Father-Son Ties Remain Strong For Maravich

BESIDES BASKETBALL stardom, Pete Maravich had another, even more important goal in his life - replicating the close relationship with his sons that he enjoyed with his father.

COVINGTON, La. - Ten years ago today, the telephone rang in the Maravich household. The maid answered and gave the phone to Jackie Maravich, who heard the terrible news and began to scream.

Five-year-old Josh Maravich didn't have to wait for the information to know what had happened.

"I kind of guessed it," he said. "I don't know how I guessed."

His father, Pete Maravich, had died. What turned out to be a 40-year-long upset victory over a defective heart had come to an end.

Josh is now a freshman playing on the junior varsity at St. Paul's High in Covington. He has the deep-set eyes. He has the moppish hair that flops as he runs around.

But watch him grab a rebound during warmups and casually toss the ball behind his back to a teammate at the free-throw line. There's no way he could have inherited that move. That's the little bit of Pete Maravich that's been left for everyone.

Pete Maravich passed away on a basketball court on the grounds of a church complex, which made for about as succinct a summary of his life as possible.

Maravich was, in his words, "a basketball robot," the product of his father's carefully planned vision to develop the prototypical basketball player. The plan achieved record-breaking success but left Maravich unfulfilled. At times he looked for happiness in beer cans. At one point he even searched the skies for UFOs, thinking that the answers would come from beyond. In his later years, he turned to Christianity.

That seemed to give him an inner peace. He sounded prepared for death and, in the eulogy of his father, Press, eight months before his own death, appeared to know it was about to come. Maravich talked of sitting beside the bed of his father in the waning moments of his long bout with bone cancer and whispering his ear, "I want you to know, Dad, that I will be with you soon." If there was a consistent, tragic theme for Maravich, it was in the timing of things: accolades that came a little too late, a style of play that was ahead of its era, a life that ended all too soon.

If there was one bit of sadness above all else, it was that Maravich would not have the chance to be a father to his children, Josh and Jaeson (then 8), after the pivotal role his own father had played in his life.

Press Maravich had the master plan outlined from the time of Pete's birth, when he looked at his hands and feet and thought he would make a great basketball player.

They dreamed big, setting goals of a world championship, million-dollar contracts and the Hall of Fame.

Pete Maravich took the obsession to new levels. He dribbled the ball as he walked into town. When he got a bicycle, he dribbled as he rode into town. He dribbled on the carpet in empty movie theaters during the matinee. He dribbled outside the passenger door while his father drove the car down deserted highways.

At night he would lie in bed, shooting the ball up at the ceiling.

They practiced relentlessly, devising all types of innovative drills.

At Louisiana State, his record-setting 44.2 points a game and career total of 3,667 are even more impressive when you take into account he played in an era without the three-point shot or shot clock. And he did it all in three years, from 1967 to 1970, because freshmen could not play at the varsity level.

But he never won a championship at LSU. He went on to sign that million-dollar contract but never won a championship during his 10 years in the professional ranks in stops with the Atlanta Hawks, New Orleans-Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics.

He had his detractors and he wasn't considered a winner, but no fan ever left the arena without seeing a show.

"(Maravich) was 25 years ahead of his time," said Stu Lantz, a teammate for one year and now color commentator on Los Angeles Laker broadcasts. "The things he did then are the things people are attempting to do today. He was a master showman, one of the greatest.

"He was perceived as a hot dog at the time. The more and more that the sport is out in front of the public, the more it has become commonplace."

Maravich, his knees aching and his will to compete gone, retired in the preseason of 1980. He was with the Celtics at the time. They won the championship that season.

The two-man Maravich team did not live to see its greatest achievements together. Press Maravich died less than a month before Pete was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987. Last year, Maravich was the only member of the NBA's 50th anniversary team honored posthumously.

His sons stood in for him when the NBA honored its 50 all-time greatest players at the All-Star Game in Cleveland last year, and the look in their eyes showed the wonder and awe at standing among the NBA legends.

Maravich stood among a much less glorious gathering of basketball players 10 years ago in the gymnasium at the First Nazarene Church in Pasadena, Calif.

He was scheduled to appear on James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" radio program, so Dobson figured he might as well take advantage of the opportunity to play with a legend.

They played for about 45 minutes, then took a break for water.

They chit-chatted and Dobson asked Maravich how he felt.

"I feel great," Maravich said.

Those were his last words.

Dobson turned to walk away, then turned back just in time to see Maravich fall face-first.

Dobson thought the 40-year-old Maravich was joking at first, then he walked over and saw Maravich was experiencing a seizure.

Dobson tried to open Maravich's air passage. Maravich shuddered once, then died in his arms. Paramedics were unable to revive him.

An autopsy showed that Maravich's heart had only one coronary artery, making his athletic achievements even more remarkable.

"It had a tremendous effect on my understanding of the brevity of life," said Dobson, who moved to Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1991. "I had known this before, but it drove home the understanding that every day is a gift, that we can't take anything for granted. And that we should live our lives in such a way that we won't have regrets when that final hour comes."

Dobson had another reminder two years later on the same court; he suffered a heart attack about 20 feet from where Maravich died.

"After that heart attack, I haven't been able to play basketball," Dobson said. "I'm 61 years old. There's a point when you have to give it up."

It wasn't until the later years of Press Maravich's life that Pete was able to bring himself to apologize for quitting before he could fulfill their dream of winning a championship. Press assured him that it was all right, that they had succeeded in playing the game in a never-seen-before style.

One thing Maravich did want to replicate was the close relationship he felt with his father. After Press died, Pete took the kids to Clemson, S.C., where the family lived when Press coached at Clemson.

His kids were too young to have seen Maravich in his playing days. He didn't gather them in the living room to tell them of his exploits. But when Jaeson came home from school one day and asked, "Daddy, did you used to be Pistol Pete?" he decided to show them a highlight tape of his old moves.

The younger Josh wasn't so impressed with old footage of fancy dribbling. His fondest memory of his father's basketball exploits came one day in the upstairs court they had in the house.

"I asked him if he could dunk it," Josh said. "He went and dunked it."

When Pete was alive, he tried not to overload his kids on basketball, then felt a little guilty as he watched his underprepared son Jaeson play his first game. Jaeson played through eighth grade, then stopped.

"The pressure," St. Paul varsity Coach Monte Fontenot said. "Everybody wanting him to be like his dad. He kind of burned out."

It was a little harder for Jaeson, the first to follow in his father's footsteps.

Josh says, "I don't have any pressure on me. I love it."

He is playing on the junior varsity now, wearing the No. 44 his father wore in his first and last years in the pros. His is the game of a casual player: He has a nice shot but doesn't demand the ball and sometimes drifts during games.

"As long as I get better," Josh Maravich said. "I will. I want to improve."

Pete Maravich's instructions are only on videotape now, his encouragements in memory. But it appears that Josh, at 15, has absorbed the lessons it took so long for his father to learn.

When asked how he could best honor his father, he took a long time to think. He finally came up with the answer.

"Just keep playing."