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Bob Pettit: The Big Man of Pro Basketball
The NBA's newest super-star leads in everything -- scoring, rebounding, free throws -- and only Bob Cousy rates higher
By Al Silverman, SPORT, April 1957
While the television technicians were setting up their equipment on an attic floor of the armory that, for this day, was being used as a film studio, six-foot, nine-inch Robert Lee Pettit, Jr., of the St. Louis Hawks sat in an adjoining room, in game uniform, reading over his contract. He had spent the better part of the morning at the armory, preparing to strike the necessary poses that would be used in a commercial extolling the virtues of a popular cigarette. Bob, in real life, does not touch tobacco. As he sat there mulling over the fine print in the contract, Frank Scott stepped out of the elevator and greeted him warmly. Scott is an enterprising and vastly successful agent who handles endorsements and other such extra-curricular business ventures for a number of major-league baseball players. Recently, he has branched out into other sports, though to a smaller degree. At the time, his only two clients in pro basketball were Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics and Pettit. "Say, Bob," Scott said, "you're going to be here for Christmas, aren't you?" "Yes. We play the 26th here. We come in a couple of days before." "Good. I think I can get you on a television show Christmas Eve. It's a panel show called Can Do. All you'll have to do is shoot a few foul shots. I can get you $300. Okay?" "Fine," Pettit replied gracefully in his well-modulated Louisiana accent, "sure enough," Scott went to a phone, called one of his contacts in the television industry, and, right then and there, confirmed the deal. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it is -- if your name is Bob Pettit. The various commercial opportunities that have come Pettit's way since he embraced the professional life in the fall of 1954 -- last year he did a series of television commercials for the Ford Motor Company -- lead to two inviolate conclusions: (1) the name's the thing; and (2) Bob's got the name. The additional fact that such a busy agent as Frank Scott saw fit to take on Pettit, along with the great Cousy, merely adds further proof. It is obvious that Cousy and Pettit stand at the top rung in pro basketball. Cousy, who is the highest paid player in the game, gets an annual pay check in excess of $22,000. Pettit, who was the second highest-salaried player in the league before the Celtics acquired Bill Russell, gets an estimated $18,000. And with Cousy, after seven years of play in the National Basketball Association, beginning to slide off from his peak (at least he should be beginning to decompose, though you'd never know it by his play this season) , it shouldn't be too long before Pettit, who is just 24, becomes the big man in professional basketball. The records would seem to indicate that he fully deserves the honor. In his first year as a pro, he was fourth in the league in scoring and he made the NBA All-League team, the first freshman to be so honored in nine years. Last year, his second in professional basketball, competing against the very best basketball players in the world, Pettit made off with everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. He was the NBA's leading scorer with 1,849 points. He was the rebound leader with 1,164. He had the best scoring average per game, 25.7. He attempted the most field goals (1,507) and made the most goals (646). He attempted the most free throws (757) and converted the most (557). He scored the most points in a single game, 46, performing that feat, as if for emphasis, on two separate occasions. (In his rookie year he hit his all-time single game high as a pro, 49 points against Rochester.) And he stamped these statistics official by his play in last season's annual, East-West all-star game. Pettit led the West to an unexpected l08-94 victory and he was high scorer in the game with 20 points. After it was all over, he was named the most valuable player of the game, which, he says, has been his greatest kick to date in pro basketball.
