Bob Pettit - # 364

Bob Pettit, imposing Hawks great and first NBA MVP, dies at 93

The NBA champion and 11-time All-Star was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1971. 

He was number 364 on the list.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Bob Pettit, an imposing scorer and rebounder for the St. Louis Hawks and winner of the NBA’s first Most Valuable Player in 1956, has died. He was 93.

Pettit’s alma mater, LSU, announced Thursday that he died a day earlier. The university did not provide a cause of death.

The NBA issued the following statement:

“The NBA family mourns the passing of Naismith Hall of Famer Bob Pettit, a two-time NBA MVP and a member of all four NBA Anniversary Teams. He raised the bar for excellence as the league’s first MVP, first 20,000-point scorer and first four-time All-Star Game MVP. His iconic 50-point performance in Game 6 of the 1958 NBA Finals clinched the championship for the St. Louis Hawks. Beyond those accomplishments, Bob helped transform the power forward position.

“Our thoughts are with Bob’s family and friends and the entire Hawks organization.”

Pettit was an All-American at LSU before going on to the NBA, where he was an All-Star for each of his 11 seasons, all with the Hawks. He led them to the 1958 championship over the mighty Boston Celtics, the Hawks’ lone title.

He was also the NBA MVP in 1959 and was the MVP of the All-Star Game four times, an achievement matched only by Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant.

Pettit was a force at a time when the NBA featured the likes of Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson and Elgin Baylor. But it was also before a time when the NBA was widely seen on television, and Pettit – playing in a smaller market – was denied a larger audience.

At 6-foot-9 and 205 pounds and with a deeply receding hairline, Pettit was a physical presence at power forward, before such a position became part of basketball’s vocabulary. He rarely missed a game. He also played center and was one of the first big men who did not play solely with his back to the basket.

Pettit was the Rookie of the Year in 1955, the last year the Hawks played in Milwaukee before moving to St. Louis.

He captured the MVP the next season, leading the league in scoring at 25.7 points a game. He also was the NBA’s scoring leader in 1959 at 29.2 points.

He retired after the 1964-65 season with career averages of 26.4 points and 16.2 rebounds. At that time, he was the NBA’s career leader in points (20,880) and second in rebounds (12,849).

He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1971.

“Lean, graceful, and always well-conditioned, Bob Pettit’s physical build made him one of the first big men to play facing the basket,” reads Pettit’s biographical profile at the Hall of Fame. “But Pettit’s resolve set him apart from his peers; he simply would not be outworked.”

Robert Lee Pettit Jr. was born on Dec. 12, 1932, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His father worked in law enforcement and served as East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff. Pettit was a late bloomer in basketball, not making the Baton Rouge High School varsity until his junior season.

As a senior, he led Baton Rouge to a state championship and wound up with more than a dozen college offers. He chose to stay home and starred at LSU as a sophomore, an era when players could not join the varsity until then.

He led the Southeastern Conference in scoring all three of his seasons, with averages of 25.5 points as a sophomore, 24.9 as a junior and 31.4 as a senior.

Pettit is one of only three LSU players – Pete Maravich and Shaquille O’Neal the others – to earn a place in the Hall of Fame. Bronze statues of Pettit and O’Neal stand outside LSU’s home arena, the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. His No. 50 is retired by LSU, his No. 9 by the Atlanta Hawks.

Pettit’s misfortune was that most of his career coincided with a run of Celtics championships that remains one of the most dominant runs in American pro sports history.

Pettit was two victories short of being a three-time NBA champion. Pettit’s Hawks advanced to The Finals four times, all against Boston, twice losing in seven games.

The first meeting, won by Boston in 1957, came down to double overtime of Game 7. The second ended with a championship for the Hawks, interrupting Boston’s run of nine titles in 10 seasons. The Hawks also dropped NBA Finals matchups with the Celtics in 1960 (in seven games) and 1961 (in five).

Pettit retired to his native Baton Rouge after leaving basketball and worked in banking and financial consulting. He was a regular at LSU and New Orleans Pelicans games in recent years.

After high school, Pettit had scholarship offers from 14 universities and accepted a scholarship to play at nearby Louisiana State University (LSU). He was a three-time All-Southeastern Conference selection and a two-time All-American as a member of the LSU men's basketball team. (Freshmen were not allowed to play varsity basketball at the time.) During those three years, Pettit averaged 27.8 points per game. He was also a member of the Zeta Zeta chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon at LSU.

Pettit made his varsity debut at LSU in 1952. He led the SEC in scoring for his first of three consecutive seasons, averaging 25.5 points per game. He ranked third in the nation in scoring and also averaged 13.1 rebounds per game, helping his team to a 17–7 win–loss record for a second-place finish in the league, and was selected to the All-SEC team.

During his junior year, Pettit helped the Tigers sail through a 23-game regular-season schedule with only one loss (to Tulsa). A clean sweep of SEC opponents became LSU's second SEC Title (their first came in 1935) and the school's first NCAA Final Four. He averaged 24.9 points and 13.9 rebounds per game for the 1953 season. He was honored with selections to both the All-SEC and All-American teams.

Pettit averaged 31.4 points and 17.3 rebounds per game during his senior year and once again led LSU to an SEC Championship and garnered All-SEC and All-American honors. He set a then-SEC scoring record of 60 points against Louisiana College in his second game, and also the SEC record for scoring average, with both records later being broken by Pete Maravich. Pettit also was the second player in major-college basketball history to average more than 30 points a game.

