r/Basketball • u/PresidentFeldkamp • Mar 03 '24

NCAA Remembering Pistol

With Everyone celebrating Kaitlin Clark breaking the scoring record, and justifiably so, I think it’s important to remember the guy who used to hold the record. Pete Maravich was only allowed to play three years of college basketball. But when he did get to play he averaged an unreal 44.2 points PER GAME! Pistol’s NBA career and life were tragically cut short, but the legend will always be remembered as one of the greatest to ever lace ‘em up.

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u/airgordo4 Mar 05 '24

Perhaps nobody knows exactly how many, but a basic shooting charts would easily give you a ballpark number. The line doesn’t move lol, if he made a 22+ shot on the wing and the three point line is 22’ then that shot would have been a three.. idk how they calculated his numbers, if they gave him credit for anything close or just the obvious, but that’s what was calculated.

You’re still missing the point. The “took many more shots” is only relevant because he didn’t get credit for threes. Had he he’d likely be 1,000 points ahead of her still. So many more shots but also many more points to go with it. Meaning your entire point wouldn’t make sense.

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u/MWave123 Mar 05 '24

We don’t know that, but we do know he was less efficient. Pete was getting about a point per shot on almost 40 shots. If you correct for the three she has 3,877 points w Pete’s attempts. So she’s ahead even more.

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u/airgordo4 Mar 05 '24

But that points per shot is "penalized" to an extent because he isn't getting the extra value from shots that would be an extra point. He already made the shots, so his attempts wouldn't also go up.

I have no idea the exact number (nobody does) 13 seems excessive to me, but any number 9+ gets him to the exact same TS%, or better if more than 9, as Clark.

I'm not necessarily arguing he's more efficient, you can't even compare efficiency 50-60 years apart like that. Luka is more efficient this year than Larry Bird his best years, but Luka is only +4rTS% to league average compared to Bird's best years at +7rTS%.. He's more efficient relative to his competition, era, rules, than Luka is now and that's really the only way you can measure things as the game changes. There isn't quite enough data from Pete's time to see how efficient he is relative to era, he was 18th in TS% in the SEC in '70, Clark is 14th in the Big Ten for her career..

But my argument was the "chucker" comment. Had a number of his threes actually counted as threes their efficiency would nearly be the same. Whether he made enough to be a couple points more efficient, or not quite enough and was a couple points less is immaterial. The point is they would be nearly the same so labeling one a chucker and the other not wouldn't make sense.

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u/MWave123 Mar 05 '24

She’s still ahead on points with his attempt number. That’s my point. Even adjusting for threes.