All this hoopla, rah-rah and sis-boom-bah is, of course, very gratifying to Pettit, who is a good-looking youngster with a boyish, handsome face and a fine, well-proportioned big man's build. But he reacts to his success with a modesty that can only be classified as refreshing. "It feels real good being so well thought of," Bob says, "but I play with a great bunch of players. They, set me up. They're very, very unselfish. They're the ones who are responsible for my success." Pettit also credits his ex-coach, Red Holzman, with aiding in his rise by teaching him some of the finer points of the game. Holzman, a mildly excitable and nervous individual, seemed quite astonished when I asked about Pettit, as if it were impertinent or at least irrelevant to inquire about such an obvious super-star. "What can I tell you?" Red said. "He's great. Great! Great!!" This, of course, was before Holzman was fired. The amenities out of the way, Holzman sat down and tried to appraise the star a little more carefully. "While he's doing all of that scoring, he's a hell of a team man. He's the type of guy who doesn't realize he's such a point-getter, he's got so many shots going -- one-hand push, tap, hook. The guy can go outside almost as much as inside. He hits on the jump shot out of the pivot. When he jumps, he goes above the others. And his defense has really improved this year. This year he's concentrated on defense. He guards a big man well. "He'll probably be one of the all-time greats in the league," Red said. "This kid's got quite a few things that others don't have, like pride. He has a great deal of pride in himself. He's a perfectionist. It's the old story. He's the last guy out of the gym. I say to him, 'What are you doing, Bob?' And he'll say, 'I need some shots.' Yeah. He's one guy who doesn't. He's a hell of a thinker. Got an awful lot of pride in what he does." Holzman's observations about Pettit as a thinker can best be illuminated by examining Bob's reactions to a crisis that hit him at a critical juncture in his college career. During his first two years at Louisiana State, Bob's big shot was the hook, and it was nearly unstoppable. Then LSU's opponents started throwing up a sinking zone defense, and when Pettit tried to get off his hook, he found he was being knocked off. He told himself he had better. get a shot he could get off quicker, so he developed a jump shot. He worked in the gym day after day, for hours at a time, trying to perfect that shot-and it paid off. Today, Bob's jump shot is one of his most potent offensive weapons. The successful transition from college basketball to professional basketball is often dependent on just such intangibles as learning how to score one more way. In Pettit's case, the jump shot didn't make him as a pro, but it helped. What are the qualifications of a pro in the NBA? "We look for size, speed, shooting ability, defensive ability, poise and smartness," said one NBA official. "In Pettit's case, we found he had a phenomenal touch, good speed for a big man, good defensive play, and poise, plenty of poise." "I was a little uncertain about making pro ball," Bob admitted. "It's something you really don't know. Most any player believes in himself to a certain degree. But you have to play it, try it. I was very, very lucky." Maybe so. But you don't get to be a pro by pure luck. There have been college boys with glittering reputations who just ran aground when they started playing in the company of men. As Bill Russell said, when he prepared to make the big jump from San Francisco U. to the Boston Celtics last December, "Life is a matter of adjustment. One adjustment after another. I'll do my very best to make the adjustment." Pettit, who had come out of Louisiana State with a tremendous reputation to uphold, had just as big an adjustment to make. For two years, as a junior and senior, he was the big gun of the Southern Conference. He set a number of conference records that still stand, including most points in one season, 464; most field goals in one season, 170; most field goals in one game, 23; and most points in one game, 57. In one other college game, a non-conference affair against Louisiana College, Pettit scored 60 points. In his junior year he was a second team All-America choice (averaging 25.6 points). He was a unanimous first-team All-America as a senior. In fact, in most any other year his 31.4 point average would certainly have led the country. But 1953-54 was the season Frank Selvy was playing for Furman (Selvy is now a teammate of Pettit's on the Hawks, or will be when he gets out of the Army), and he came up with an all-time high, a 41.7 average. Pettit was just the all-time runner-up. Despite such gaudy statistics, when Pettit signed up with the Hawks, who were then bedded down in Milwaukee, nobody was quite sure what to expect of him. As far as the pros were concerned, he was an unknown quantity. "We didn't ever hope that anybody could be that good," Red Holzman said early in the season. When a collegian comes into the NBA, there are certain things he must learn about his position. It's not just a matter of scoring. The pivot man has to be able to pass off and rebound and help his teammates as they drive by. The guards have to learn to shoot from the outside, drive, be the quarterback. Pettit's case was especially complicated by the fact that he changed positions as a pro. Big Charlie Share was the Hawks' pivot man, so Bob was moved to forward. "In college I played the standing pivot," he says. "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. There was so much for me to learn -- so much I'm still learning. Fitting in the pattern, going outside, handling the ball better. I had to work to get in my shots. In college, they gave me the ball. I also had to play a lot better defensively than I ever had before. The hardest thing to do was to learn to block the man at the boards. If you don't block him, he jams you. The second or third time he jams you," Bob added wryly, "you begin to learn how to block him." Bob learned one other thing about the pros -- that you have to play at your peak every night, because night after night, unlike college, you're playing against the best. Pettit says he was helped in this respect at the start of his career by participating in a 15-game pre-season exhibition tour with the Minneapolis Lakers, who were then the world champions. "That was a good teacher," Bob says. "I learned something from them."
