There, he would embark on what he came to call “Homework Basketball,” a set of ballhandling and shooting routines designed to polish his skills. “When you’re in the gym alone …” he once wrote, in a first-person column for Sports Illustrated, “you can do anything you want.” When Maravich was in grade school, he would sequester himself inside a gym for up to 10 hours a day. If you gave him a basketball, he could see the future. For Pete Maravich, an empty gymnasium meant freedom. The boy who changed basketball preferred the solitude of an empty gym: the syncopated rhythm of squeaking shoes, the swish of the net, the echo of dribbles against a hardwood floor, plenty of open court to try things - to build the perfect jumper, to invent a novel spin move, to run and dribble and sweat and, in his words, fool around and throw up a hook shot from 35 feet.
27-31, culminating with the man picked by a panel of The Athletic NBA staff members as the greatest of all time.
18, we’ll unveil a new player on the list every weekday except for Dec. Welcome to the NBA 75, The Athletic’s countdown of the 75 best players in NBA history, in honor of the league’s diamond anniversary.
