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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/5984254\/2026\/09\/24\/bob-pettit-nba-hof-hawks-celtics-obituary\/?emc=edit_na_20260924&nl=breaking-news&segment_id=227035",
    "parsed_content": "Bob Pettit, pictured, was the NBA's first formal Most Valuable Player winner and the first to cross the 20,000-point threshold. Via Bettmann \/ ContributorBob Pettit learned to play basketball in his parents\u2019 backyard in south Louisiana, with a light streaming from a bedroom window illuminating a hoop and a backboard. No formal coaching. No film study. No prep AAU circuit to fine-tune his skills.That was the norm eight decades ago, but what Pettit accomplished with that foundation was anything but typical.Pettit, the NBA\u2019s first Most Valuable Player in 1956 and the first player in league history to reach the 20,000-point plateau, died Wednesday, his alma mater LSU said. The Basketball Hall of Fame announced the news on Thursday. He was 93.\u201cProbably as fierce a competitor as (has) ever played,\u201d Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell once said of Pettit. \u201cHe knew what he was doing. As great as he was, he was always better under pressure.\u201dDrafted No. 2 in 1954 by the then-Milwaukee Hawks, the 6-foot-9 Pettit was Rookie of the Year in 1955 and a two-time league MVP \u2014 in 1956, the first in NBA history, and again in 1959. He earned All-Star honors 11 times (every season he played) and was named to the NBA\u2019s 25th, 35th, 50th and 75th anniversary teams. Throughout his Hall of Fame career with the Hawks \u2014 first in Milwaukee, then in St. Louis \u2014 Pettit averaged 26.4 points and 16.2 rebounds per game. The power forward took the most pride in rebounding. Only Wilt Chamberlain (22.9) and Russell (22.5) had higher rebounds-per-game averages than Pettit.\u201cIt became a real focus for me,\u201d Pettit said. \u201cI was very proud of my rebounding ability.\u201cNot Wilt, not Bill Russell, but good.\u201d\n \n \n \n \n From the archives\n \n \n \n \n NBA 75: At No. 31, Bob Pettit\u2019s illustrious career was filled with a flurry of firsts\n \n \n Look up Pettit's basketball r\u00e9sum\u00e9, in addition to his on-court numbers, and notice the many firsts he accomplished for his NBA career.\n \n \n \n \n \n Pettit didn\u2019t start playing basketball until late in high school because he thought he was too awkward and, ironically, too tall to play.\u00a0But he won a state championship at Baton Rouge High School not long after he took up the game.\u00a0\u201cI never played basketball until I was \u2026 a junior in high school,\u201d Pettit once told NBA.com. \u201cI practiced at night with a lamp in the window in my back bedroom, shooting baskets hour after hour. I just learned trial-and-error. Repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. Finally, I learned something.\u201dPettit was one of the first NBA players to incorporate weight training into his workout regimen. Pettit credited a USA Strength and Conditioning Coaches Hall of Famer and fellow Louisianan for getting him started.\u201cI really think \u2026 that Alvin Roy and his getting into strength and health, the lifting and the power lifting and things, might have had something to do with it,\u201d Pettit told Louisiana Public Television in 1983. \u201cOne of the real centers in the country was right here for working with (Roy) to develop the strength.\u00a0\u201cHe was ahead of his time, wasn\u2019t he? Yes, he was one of the first, really. In fact, I wouldn\u2019t have touched weights as an athlete as a basketball player unless Alvin had gotten me into it, and I had confidence in him.\u201dPettit carried that confidence to college. In three years at LSU (1951-54), he put up 27.4 points and 14.4 rebounds per game. His scoring average was a league record until another Tiger, \u201cPistol\u201d Pete Maravich, shattered the record with a 44.2-point per game average a decade and a half later. Pettit is now third behind Maravich and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. He was a three-time first-team All-SEC honoree, leading the Tigers to conference championships in 1953 and \u201954, and their first Final Four in 1953.\u201cAfter my senior year, I played in a couple of All-Star games. There was one in New York and one in Kansas City. \u2026 I played pretty well in both of those,\u201d Pettit told The Athletic in 2021. \u201cThen I started considering maybe the NBA.\u201dThe still-growing NBA, less than a decade old at the time, was far from a guarantee for college basketball standouts.\u00a0\u201cWe knew very little about it here,\u201d Pettit said. \u201cThere were only eight teams in professional basketball in towns like Rochester, New York; Syracuse, New York; or Minneapolis; Fort Wayne. Basketball in those days was not in the Los Angeles and the Seattles and the other, some of the other major cities \u2014 Chicago didn\u2019t have a team \u2014 in the major cities in the country.\u201cWe read very little about it. I knew a little about it, and it was very close to me whether I was going to play professional basketball or play (amateur) basketball.\u201dAfter the Baltimore Bullets made Furman\u2019s Frank Selvy the No. 1 pick in the 1954 draft, the Milwaukee Hawks picked Pettit next. He signed with them for $11,000. Pettit made the leap from college to the NBA seem effortless. He averaged 20.4 points and 13.8 rebounds per game on the way to that Rookie of the Year honor. The next year brought his first MVP and an All-Star Game MVP award, his first of four, tied with Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant for most all time.\u00a0In 1958, Pettit led the Hawks to their lone NBA championship, clinching the crown with a 50-point performance in Game 6 against the Celtics, the first 50-point game in NBA Finals history. It was the only time Boston, led by Russell, didn\u2019t win the league championship from 1957 to 1966.\u201cIt was the highlight of my 11-year professional career, no doubt,\u201d Pettit once told the Hawks\u2019 website.