The irrepressible Press Maravich was on a mission. He needed to keep West Virginia from signing potentially the most exciting basketball player of all time — who also happened to be his son — and he entrusted the task to the only kind of man who made sense in such a scenario.
A Pitt man.
That’s the story Paul Milanovich is telling me, anyhow, and if you were sitting across from the 6-foot-4 Milanovich in this Moon eatery, you wouldn’t question him, either. He sports a “Property of Aliquippa Football” sweatshirt and something of a Ditka-esque personality.
Good-natured Ditka, mind you, but Ditka nonetheless. Gruff. No-nonsense. Maybe some questionable language thrown in to emphasize a point.
Are all these old-school Aliquippa guys alike?
Anyway, as the 69-year-old Milanovich tells it, Pistol Pete Maravich, Press’ preordained basketball star of a son, was in 1966 bent on becoming Morgantown’s next Jerry West. He was literally heading that way, straight from the Pittsburgh airport and an epic scholastic career in North Carolina, to accept the Mountaineers’ offer.
Just one problem: Press was about to jump from N.C. State to LSU to become coach there, and he promised he’d bring his kid. So he dialed up a lifelong friend, Milanovich’s father, Sam, an ex-Pitt basketball star, and ordered him to intercept Pete at the airport.
“Take him home,” Press said, according to Paul Milanovich’s recollection. “He’s not going to West Virginia. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
Did the fantastically headstrong Pistol resist?
“My dad was 6 foot 4, 270 pounds,” Paul Milanovich says. “What could Pete do?”
What about the West Virginia people?
“Maybe they were going to meet him at the airport. Oh, well, too late.”
The next morning, Press Maravich arrived at the Milanovich home with three “contracts” in hand. One for Pistol Pete and one each for a pair of talented Aliquippa players: Rich Hickman and Paul Milanovich.
They were all bound for Baton Rouge, where Pete and Paul would become roommates.
• • •
I can’t help but think of Pistol Pete as the NCAA tournament rolls through the place he briefly called home. He never got to participate in March Madness, never played an NCAA tournament game, but left an indelible mark on the sport.
There was nobody like him, and there never will be.
I’d always wondered how the tiny portion of Pistol Pete’s life spent in Beaver County — from kindergarten through third grade — shaped him. And those around him. Did people still remember him and his father?
We get to claim Pistol Pete, you know, the same way we claim Billy Knight, Dick Groat, Maurice Lucas, Kenny Durrett, DeJuan Blair and so many others in what once was a great basketball region. He was, after all, born in Sewickley Valley hospital on June 22, 1947 (whereupon his father, a precursor to the Earl Woods/Marv Marinovich obsessed sports dad, pronounced him athletically gifted).
As the story goes, Pistol Pete cut his teeth playing Biddy basketball on Saturday mornings in Aliquippa, where Press had grown up and was now the high school coach. Pete attended New Sheffield Elementary School, a five-minute walk from his house, which had a basketball hoop in the driveway and never-ending game in progress.
Even though he left for good after third grade when his dad took the Clemson job, Little Pistol made impressions that last to this day in one of Western Pennsylvania’s most decorated sports towns.
Chad Calabria remembers Pete from Biddy ball.
“He could do things with the basketball that most of us couldn’t do,” says Calabria, who had a stellar career at Iowa and whose son, Dante, was a pretty fair player himself.
Not every Maravich in Beaver County is related to Pistol Pete, but more than a few have a legitimate claim. Folks of other names can rightfully say they are related, too.
Saya DiCiccio, 75, of Midland, remembers. Her father was Press Maravich’s half brother. The Maraviches would come over to celebrate Serbian Christmas.
“I remember Pete as a little, scrawny kid, always with a basketball,” DiCiccio says. “He would twirl it on his finger. If it was raining out, he’d be playing basketball in the rain.”
It’s not hard to locate the likes of Laurene and Jeanine Maravich, whose father, Larry (“Lazo”), was Press Maravich’s cousin and confidant. Or Eli Maravich, 60, now of Scott, whose uncle Bob gave the elder Maravich (real name: Peter) his nickname on account of hearing him yell “Press here!” all the time as he delivered the Pittsburgh Press.
Truth is, you could ask just about any local basketball person of a certain age, and they’d have a Pistol Pete story. It could be legendary former Blackhawk coach John Miller, veteran coach and Ambridge native Mark Jula or the elevator guy at PPG Paints Arena on Wednesday.
“You remember Pistol Pete?” I asked.
“My dad gave me an autographed Pistol Pete basketball,” he said. “I still have it.”
Miller sponged information off Press Maravich many moons ago at Campbell University basketball camps in Buies Creek, N.C., and used some of Press’ unique drills with his sons Sean and Archie.
Jula still talks about a Juniata basketball camp, when he was in ninth grade, where Pistol Pete made a mind-boggling pass in a 3-on-2 drill, palming the ball with his right hand, at full speed, and then whipping it behind his head to a player in the left lane.
“God, I wish had video of it,” Jula says. “I’ve told that story a million times.”
Can you imagine if Pistol Pete had stayed in Aliquippa? A high school team that featured Division I talents such as Hickman, Milanovich, Chad Calabria, Jarrett Durham (Duquesne) and Chris Peacock would have included a 6-foot-5 point guard capable of putting up 60 on a given night (and throwing bullet passes behind his head).
“It would have been interesting,” Calabria says. “But that old saying about there’s only one ball in a game? We would have had to chop it into lots of pieces.”
• • •
Few came to know the collegiate Pistol Pete as well as Milanovich. They lived together as sophomores, in a spartan dorm room that included a couple of beds, a sink and a mirror.
