Bob Pettit, a prototype for the modern-day power forward who was named one of the N.B.A.’s 50 greatest players of its first half century and who led the Hawks franchise to its only league championship, died on Wednesday. He was 93.
His death was announced by Louisiana State University, his alma mater. No other details were provided.
Playing for the Hawks from 1954 to 1965, in Milwaukee as a rookie and then in St. Louis, the 6-foot-9-inch Pettit became the first N.B.A. player to score at least 20,000 points, and he retired as the league’s second-leading career rebounder. He was an All-Star in each of his 11 seasons and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1971.
Pettit turned in one of the most brilliant playoff performances in N.B.A. history on April 12, 1958, when he scored 50 points, including 19 of the Hawks’ last 21, in a championship-clinching 110-109 victory over the Boston Celtics at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis in Game 6 of the playoff finals.
The Celtics’ Bill Russell was hampered by an ankle injury and saw limited action, but Pettit was double-teamed in the late going as he set a then-record point total for an N.B.A. regulation-time playoff game, matching Bob Cousy’s 50 points for the Celtics in their four-overtime victory against the Syracuse Nationals in 1953.
“In the last quarter I wasn’t sure what was happening,” Pettit told Terry Pluto in his N.B.A. oral history “Tall Tales” (1992). “I was getting the ball, shooting it and it was going in. I wanted the ball because I didn’t think there was anything they could do to stop me.”
That league championship is the only one to date captured by the franchise, which joined the N.B.A. in 1949 as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, then moved to Milwaukee in 1951, St. Louis in 1955 and Atlanta in 1968.
Pettit was a high-scoring, All-American center at Louisiana State University, but he weighed only 200 pounds or so, raising doubts he could compete against bulky pro centers. The Milwaukee Hawks nonetheless chose him as the second pick in the 1954 N.B.A. draft. Their coach, Red Holzman, who would be best known for taking the Knicks to two N.B.A. championships in the 1970s, converted him into a forward who would face the basket instead of jostling for position underneath it. Pettit became an early devotee of weight lifting and eventually filled out to 240 pounds or so.
He was viewed as the model for the modern-day classic power forward perhaps best exemplified by the former Utah Jazz star Karl Malone.
“Malone and I had similar styles,” Pettit once recalled. “My strength was rebounding — offensive and defensive — shooting 18- to 20-foot jump shots, going to the basket and shooting a lot of free throws.”
Pettit was acclaimed for his grit.
“Bob made ‘second effort’ a part of the sport’s vocabulary,” NBA.com quoted Russell as saying. “He kept coming at you more than any man in the game. He was always battling for position, fighting you off the boards.”
Robert E. Lee Pettit Jr. was born on Dec. 12, 1932, in Baton Rouge, La. He did not make the Baton Rouge High School basketball team as a sophomore, but he joined a church league and practiced nightly by shooting tennis balls at a makeshift hoop in his back yard, bending a wire into the shape of a basket. He finally made his high school team as a junior, grew five inches to nearly reach his eventual 6 feet 9, and led his team to a state championship as a senior.
Pettit took L.S.U. to the 1953 N.C.A.A. tournament’s semifinals, later known as the Final Four, and he averaged more than 27 points a game for his three seasons with the Tigers. (At the time, freshmen were not allowed to play varsity basketball.) The Hawks selected Pettit in the 1954 draft right after the original Baltimore Bullets took Furman’s Frank Selvy as the top pick. Pettit was the N.B.A.’s rookie of the year, averaging 20.4 points a game, and was named the league’s most valuable player in his second season, when the Hawks moved to St. Louis.
He was the league M.V.P. again in 1959 and he was named the All-Star Game’s most valuable player three times outright and once as co-M.V.P. with the Lakers’ Elgin Baylor. He was the N.B.A. scoring leader twice and led the Hawks to the N.B.A. finals against the Celtics four times.
He retired at 32, when he was hampered by a knee injury, having scored 20,880 points (26.4 a game) and pulled down 12,849 rebounds (16.2 a game).
Pettit became a bank executive in Baton Rouge and later moved to New Orleans, where he was a partner in a financial consulting firm.
When the N.B.A. marked its 50th anniversary in 1996, Pettit was named one its greatest forwards. “I kept on plugging away and raising my goals,” he told The Post-Dispatch in 2007. “I won my high school letter as a junior and I thought, ‘Now I want to win a state championship,’ and so on. Ten years later, I wanted to be the best player in the world.”
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