Shooting revisits magic of Maravich era
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It was a different time. The team played its home games on a basketball court that sat atop a dirt floor in what was essentially a rodeo arena. It’s star was a skinny kid who favored floppy, oversized socks. They were his lucky socks. He washed them himself after every game. His dad was the coach. The team was LSU and the kid with the huge hosiery was Pete Maravich — Pistol Pete.
You might not remember that time in the late ’60s when basketball was a distant second to football at LSU, but you know his name. And even if you never saw him play, you know Pistol Pete was something. The enormous arena the team calls home now bears his name: Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Danny Brown remembers Pete Maravich, he even knew him pretty well. Brown was a photographer/writer at the LSU Daily Reveille and a stringer for the now-defunct State-Times during Pete’s time at LSU.
In those days, members of the press sat beneath the goals in the Parker Coliseum during games, taking notes and snapping pictures. Brown took hundreds of pictures of Maravich because it was plain to Brown that he was witnessing something special — the skinny kid had surreal moves, unbelievable body control. Maravich routinely snapped off behind-his-head or between-his-legs passes that drew gasps from fans and foes alike. He shot better than 40 percent during his career at LSU, set an LSU scoring record and then broke Oscar Robertson’s all-time scoring record for a college player. Brown was there for it all. He was there with his camera.
Brown kept his film negatives. It occurred to him that the shots of Maravich might be valuable some day, but life intervened before he could do anything with the photos. First his mother died of cancer just before he graduated from LSU. Then along came a career and marriage. Over the years he would lend a few of the photos for use in documentaries about Maravich. Folks kept telling him he needed to do a book. So, he finally did. In March LSU Press published Shooting the Pistol ($23), an 8-by-10 hardcover compilation of Brown’s Maravich photos.
Brown’s images are black and white. That’s the format newspapers used in those days. The pictures show a young, mop-haired Maravich shooting the basketball, rebounding, dribbling, making some of his signature passes. The photos of Pistol Pete that Brown snapped just after he eclipsed Robertson’s record show a young man in the throes of an ethereal joy. It’s clear from the photos that Maravich moved with a dancer’s grace, and Brown even refers to one move as “some kind of weird ballet.” Whatever it was, it worked. Maravich averaged more than 40 points a game during his LSU career. Yet, LSU never managed to win the SEC basketball championship while Maravich was leading the team. Their best finish in his three varsity years was 22-10. They wound up fourth in the National Invitational Tournament that year.
Brown says in his introduction that he wants the pictures to function as a time machine to transport viewers back to Maravich’s day. It does bring that era (1966-1970) back. Maravich was glorious, but some things weren’t so good. One thing that strikes you about the photos is that there were no black players on the team then. Integration was yet to come. And the crowd shots show few if any black faces. Meanwhile, teams like UCLA had been integrated for a long time. From 1967 to 1973, UCLA won seven straight NCAA basketball championships behind such great African-American players as Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul Jabar) and Sidney Wicks. What if Maravich had had a few players like that on his team at LSU? It’s tantalizing to imagine, but it’s an argument contrary to fact.
But Brown doesn’t focus on what Maravich didn’t do. In the modest history of LSU basketball, Maravich is the biggest icon the program has produced. He was a legend and that’s what Brown shows in this book. True basketball fans — whatever their favorite team — recognize Maravich’s greatness. This book will allow them to enjoy it again.
Creoles of color
They were neither slave nor entirely free; they were not white Creole, yet shared the same culture. How did Louisiana come to have thousands of free people of color long before the Civil War? How did they gain their freedom? What contributions did they make to our state and its development? Mary Gehman, a licensed New Orleans tour guide and former assistant professor of English at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, addresses these and many other questions about the unique role of people of French-African-Indian descent who formed a third tier of antebellum society in a lecture at Ascension Parish Library, 500 Mississippi St. in Donaldsonville, at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 7.
Gehman has completed extensive research and published several books on this culture. She focuses this discussion on her book, The Free People of Color of New Orleans (1994). Signing of that book plus two others, Women and New Orleans (1988) and Touring Louisiana’s Great River Road (2003), will follow the talk. Registration is required. For more information, or to register, please call the library at 473-8052.
Hurt Book Sale
LSU Press will hold its annual Hurt Book Sale on noon to 6 p.m. Friday, May 9, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, May 10 at its warehouse at 3555 River Road.
Thousands of books in slightly bruised but not used condition will be available at bargain prices. Books of photography, history, fiction, literature, poetry and more will be offered at $5 each for hardcovers and $2 each for paperbacks. Shoppers will also have the option to fill an LSU Press tote bag to the brim with their choice of books for only $25, including the bag.
Writers group to meet
Anyone interested in writing, whether a beginner or accomplished author, is invited to attend the second meeting of the Art Council of Livingston Parish Writers’ Group. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 8, at the ACLP’s Meeting Room, 133 Hummell St. in Denham Springs.
The kick-off meeting last month generated a list of goals and a format for the group. This second meeting will formally organize the Writers’ Group, and discuss future topics, sharing skills for short stories, poetry, spontaneous writing, journaling, etc., in a friendly atmosphere designed to enhance the art of writing. The Writers’ Group will meet every second Thursday at 7 p.m. at the ACLP. Anyone who is interested in participating in the Writers’ Group is encouraged to attend.
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