In addition to the mechanical requirements of pro ball, which are the most demanding in the world of sports (demanding in the sense that only 80 or so boys get picked to play pro; so the league can afford to be choosy) there were certain other elements Pettit found he had to adjust to. He discovered very quickly that there is much more body contact in a professional game than he ever experienced in college. He discovered also that the officials have a tendency to be lenient in their calls. Bob doesn't like to talk about the officiating in the league, but his very reluctance gives a hint as to his feelings in the matter. Last year he was fined a total of $75 by referees. The one big difference between college and pro ball, and the one that the rookies feel the most, lies in the schedule. In college, a team plays a rather leisurely 25 games or so per season, and that's it. The pros have a 72-game schedule, plus exhibitions and playoffs which bring the total over the 100 mark. It is a long and strenuous and often monotonous treadmill, lasting as it does now from September 20, when practice is called, to mid-April, if a team makes the final round of the playoffs. The traveling is rough on the digestive system, too, hopping from plane to train and to plane, to such diverse sections of the country as Rochester, N.Y., and Fort Wayne, Ind. Back home in Baton Rouge, La., where Bob was born, raised, went to school and hopes to retire to after his pro career is at an end, he rises early and likes to get to sleep early, by 10:30 at night if possible. With the pros on the road, he seldom gets to sleep before two in the morning and seldom gets up before 11. On the road there are no curfews to worry about, although the players are cautioned to keep sensible hours. When there is no game scheduled that evening, Bob might take in a movie or, if he is in a city like New York, a Broadway play. The Hawks get $5 a day traveling expenses. Bob's other avocation (besides golf, which is an off-season hobby) is eating. He finds it prudent to eat as much as possible to keep his 6-9 frame enclosed in enough flesh (215 pounds is his normal playing weight) to keep him warm and healthy. One of the reasons he has gone so well as a pro, he says, is that he put on ten pounds and feels stronger and has more stamina. He is a steak man during the season, but when he gets home, he says, "I go in for a little fancy stuff," which includes hominy grits as a delicacy for breakfast every morning in addition to the usual ham and eggs. In St. Louis, Pettit and his teammate, Med Park, who played college ball at the University of Missouri, share a bachelor apartment. (Bob would like to get married some day but he claims he hasn't found the girl.) The two roommates do all of their own cooking in the apartment. In the off-season, Bob lives at home with his mother and father, who are in the real estate business. Bob is an only child and the family ties are very close. His parents come to St. Louis to see him play whenever possible, and last year they spent Christmas with him in New York. Bob is a solid citizen in Baton Rouge. Last year .he had some 15 speaking engagements in the area. He says he enjoys the give and take of a question and answer session but that he doesn't like to make prepared speeches. But he knows these public activities are good for his fledgling business. Two years ago, after taking a summer's course at Hartford, Conn., he opened up an insurance agency in Baton Rouge. He hopes to, make the insurance business his life work. "In this respect," Bob says, "I think pro ball has been very good for my future. I can't hope to make money in insurance right away. It's a losing proposition for a couple of years. So, for five or six months while I'm playing ball, I save money and take it home to Baton Rouge. Then I work six months building my insurance business. The money I save up north helps me in my business. I enjoy myself now, don't get me wrong; I live well. But I don't want to throw it away." Despite the fact he has only been playing pro ball for three years, and has a long career to look forward to if he wants, Bob talks seriously about limiting his basketball playing days. Although he is happy in St. Louis and likes the people there, he misses his life at home, his family and friends. "I still love the game, still love to play," he says. "I've never gotten to the point where I didn't love it, even if the traveling is kind of rough. It's a tremendous challenge every night. You're playing against the greatest players in the world. But I wouldn't want to drag it out. This is my third year. From here on in, I don't know. I may not play any more after this year, or I may play two or three years. The way I feel now, though, I don't want to play for any ten years." There are times during the season when Bob feels down at the mouth because he isn't going well. He is a severe competitor who demands perfection in himself. Once, in a game against Rochester last year, he scored the first two baskets of the game, then couldn't hit for another one all night. That was a low point in his career. The day I spoke to him at the armory, when he was working on the cigarette commercial, Bob claimed he was in something of a shooting slump. He tried to analyze it. "The secret of my shooting is my legs. When my legs are strong, I feel good. But I get in bad habits. Right now I'm hesitating and falling away from the basket in the jump shot instead of going up and shooting over. I know I'm doing it wrong, but I don't know how to break it. A day's practice would help, though." That afternoon, after completing his television chore to the satisfaction of the producers, Bob engaged in a lengthy practice with the team. The next night, playing against the Knicks, he seemed to have corrected all his bad habits. The Hawks beat the Knicks handily and Pettit was high man for the night. He scored 41 points.
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