have played in the day of the three-point shot, he would have averaged over 57 ppg.
Pete dropped dead on a basketball court at the age of 40, after injuries shortened his NBA career, but not until the man who tried everything from Buddhism to UFOlogy found a strong Christian faith.
He had a wild and remarkable life. Not bad for a guy whose post-mortem found he played with only one cardiac artery and an enlarged heart.
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I looked at some of his highlights on the You Tube and he was crazy good.
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My brothers and I were very average at basketball but I do remember when I was about 9, my dad got us the movie "Pistol: Birth of a Legend" as well as had us attend a Pistol Pete basketball came for a year or two. Pete's work ethic and practicing the fundamentals of finger pad control, backspin, follow through, combined with his use of new "trick" moves were quite an inspiration on how to play really good ball. It's a shame he died so young, but your reference to his 44 PPG is just bananas and reminds us of how dominant he was a shooter.
