A Few Thoughts on the Death of Pete Maravich


Not so long ago, I was "practicing" basketball with my oldest daughter, a junior in high school. Besides being an excellent athlete she is a very creative girl and so we ended up doing some "razzle-dazzle" stuff like between-the-leg dribbles and behind the back passes. (Actually, I had come to think that that sort of thing was de rigeur nowadays); but the next week she came home and told me that her coach told her that if she did any more of that "hotdog" stuff she was off the team.

What pain is wrought by the poisoned arrows of ignorance.... so many heroes slain, so many dreams destroyed!

Obviously, Pete Maravich was one of my heroes even though he was five years younger than I. He was one of those rare individuals who carried the game of basketball into that realm of art with their uninhibited delight in playing for the sake of playing. He refused to be strangled by conventions and dogma. He was truly a pioneer. We all admire the Bob Couseys and Jerry Wests, the clean-cut, straight shooters, the stalwarts of the game; but the Pete Maraviches and Dr. J's let us soar with new goals, new possibilities and new freedoms.

As non-conformity is the precondition for all art I loved Pete Maravich for illustrating that non-conformity is essential to sports in America as well as it is to art. The only thing more rigid and conformist than the highly trained athlete is the soldier. They both require discipline, conditioning, respect for order and leadership. While there are people out there who admire the stanch, shorthaired, unquestioning loyalty of Oliver North, we are lucky to live in a society which celebrates the expression of those precious, free, high-soaring, longhaired, irrepressible spirits like Pete Maravich. I am going to miss him.