because he didn’t like playing defense so I knew I was going to get my points, even though he would always score more than me…. Pistol was an individual player, he was out there to put on a show and that’s what he did.(Personal Interview)I agree with Mike Flynn, because this quote comes from a player that has played against him, so he knows what type of player Pistol was. Pistol was a great player, even though he was an individual player, because no one could stop him.Pistols’ first encounter with basketball was at the age of seven, where he practiced shooting with his father. As a kid, Maravich was known to hustle bets from his fellow classmates by challenging them to predict how long he could spin the basketball on his finger. Despite criticism that he was too greedy, Maravich shot fifty times and scored 48 points in his first varsity game, which led to a successful high school career. Maravich not only made his high school varsity team while in the eighth grade, but seemed to enjoy great success as a high school basketball player, even though he played for five different coaches in five years. At Needham-Broughton High School in North Carolina, he captured the single season scoring record with 735 points, the best per-game average with 32 points, and, as a senior, scored more points than any other player by scoring 47 in the North Carolina High School All-Star Game. (The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives) For Maravich, as a high school player, to play against all-stars and score 47 points, is amazing. High school is just the beginning of a great career for what this phenomenon will eventually accomplish. In 1966 Maravich enrolled at LSU, where his father just accepted a job as head basketball coach. NCAA rules, at the time, prohibited first-year students from playing at the varsity level so Maravich played for LSU’s freshman team during the 1966-67 and ave...
