Pistol Pete Maravich is a basketball legend who, without argument, is hands-down considered to be the best college basketball player that has ever lived. In a 1974 interview, Maravich proved he was also remarkably prophetic because he predicted his own death with pinpoint accuracy.

Pete Maravich
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Pistol Pete Maravich Predicted His Own Death

Born Peter Press Maravich, but better known to the world as Pistol Pete Maravich, played at LSU from 1967 until he entered the NBA draft in 1970.

In only three seasons as a shooting guard for LSU, Mararvich became the all-time leading NCAA Division I scorer with 3,667 points, scoring an average of 44.2 points per game.

To this day Maravich remains the NCAA leading scorer, 53 years since making his last bucket at LSU.

Oh yeah, Maravich's 3,667 points were scored without the help of a three-point line...it wasn't instituted until 1979 in the NBA and wasn't introduced into college hoops until the 1986-1987 season.

Georgia v Michigan State
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Video from Maravich's college games has been analyzed shot by shot, and basketballnetwork.net estimates that, if Maravich would have had the option of the three-point line while at LSU, he would have actually averaged 57 points a game.

That would give Pistol Pete a staggering total of 4,731 points, and this doesn't include his point total from his Freshman year due to NCAA rules.

He scored 741 points his Freshman year, putting his actual 4-year college total at well over 5,000 points.

Now, about Pete Maravich predicting his own death...

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In an interview in 1974, Pete Maravich, then playing for the Atlanta Hawks, unknowingly correctly predicted his own death, a death that would come way too early in his life.

During that 1974 interview with Andy Nuzzo, sports writer for the Beaver County Times, a 26-year-old Maravich said "I don’t want to play ten years in the NBA and die of a heart attack at 40. I’ve got other things to do. Who needs basketball?”

Little did he know, that would be exactly how his life played out.

From wikipedia.com -

"On January 5, 1988, Maravich collapsed and died of heart failure at age 40 while playing in a pickup basketball game in the gym at First Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena, California.

Dobson has said that Maravich's last words, less than a minute before he died, were 'I feel great.'"

 

 

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