The Faith of 'Pistol' Pete Maravich

The Faith of 'Pistol' Pete Maravich

On the court, the great "Pistol" Pete Maravich played an unforgettable brand of basketball. But it seems that many have forgotten—or never heard—about the last five years of Maravich’s life, when he was a passionate Christian. In their new book, Pete Maravich: The Authorized Biography of Pistol Pete, Marshall Terrill and Wayne Federman detail all of Pistol Pete’s life, including those last five years. New Man sat down with Terrill last week to discuss Pistol’s faith.

New Man: We all know what Pete Maravich was like on the court, but what was he like off the court?

Terrill: Well, throughout his life he was obsessed with playing basketball, particularly as a youth. He would spend four hours a day in the gym during the school year and eight hours a day in the gym during the summer. He said that he had mastered the skill of basketball by the time he was 13. When he got to LSU for college, his basketball career was starting to get really serious, and he was getting all this national attention, and the pressure was starting to get to him. So he started seeking other things because basketball was his whole life. In the '70s he got into transcendental meditation, ufology [the study of UFOs], karate and meditation.

He also relieved it through alcohol some of the time. He called himself an alcoholic in later years, although I don’t agree with that assessment. His wife said that he exaggerated that part of his life to make his testimony more interesting, but he did have some serious bouts with it during the course of his life. But he was always searching for something. He had an obsessive personality. You could see it in this play, whatever he did; he would attack it with a fervor. In the end, he did that with Christianity, too. When you think of Christian athletes, I can’t think of a more powerful one than Pete Maravich. And it wasn’t a phase, like those other things that he would do for a period. The last five years of his life, Maravich was a very strong Christian. He was peaceful for the only time in his life, and he was very much an evangelist. He was well-versed in the Bible, just an incredibly bright guy. He really knew what he was talking about.

New Man: What was the spark that started him toward Christianity?

Terrill: He said that his dad would take him to church as a youth. It was the typical thing. He said, "I was raised in the church, but I didn’t know a thing about God." What he would do when he went to church is, he would count in his head how long it would take him to get out. He would just count to 60 seconds over and over again for a whole hour. So the idea of Christianity didn’t really hit him until the end of his freshman year in college. He was invited by Athletes in Action to give a demonstration at a seminar in California. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, was at the seminar, and it was there that he really got the first true glimpse of Christianity. He heard the gospel for three whole days in between the parts when he would do his basketball demonstrations.

One of the interesting parts is that when he went out there, he took this cross-country trip form Louisiana to California with this guy named Kenny, who we tried to track down but never could. While they were in California, Kenny became a Christian. There was an altar call and Kenny got up, and Pete told him to sit down, that he would embarrass him. But Kenny told Pete that he had to do this. Pete later said that was the longest car ride home he ever experienced, because Kenny kept talking about the gospel, but Pete resisted. He said that he had the internal monologue with God, and that he basically told God: "I reject you. I’m going to be a pro player and I’m going to make a million dollars, and that’s my goal." And for the next 20 year of his life, he entered the wilderness. He said those were the 20 most miserable years of his life, even though he did become a pro and make millions. But that weekend was the start. It’s interesting how that lone spark can stay with you for the rest of your life.

New Man: When did he finally become a Christian?

Terrill: It was on a November night in 1982. He had this quest of always wanting to win the championship, but he never did. At the end of his career, after all his injuries, he was playing on Larry Bird’s Celtics in 1980, but he couldn’t make it, and he left them on a really sour note. Then they wound up winning the championship that year. So he was fed up with basketball, and for two years he became a recluse. That obsessive-compulsive personality came out. He became a neat freak, he was constantly scrubbing tiles and washing dishes. He got into vegetarianism. He would fast for 25 days at a time. Everything was a distraction from reality.

So on that November night, his wife, Jackie, had already gone to bed. Around midnight, he said the conviction of God was upon him, and he couldn’t go to sleep. In his mind all the sins of his life were playing before him for hours and hours, all the things that he had done to people and to his family. He was just miserable. He said he was days away from committing suicide. Finally it all led him back to that weekend with Athletes in Action and the moment when he rejected God. Finally, at 5:48 a.m., he got onto his knees and asked God to save him. He said he prayed for salvation and immediately afterward he actually heard an audible voice say, "Be strong, lift thine own heart." The words were really loud and clear to him. He actually woke his wife up and asked, "Did you hear that, did you hear God?" She told him that he had finally gone crazy and went back to sleep. Then he said a calm feeling lifted his body, and he was completely changed. He said it was the first true happiness he had ever felt. Talk about a Damascus Road experience.

New Man: You interviewed hundreds of people for this book. How did the people around him describe the change in him after that experience?

Terrill: Oh, he was a different person. Actually, I was at the NBA All Star Game a few weeks ago, and I bumped into [former NBA great] Bobby Jones. He said he knew Pete before and after he was a Christian, and he said, "The change I saw in him was very dramatic." I’ll read you what Paul Westpaul [another former NBA great] said about him in the book. They were very good friends. He said: "It was a fantastic thing to witness. Pete went from this guy who was chasing everything to having an inner calm. You looked at him and he had a different look in his eye. Once he became a Christian, he developed a focus that was real. It was as if he had just started living." To me that really says it all.

New Man: Yeah, I talked about him briefly with Pat Williams last month, and he said pretty much the same thing.

Terrill: Yeah, and he was the one who finally fired Pete. Pete was very bitter with him and with Cotton Fitzsimmons, the last coach and executive that he had. Cotton said that Pete was very angry with him after leaving and wouldn’t speak to him for years. And then he said all of a sudden that he started talking to him again. He saw him and asked for forgiveness, and they hugged and that was it.

New Man: Why did James Dobson write the foreword?

Terrill: Well, Pete practically died in his arms. He had gone out to Focus on the Family to be on Dr. Dobson’s program, and he was playing as a part of their twice-weekly pickup basketball game the day before the interview. He was at the water fountain, and he was telling Dobson about how great he was feeling because he had been bothered by a shoulder injury, and then a few steps later he just collapsed [Maravich died of a congenital heart defect that he was born with.] So I think it was important to Dr. Dobson that he could be a part of this book. He never got to interview him, but he knew Pete’s story.

New Man: Jackie Maravich, Pete’s wife, has historically avoided talking about her husband to the media, but you got a chance to talk with her for the book. What was that like?

Terrill: Well, my co-author, Wayne Federman, and I said we’ve got to find some way to talk to her. She knew him the best and she was always this mystery woman. I had sent her a couple of my books and tried to open up a dialogue, but I didn’t get a reply. Wayne befriended someone who was a friend of hers, and basically we just wound up having to prove ourselves to her, to prove that our hearts were in the right places. There were some other books about his life that were not so glowing, books that would focus on the dark part of his life without the Christianity, and she felt like she had been burned before. Of course, Pete didn’t have a healthy attitude toward reporters, either. We finally met with her, and she’s a wonderful lady. We talked to the two boys as well. Having her involved and having her endorsement really verified what we did. She was such a stabilizing force in his life. When he would go into his obsessions, she would bring him back. In the end, he lived such a strong Christian example that she decided to become a Christian as well. She said that through Christianity, Pete finally became the man he had always wanted to be.

Pete Maravich died on Jan. 5, 1988, at age 40. In his three years at LSU, 1968-1970, the 6' 5" guard averaged 44 points per game before the era of the 3-point line and led the NCAA in scoring for each of the three seasons. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1987 at age 39. To purchase Pete Maravich: The Authorized Biography of Pistol Pete by Marshall Terrill and Wayne Federman, click here. If you are interested in Marshall Terrill’s other biographies, check out his Web site.