McDermott < Maravich

This week's Sports Illustrated has Creighton's Doug McDermott on the cover. When I first glanced at the cover I recognized immediately that SI had re-created the Larry Bird cover with two cheerleaders, with the title College Basketball's Secret Weapon. Inside is a feature story on McDermott, which included a list of the top ten scorers in college history:

Points Games Player, School
3667 83 Pete Maravich, LSU
3249 106 Freeman Williams, Portland State
3217 131 Lionel Simmons, La Salle
3165 109 Alphonso Ford, Mississippi Valley
3066 110 Harry Kelly, Texas Southern
3058 118 Keydren Clark, Saint Peter's
3011 140 Doug McDermott, Creighton
3008 125 Hersey Hawkins, Bradley
2973 88 Oscar Robertson, Cincinnati
2951 147 Danny Manning, Kansas
2850 (14th) Larry Bird, Indiana State
2599 (33rd) Jimmer Fredette

Reid: Did you just hear where Maravich averaged 44 points a game during his 3 years at LSU. Somebody got the shot shots for all his games and figured out that if there had been a 3 pt line, he would have averaged 55 pts a game. I have often wondered this.

That is really something. You rarely hear about Maravich any more, just like you rarely hear about Wilt Chamberlain or Oscar Robertson. When the guy from Creighton scored his 3000th point they showed how was ahead of him, but did not mention that Maravich scored his points in fewer years. Back then they played fewer games as well.

SI advertised an on line republication of a 12.01.1969 SI story written by Maravich, where he said the best part of his game wasn't shooting. It was his passing, ball-handling, and dribbling, and that was what everyone came to see.

In this same issue SI's Tweet of the Week was authored by Russ Bengston: "Hi, Melo, this is Phil Jackson. You might remember me from my book where I totally called Kobe out on every perceived fault, and…hello?"

Yesterday I was watching an episode of the Brady Bunch. The youngest son had gotten in trouble for having Jesse James as his hero, not realizing all the bad things James had done. Around the dinner table, after the dad prayed, the family discussed who proper heros would be. The first name suggested was Wilt Chamberlain. I thought that was pretty funny.