The Journey of Pete Maravich's Son

In the Name of His Father: The Journey of Pete Maravich's Son
By PETE THAMEL, NY Times

Published: February 17, 2004


Jaeson Maravich, 24, has three tattoos dedicated to his father.


HATTIESBURG, Miss. — Jaeson Maravich tried eight or nine types of sleeping pills before finding a brand that worked. To get three or four hours of sleep every night, Maravich used to take one pill. Now he takes two.

The infomercials keep him company at 4 a.m. when he tosses and turns. Lose weight. Get stronger. Make money. He has seen them all.

He has seen all the doctors, too. Taken all their tests. Been poked, prodded and hooked up with wires. Still, they cannot explain why Jaeson Maravich struggles to sleep.

But Maravich knows. So does his mother, his younger brother and his coach.

In a life inspired yet tortured by being the son of Pistol Pete Maravich, the Hall of Fame guard, Jaeson's anxiety to live up to his family name keeps him awake.

A senior point guard for William Carey College, an N.A.I.A. school in southern Mississippi, Maravich, 24, wants desperately to play professional basketball.

He has attended five colleges in the last six years, views the prospect of a girlfriend as a distraction and refuses to drink soda, let alone alcohol. Before the sleep problems began in November, Maravich routinely spent six hours a day shooting, dribbling and refining his game.

Despite an injury-riddled, vagabond career spent searching for stardom, Maravich has shown his father's relentless passion for basketball while attempting the unlikely leap from the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics to the N.B.A.

"He idolizes his dad, wants to be like him and play like him," his teammate Blake Anderson said. "Jaeson isn't real interested in anything but basketball. He's totally obsessed with the game. It really is unhealthy."

Everything changed that day in 1988 when they pulled Jaeson, then in third grade, out of school lunch. His father had died unexpectedly, at age 40, while playing pick-up basketball. Four years after kicking alcoholism and finding religion, Pete Maravich's heart gave out.

"I just remember sitting there for three or five seconds, trying to take it all in," Maravich said. "Then I remember me and my mom crying."

To shield them, Jackie Maravich did not allow her sons, Jaeson, 8, and Josh, 5, to attend the funeral. But 16 years later, the memory of his father's death still sears. When Jaeson prays at night, he asks God why he took his father so soon, why he robbed him of the opportunity of having a close relationship like Pete had had with his father, Press, who coached him at Louisiana State.

When Pete Maravich was growing up, he would dribble a basketball out the car window as the family drove into town. He would even take a ball with him to the movie theater, sit in an aisle seat and dribble throughout the show. That work ethic came from his hard-nosed father.

Freshmen were not eligible to play then, but in Pete's three college seasons, from 1967 to 1970, he scored 3,667 points, the modern scoring record in college basketball. He averaged 44.2 points a game, and his flamboyant style, along with his floppy hair and droopy socks, ushered basketball into the mainstream in the football-crazy south.

The Cow Palace, L.S.U.'s old arena, began filling up. Fans endured the smell of the manure from the agriculture school, which was housed in the same building, to see Maravich play. He became so popular that backboards began popping up in driveways around the Bayou. L.S.U. now plays in the Maravich Assembly Center.

"Pete was so far ahead of his time I don't think he was appreciated," the former L.S.U. coach Dale Brown said. "He had no 3-point shot and no shot clock. To average 44.2 points per game today, you'd have to essentially score 15 3-pointers in every game you play."

When Jaeson was young, Pete took him on road trips when he did color commentary for basketball games. He took him to the 1987 N.B.A. All-Star Game in Seattle and introduced him to Michael Jordan.

Every afternoon, Pete Maravich took his sons up to the third floor of their house in Covington, La., where they would perform the dribbling and shooting drills Pete had learned from his father.

As an eighth grader, Jaeson averaged 30 points a game. But that success, and his famous surname, brought unwanted attention.

"He thought he was supposed to go out and score 50 points a game," Josh Maravich, a walk-on at L.S.U., said of his older brother. "People in the crowd would start saying stuff to him, and he couldn't really handle it."

Jackie Maravich recalls Jaeson hiding under bleachers after games in eighth grade to avoid autograph seekers. That same year, Billy Packer called to see if Jaeson would do an interview on national television. He refused.

After his ninth-grade season, Jaeson walked away from basketball.

"It was too much too soon," he said. "I was too young and everything was happening at once, and I didn't have my dad around to help me deal with it. I just couldn't take it."

His senior year, Maravich changed his mind. He played varsity for the St. Paul's School in Covington, La., and drew some light recruiting interest. He knew he needed to keep improving, so he went to New Hampton Prep in New Hampshire. Maravich tore a ligament in his back doing squats, however, and lasted just one semester.

After six months of rehabilitation, he decided to walk on at Alabama, the beginning of a dizzying, itinerant college basketball existence.

"I've been though so many schools, I can't remember what the reasoning was for choosing Alabama," Maravich said.

In search of playing time, he transferred to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College for the 1999-2000 season. Everything finally came together. He scored 27.3 points a game, third nationally for junior-college players, and was recruited by big-time programs, including Kentucky.

Maravich then decided to go to McNeese State, a small Division I university in Lake Charles, La., where the up-tempo style fit his game and his mother could watch him play. But he never took the court there. Going against the advice of the team trainer, he did squats in the weight room and tore the same ligament in his back.

Maravich returned home to take classes at a local college for a semester, but he was wooed to William Carey in the spring of 2002 by a former junior-college teammate. After five years of being the new guy and constantly having to fit in, Maravich finally found a home.

"This is the first school I've been actually two years in a row," he said. "It felt weird, but it's been nice. I've had stability."

The William Carey coach, Steve Knight, said the stability and comfort with his teammates had helped transform Maravich from an introvert to an occasional team prankster.

"This year he's really matured, had fun," Knight said. "And that's something that needed to happen for him to develop as a person."

Sitting on one of the 12 rows of wooden bleachers in William Carey's pint-sized gym recently, Maravich proudly wore one of his father's throwback jerseys — this one from the Atlanta Hawks. He owns at least three of his father's throwbacks, has three tattoos dedicated to his father, and all of his teammates call him Pistol.

Maravich, however, rarely talks about his father. His teammates and coaches know better than to bring it up. The same last name that sometimes made him wish he was a Smith or a Jones, however, may help get him the break he covets.

Marty Blake, the N.B.A. director of scouting, has sent scouts to see Maravich three times. While Maravich's lackadaisical defense may remind some of his father, his scoring ability (18.2 points a game), cockeyed but accurate shot (more than 40 percent on 3-pointers) and blazing speed make him a prospect.

Blake, who drafted Pete Maravich to the Atlanta Hawks in 1970, said Jaeson Maravich would most likely receive an invitation to the Portsmouth Invitational, a showcase camp for college basketball seniors each spring in Portsmouth, Va.

And after all the heartache, injuries and struggles, Blake is helping Maravich get exactly what he wants — a chance to do the family name proud.

"All I want is a shot," Maravich said. "Whatever happens, I went through a lot, and I got through it."

Maravich has a tattoo on his chest of a basketball with three numbers: 23, 7 and 44. Those are his father's jersey numbers. But Maravich has left space for a fourth — a professional uniform number of his own.