In 1954, the Milwaukee Hawks selected Pettit second in the first round of the NBA draft after the Baltimore Bullets' selection of Frank Selvy. Pettit was initially reluctant to sign with the team before his third cousin, fellow NBA player Frank Brian, convinced him to do so. With $100 in the bank, he signed a contract with Hawks owner Ben Kerner for $11,000 – an all-time high for an NBA rookie then. Pettit's awkward ballhandling and a lack of strength to battle NBA bruisers weighing 200 pounds that early in his career, had Hawks coach Red Holzman move him from center, his position at LSU, to forward in his first training camp. "In college I played the standing pivot", he said in an April 1957 SPORT magazine interview. "My back was to the basket. In the pros, I'm always outside. Everything I do is facing the basket now. That was my chief difficulty in adjusting, the fact that I had never played forward before." Though many were skeptical about Pettit making the transition from college to the rough-and-tumble NBA, in 1955 he won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award after averaging 20.4 points and 13.8 rebounds per game. He became the second rookie to win all-NBA honors but the team finished last in the Western Division. After the season, the Hawks moved to St. Louis.

Pettit helped the Hawks improve during their first year in St. Louis in their winning of 33 games during 1955–56. In his second season, Pettit adjusted his game so that he would get to the free-throw line for easy points for his team and foul trouble for his opponents. Being a phenomenal offensive rebounder and an instinctive scorer, he told basketball historian Terry Pluto that "Offensive rebounds were worth eight to 12 points a night to me. Then I'd get another eight to 10 at the free-throw line. All I had to do was make a few jump shots and I was on my way to a good night."[8] Pettit won his first scoring title with a 25.7 average, and led the league in rebounding (1164 for a 16.2 average). He was also named MVP of the 1956 NBA All-Star Game after scoring 20 points with 24 rebounds and 7 assists; he would win subsequent MVP All-Star Game honors in 1958, 1959, and 1962. He also won his first of two NBA regular season MVP awards (the other was in 1959).

Retooling before the 1956–57 season, the Hawks acquired Ed Macauley and rookie Cliff Hagan from the Boston Celtics for the draft rights to Bill Russell. The team added guard Slater Martin in an early-season deal with the New York Knicks while Alex Hannum arrived a few weeks later after being released by the Fort Wayne Pistons. Hannum became the team's third coach that season by taking over as player-coach with 31 games left on the schedule. Though they posted a 34–38 record in 1956–57, a series of tie-breaking playoff games against the Pistons and a three-game sweep of the Minneapolis Lakers had them in the NBA Finals. In Game 1 of the 1957 NBA Finals at the Boston Garden, Pettit scored 37 points as the Hawks shocked the Bill Russell-led Boston Celtics in double overtime. Pettit won his team the third game in the series with a late basket in St. Louis. His two free throws with six seconds left in Game 7 forced overtime, but Pettit's 39 points and 19 rebounds in 56 minutes weren't enough to win a double-overtime game. Pettit averaged 29.8 points and 16.8 rebounds per game during their 1957 playoff run.

A franchise-record 41 wins and a division crown allowed the Hawks to get back at the Celtics in the 1958 NBA Finals. Pettit led the Hawks to an NBA Championship with a then-playoff record 50 points in the Hawks' 110–109 series-clinching victory in game 6. Pettit's 50 points stood alone as the most in a Finals close-out victory until it was matched by Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2021. Both teams would later meet in the 1960 and 1961 Finals, with Boston winning each time. For the season, Pettit scored 24.6 ppg and pulled down 17.4 rpg, and earned All-Star Game MVP honors with a performance that included 28 points and 26 rebounds. St. Louis finished at the top of the |Westetn Division in each of the next three seasons. Pettit's league-leading scoring average of 29.2 points per game in the 1958–59 season was an NBA record at the time, and he was named the Sporting News NBA MVP.

In the 1960–61 season, Pettit averaged 27.9 points per game[9] and pulled down 20.3 rebounds per game, making him one of only five players to ever break the 20 rpg barrier. He, along with Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry Lucas, are the only three people who averaged more than twenty points and twenty rebounds in an NBA season. On February 18, 1961, Pettit scored a career-high 57 points and grabbed 28 rebounds in a 141–138 win over the Detroit Pistons.

 

Personal information

Born    December 12, 1932

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S.

Died    September 23, 2026 (aged 93)

Metairie, Louisiana, U.S.

Listed height   6 ft 9 in (2.06 m)

Listed weight  205 lb (93 kg)

Career information

High school     Baton Rouge

(Baton Rouge, Louisiana)

College            LSU (1951–1954)

NBA draft        1954: 1st round, 2nd overall pick

Drafted by       Milwaukee Hawks

Playing career 1954–1965

Position           Power forward / center

Number           9

Career history

1954–1965      Milwaukee / St. Louis Hawks

Career highlights

NBA champion (1958)

2× NBA Most Valuable Player (1956, 1959)

11× NBA All-Star (1955–1965)

4× NBA All-Star Game MVP (1956, 1958, 1959[a], 1962)

10× All-NBA First Team (1955–1964)

All-NBA Second Team (1965)

NBA Rookie of the Year (1955)

2× NBA scoring champion (1956, 1959)

NBA rebounding leader (1956)

NBA anniversary team (25th, 35th, 50th, 75th)

No. 9 retired by Atlanta Hawks

Consensus first-team All-American (1954)

Consensus second-team All-American (1953)

No. 50 retired by LSU Tigers

Career NBA statistics

Points[1]          20,880 (26.4 ppg)

Rebounds        12,849 (16.2 rpg)

Assists 2,369 (3.0 apg)