Pistol Pete Connection - Times and Democrat
Orangeburg man plays key role in new biography of legendary player
By TRAVIS BOLAND, T&D Sports Writer
Saturday, December 16, 2006
He played for Pistol Pete's father. He coached the basketball phenom in high school in South Carolina. He's been close to the Maravich family ever since.
Now Don Carver of Orangeburg has played an integral role in creating a new biography about one of basketball's most prolific scorers.
The book is "Maravich," the story of "Pistol'' Pete Maravich. It is written by Marshall Terrill, a sportswriter in Arizona, and Wayne Federman, in cooperation with Maravich's widow, Jackie Maravich
"Marshall got in touch with me in 2000," Carver said. "He asked if I could give him some contacts at Clemson who could help him with the book. He asked me about my experiences, and we formed a friendship. We talked over the next seven years, and he would send me chapters he finished to let me read."
Terrill said Carver had a big part in creation of the new book.
"He provided great insights into the Maravich family, put me in touch with several people in Clemson, read the manuscript for accuracy and gave me a lot of perspective about the flavor of basketball in the ACC at the time," Terrill said. "Basically he was an unofficial adviser. He's also a very loyal friend and it's easy to see why the Maravichs trusted him."
Carver's path first crossed with the Maravichs in 1956 when Pete's father Press Maravich took over the head coaching duties at then-Clemson College. Carver had just graduated from Elkins High School in Elkins, W.Va., and Maravich was looking to recruit him.
"He had just taken the position at Clemson," Carver said. "He told me he heard about my selection to West Virginia's all-state team and asked me to meet him."
At the meeting, Maravich invited Carver to fly down to Clemson to check out the school.
"I was 18 years old, straight out of high school, and had never been on a plane before. In fact I had never heard of Clemson College."
Carver had signed a letter of intent to West Virginia Institute of Technology and was set to be the top guy as soon as he stepped on campus.
"Tech led the nation in scoring in 1956, averaging 110 points per game," Carver said. "They had the number one scorer in the nation who was graduating, and I was promised to have his spot the next year."
Carver spent two weeks at Clemson playing pick-up games and checking out the campus. He would later accept a full basketball scholarship from Clemson. That's the first time he met Pete Maravich, then just 9 years old.
"Pete would be at some of the practices at Clemson," Carver said. "I continued to see Pete for the next four years. He was kind of a nuisance during shoot-around because he was usually in the way."
Carver would play three years for Press Maravich before opportunity started knocking again. One month before his graduation, Carver was approached by Pete Carlisle, head basketball coach at Daniel High School. Carlisle wanted Carver to take over the head coaching duties at Daniel. Carver put in an application and became the head coach in 1961.
"I loved coaching and teaching at Daniel High School," Carver said. "In 1961 we had two lettermen returning. One was junior Jim Sutherland and the other was ninth-grader Pete Maravich. We finished the season 9-9."
Carver would return his entire starting five from the '61 team, including Sutherland, now a senior, and 10th-grader Pete Maravich.
"1962 we finished the year 23-3," Carver said. "Jim averaged 27.5 points per game. Pete averaged 20.5 points per game, but if Jim were not on that Daniel team he would have averaged a lot more."
Carver remembers Maravich waiting for him after he finished coaching the JV football team.
"When he was in ninth grade he would wait for me and we would play one-on-one," Carver said. "Some nights I would win, some nights he would win. If I tried to block his shot, he would drive around me. If I tried to stay back, he would hit the outside shot. Even though I had him when he was very young, I knew there was something special about him. But I never envisioned him being what he became."
T&D Sports Writer Travis Boland can be reached at tboland@timesanddemocrat.com and 803-533-5522.
'Maravich' a proper piece on Pistol Pete
Maravich's former coach says book has player's life in correct perspective
By BOB GILLESPIE
bgillespie@thestate.com
ORANGEBURG — Don Carver places the book gently, almost reverently, on his dining room table. Occasionally he reaches over to touch it, turning pages, handling the volume the way a proud parent might caress a newborn.
Carver, 68, did not write the book, but the reasons for his proprietary affection soon become apparent.
"Maravich" is a recently released, 400-page-plus biography of "Pistol Pete" Maravich by co-authors Marshall Terrill and Wayne Federman. Eight years in the making, it claims to be "the definitive biography" on the late basketball legend, and Carver agrees.
"It's the best I've read," he said. "It has more insight into Pete because (his widow) Jackie is a part of it."
Carver paused, then added, "It's very satisfying to have (the book) in hand."