Milanovich remembers Pistol Pete as a happy-go-lucky prankster who might pass time by spinning a basketball on his toes. He also remembers a young man who was “always searching for something.”
Pistol Pete had demons, all right, and they would manifest later in life — he became an alcoholic — before he finally found peace in Christianity. He reconciled his difficult relationship with his father, spending months by his bedside as Press Maravich succumbed to prostate cancer.
If the demons were rustling at LSU, and surely they were when Pete’s mother, Helen, committed suicide after struggling with depression and alcohol issues, Milanovich didn’t see them.
“Nobody opened up about their trials and tribulations,” Milanovich says. “Nobody talked about that.”
Basketball was the great escape, and nobody put on a magic show like Pistol Pete. He would stand at the foul line in pregame layup lines and perform what amounted to a Harlem Globetrotter’s ball-handling routine as he passed to teammates.
Freshmen couldn’t play varsity back then, so Pistol Pete would fill LSU’s arena for freshman games, and the place would empty out before the varsity took the floor. Road games were like rock concerts. Fans would line up outside to get a glimpse of Pistol Pete.
Press and Pete wanted to win, sure, but if that wasn’t in the cards, they were going to give everyone their money’s worth. Pistol’s passes came from everywhere. He might spin the ball in front of him on a fast break and then slap it, no-look, to a teammate.
“You had to be part of it to know what it was like,” Milanovich says. “The way he played, you never knew where the ball was coming from, but it always wound up where he intended it to go. No mulligans.”
If he or his teammates were angered by Pete shooting the ball 40 times a game, Milanovich won’t let on, even all these years later. He does, however, acknowledge that things weren’t always smooth with Pete and Press.
“Most of the time it was good on the court,” he says. “But when it went from good to bad, there was no in-between.”
Milanovich left LSU after his sophomore year, feeling he should have played more. What moves him all these years later about his time with Maravich is remembering Pete’s tender side.
“The best thing that ever happened to him was finding religion,” he says.
The two stayed in touch in later years. One time Milanovich was driving home and heard Pete on KDKA radio talking about his new book. This was shortly before Pete’s fatal heart attack (after a church pickup game) at age 40 in 1988. Milanovich decided to call in. He was in Aliquippa. Pete was in Louisiana.
As soon Maravich heard caller “Paul” on the line, he blurted out, “Paulie, is that you?” and the two caught up on families and life, barely minding the fact they were on the radio.
Another time, Pete’s Atlanta Hawks were in town for an exhibition game at the Civic Arena. He was eating alone at a hotel across the street, with strict orders not to be disturbed, when Milanovich asked the waitress to pass Pete his business card.
Maravich’s mood quickly brightened. The two visited before Milanovich, a sales rep for Schmidt’s beer at the time, said he had to go or he’d be in trouble.
“Where do you work?” Pete said. “Let’s go.”
Next thing Milanovich knew, Pete was making the rounds at his South Side beer distributor. Employees were beside themselves with excitement. Several would sit behind the Hawks bench that night, courtesy of Pistol Pete.
Milanovich’s eyes well when he recounts such stories. He might be gruff, but he isn’t afraid to cry. It happens again as he remembers Press’s viewing in Aliquippa.
Milanovich was on his way out of the funeral home when Pete walked up. The two embraced.
“How long is a minute? Is that a long time to hug someone?” Milanovich asks as his eyes redden. “That’s how long we hugged.”
Maravich needed a break from the proceedings, so the two went to a local tavern for hot sausage sandwiches and cokes.
“I think that was the last time we were together,” Milanovich says.
• • •
Pistol Pete predicted he would be forgotten quickly upon his death. Forgive him for the bad call. Because he we are, 30 years later, and LSU plays its home games at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center (PMAC).
More strikingly, you see grown men light up at the mere mention of his name.
“Just makes you smile,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, a Maravich contemporary, speaking Wednesday at PPG Paints Arena. “Every kid wanted to be him. Just magical with the ball. To me, people talk about a guy going into a zone. He was in a zone all the time.
“Probably the most entertaining player on the collegiate level that I’ve ever seen.”
If anything, the fascination grows, as it often does with legends lost too soon. Teenaged players might only know the name, but the name will forever remain a critical part of college basketball lore because of Pistol Pete’s mind-blowing numbers.
People went crazy when Oklahoma’s Trae Young was averaging over 30 points per game earlier this season. It’s lightly traveled territory. Now realize that Pistol Pete’s career scoring average was 44.2 ppg. And that was without a 3-point line or a shot clock. Nobody will ever touch it.
No player, in fact, has come close to his record scoring average of 44.5 in 1969-70. None is close to Pistol Pete’s career total of 3,667 points, which, again, he racked up in just three years.
Meanwhile, Young has cooled, likely realizing it’s not easy to keep a 30-point pace. He’s a terrific player. I can’t wait to watch him Thursday. It’s just that Pistol’s numbers reside in another universe altogether.
“That’s unbelievable,” Young said Wednesday of Pete’s career scoring average. “Just being mentioned in the same category or even the same breath as someone like Pistol Pete Maravich, that’s a legend right there. It’s an honor.”
• • •
Milanovich would head home to Aliquippa during summers in college, eager to partake in some high-end pickup games at the high school. Every so often the great Connie Hawkins would round up a crew and drive in for some run.
And even a talent as breathtaking as “The Hawk” needed an answer.
“Hey man,” he would say to Milanovich, “what’s it like to play with Pistol?”
What could Milanovich do but laugh? Then he’d tell Hawkins what he told everyone:
“You gotta do it to believe it.”
Joe Starkey: jstarkey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @joestarkey1. Joe Starkey can be heard on the “Starkey and Mueller” show weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.
First Published: March 15, 2018, 10:00 a.m.