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s something that you look back on forever. You see some of these players today, hanging on to try to win a title and get that ring. It\u2019s nice to have been on one of the teams that won a league championship. It\u2019s nice to look back on it and say, \u2018Boy, that was a great year for us.\u2019\u201dPettit helped revolutionize the power forward position, a role that was relatively new to basketball. Centers played with their backs to the basket, while power forwards would face the hoop.\u201cMy game was playing hard, rebounding and having my teammates set me up for a jump shot,\u201d Pettit told NBA.com. \u201cI got the ball, would take two or three dribbles, drive to the basket and make a layup or get fouled. I had a very good jump shot. I could hit it from the top of the circle. We didn\u2019t have a 3-point line, so I didn\u2019t shoot 3s, but I could shoot within 15-18 feet of the basket with pretty good accuracy.\u201dThat ability to shoot or fake and drive to the hoop made Pettit hard to guard, and helped him become one of the leaders in free throws made and free-throw attempts. He still ranks in the top 20 in both categories in NBA history.Pettit took the Hawks to NBA Finals appearances in 1960 and 1961, though they couldn\u2019t topple Boston again. He teamed with future Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens to lift St. Louis to the postseason three additional times in the \u201960s. But the franchise never again reached the special heights of \u201958.\u201cBob Pettit was \u2026 one of the smartest forwards and one of the greatest forwards in the history of the game of basketball,\u201d Oscar Robertson once told NBA.com.Pettit, who averaged a double-double every season he played, retired from the NBA in 1965 at age 32. After his ninth season in the NBA, he gave the Hawks owner notice that he was retiring in two seasons as he had been offered a role at a Louisiana bank.\u201c\u2018I\u2019m quitting in two years,\u201d he recalled in the 1983 interview. \u201cMake your plans. Two years\u2019 notice, and I\u2019m getting out.\u2019\u201dBy that final season in 1964-65, Pettit knew that his athleticism was keeping him from maintaining his personal standards for excellence.\u201cAthletic prowess is really a short-term loan, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Pettit said in 1983. \u201cI started to get injured. \u2026 I knew that I wasn\u2019t jumping as high.\u201dA diminished Pettit played his final game on March 30, 1965, scoring six points in 14 minutes in a 109-103 loss to the Baltimore Bullets. The 10-time First Team All-NBA player still had the respect of opponents.\u201cIt was good for us that you were playing on one leg,\u201d Bullets forward Bailey Howell told Pettit in the Hawks locker room after the game, according to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, \u201cor we would have never beaten you. Naturally we wanted to win, but I hate it worse than anything that it had to end this way.\u201dPettit was the first player to surpass 20,000 career points and was the NBA\u2019s all-time points leader \u2014 one of seven players in history to hold that distinction \u2014 for one season before Chamberlain passed him in 1966. Still, Pettit\u2019s scoring average remains 10th in NBA history.\u00a0Yet, Pettit prefers to remember his indefatigable effort, especially on the boards.\u201cWhenever my teammates shot the ball, I didn\u2019t watch the ball; I watched the guy playing me,\u201d Pettit told NBA.com in 2021. \u201cI focused on the guy playing defense on me who was trying to block me off the boards. I fought and got around him and then got in position so the ball would bounce in the area I was fighting to get to. Basically, my game was pushing and shoving under the backboard to get rebounds.\u201cThe other thing I did, I played as hard as I could play every minute I was in the game. I never took time off. I never relaxed or said I\u2019m not going to go get the ball this time. I didn\u2019t do that. I went after every offensive rebound. Every time my teammate shot, I went after the ball. Not once, not twice, every time. In the long run, that really paid off for me.\u201dThat relentlessness led him to basketball immortality, as he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1971 and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1973. He worked in the banking industry and financial consulting after his playing career ended, retiring at 75.\u00a0He spent his later years in the New Orleans area and kept tabs on the nearby Pelicans and the Hawks, never too far away from the game he first learned to master in his parents\u2019 backyard.\u201cHe doesn\u2019t get the kind of recognition that he deserves,\u201d Wilkens said of Pettit in 2021. \u201cHe was a hell of a player.\u201d\nTyler Batiste|Managing Editor, NBAFollow Rob Peterson|Senior Editor, NBAFollow Sep 24, 2026Connections: Sports EditionSpot the pattern. Connect the termsFind the hidden link between sports termsPlay today's puzzleWhat did you think of this story?MEHSOLIDAWESOME",
    "published_at": "2026-09-24T21:46:26+00:00",
    "author_name": "Tyler Batiste, Rob Peterson",
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    "ai_headline": "Bob Pettit, pictured, was the NBA's first formal Most Valuable Player winner and the first to cross the 20,000-point threshold. Via Bettmann \/ ContributorBob Pettit learned to play basketball in his parents\u2019 backyard in south Louisiana, with a light streaming from a bedroom window illuminating a hoop and a backboard.",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Bob Pettit, NBA Legend and First MVP, Dies at 93",
    "ai_excerpt": "Bob Pettit, the NBA's first MVP and the first player to reach 20,000 points, has died at 93. A Hall of Famer, he revolutionized the power forward position and led the Hawks to their only NBA championship.",
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