Nearly 45 years ago, Maravich was a skinny, baby-faced 15-year-old guard who loved basketball with an almost unearthly obsession. That inner fire would drive him to become the greatest offensive player, pound-for-pound, in the game's history: a rail-thin 6-foot-5, floppy-haired phenom who averaged more than 40 points a game at LSU, was named to the NBA Hall of Fame and selected as one of the 50 greatest players.
In 1962-63, Carver was Maravich's coach at Clemson's Daniel High School. He watched the 5-8, 150-pound youngster who, growing up, wasn't strong enough to shoot jumpers and had to heave the ball from his hip — the origin of his "Pistol Pete" moniker.
"Basketball was Pete's total life," Carver said. "That's all he thought about, 365 days a year."
The coach understood that passion for basketball better than anyone outside the Maravich family — because, in a way, he had shared it.
Carver, who played three seasons at Clemson for Pete's father, Press Maravich, grew up in the mountains of West Virginia, where "the only way out was sports. If not for sports, you were a nobody.
"(Pete Maravich) probably could say the same thing."
Now, nearly a half-century removed from his brush with basketball greatness, Carver has another connection to Maravich. He didn't write the new book, but he helped make it a reality.
Terrill, an Arizona-based reporter and author of 10 books on actor Steve McQueen, basketball star David Thompson and others, says he grew up with three heroes: McQueen, Elvis Presley and Maravich. In 1998, when Maravich was named to the all-time top 50, the time seemed ripe to write his life story.
"People are still very sentimental about Pete," Terrill said. "He was one of a kind, something we'll never see again."
Terrill's research led him in 2000 to Carver, with whom he struck up an "e-mail friendship." As the book slowly took form, the writer sent chapters on Maravich's early years to Carver's home for evaluation, insights and corrections.
"It was burning up my printer," Carver said.
But work on the book was therapy for Carver, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. "It was winter, and I was staying inside anyway," he said. "Doing that helped me emotionally, made me feel better."
When he learned about Carver's illness, "that floored me," Terrill said. "We've become fast friends. He's a loyal guy."
The book project finally took off the past two years when Jackie Maravich agreed to open up her late husband's archives. The volume of material from those, plus some 300 interviews, was substantial. Terrill said the original manuscript was 1,000 pages before publisher Sport Media Publishing Inc. twice ordered it trimmed.
A 10,000-book first edition has sold well, and a second printing is set for early 2007.
"It took a lot of time, but it was very rewarding that Marshall would ask my opinion" on his work, Carver said. He said he was approached by other authors working on Maravich books but declined to get involved.
"(Terrill and Federman's book) is a positive book, more family-oriented," Carver said. "There were a lot of negatives in other books."
Indeed, Pistol Pete's life was often touched by tragedy, and "Maravich" pulls few punches. Press Maravich died of prostate cancer, and Pete's mother, Helen, battled alcoholism and finally committed suicide. Pete also faced his mother's two demons during his career before finding peace in Christianity later in life.
Then in 1988, at age 40, Maravich collapsed and died during a pickup game at his church. The cause, a congenital heart defect, is perhaps the most amazing part of the story, Terrill said.
"He should never have lived past his teens," he said. The book tells how an ROTC physical at the end of his LSU career indicated the problem. Another exam while he was in the NBA also was a warning, but Maravich never followed up after retiring.
Carver knows Maravich's life was a mixture of joy and pain, a life that ended too soon. But he mostly remembers good times when young Pete was first learning what wondrous things he could and would do in basketball.
"The Pete I knew was an excellent young man," Carver said.
Readers of "Maravich," he said, will get a chance to know that Pistol Pete, too.
Reach Senior Writer Bob Gillespie at (803) 771-8304.
ABOUT THE BOOK
AUTHORS: Wayne Federman and Marshall Terrill
PUBLISHER: Sport Media Publishing Inc., August 2006
LENGTH: 422 pages
COST: $24.95 (includes Maravich's LSU and NBA statistics, game-by-game scoring at LSU and "The Pistol's Top 25 Games" as selected by the authors)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Wayne Federman is an actor, comedian and writer who has acted in more than a dozen films, including "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Fifty First Dates" and "Legally Blonde." He appears on The Comedy Channel and wrote and co-produced the film "Max and Josh" for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Marshall Terrill is a reporter for the Chandler (Ariz.) Connection. He has written 10 books, including "Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel" and co-authored books with David Thompson and boxers Ernie Shavers and Ken Norton. He recently finished "Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business," which will be published in 2007.
