Top 100 NBA Players: #21

Bob Pettit

(Kalb: #11, Simmons: #17, BBR: #21)

Of the top 25 players of all time, Bob Pettit is probably the least remembered. Part of that has to do with him retiring in 1965, long before most of today's sports fans were following the sport. It also has a lot to do with the fact that he played the majority of his career in Saint Louis, a city that no longer has an NBA team, and with no fan base left to celebrate him, he has been largely forgotten.

Here are some good reason to remember Pettit. For the 4 seasons before Wilt Chamberlain came into the league, Pettit was the best player in the league, winning 2 MVP's and playing in 2 NBA Finals. The MVP award was created in 1956, and Pettit was the first to ever win the award, in just his second year as a pro. Here are his stats from that season, compared with those of Bob Cousy, his nearest competitor:

Pettit - 25.7 pts, 16.2 reb, 2.6 ast, .429 FG%, .736 FT%
Cousy - 18.8 pts, 6.8 reb, 8.9 ast, .360 FG%, .844 FT%

Pettit was the league's leading scorer that year, while Cousy led the league in assists. Cousy was better at the guard stats, and Pettit at the big man stats, so the scoring title made him the better player. In 1957 and 1958, the MVP's were won by Cousy and Russell, but Pettit had a legitimate argument for both. Here are their statistical comparisons from those seasons:

Pettit (1957) - 24.7 pts, 14.6 reb, 1.9 ast, .415 FG%, .773 FT%
Cousy (1957) - 20.6 pts, 4.8 reb, 7.5 ast, .378 FG%, .821 FT%

Pettit (1958) - 24.6 pts, 17.4 reb, 2.2 ast, .410 FG%, .749 FT%
Russell (1958) - 16.6 pts, 22.7 reb, 2.9 ast, .442 FG%, .519 FT%

Pettit and Cousy were both slightly down in 1957, but since Pettit was already the better player before, I believe he was still the better player. The following season it was a little easier to make the comparison, since he and Russell were both big men, and while Russell was a little better from the field and on the boards, Pettit was much better from the line and at scoring in general.

There are only two retired players in NBA history to play at least 3 seasons and score at least 20 points per game in every season they played. Michael Jordan is one of them. The other is Bob Pettit. Pettit led the league in scoring twice, but after Wilt arrived he never led the league again. That didn't prevent him from becoming the first player ever to reach 20,000 points, and he was also the league's all-time leading scorer when he retired.

Another thing that sets Pettit apart and makes him memorable is that he played one of the greatest games in NBA Finals history, and it happened to come in the game in which Bill Russell lost his only NBA Finals. Pettit scored what was then a playoff record 50 points in Game 6, and they needed every one of them to beat Boston 110-109.

Besides that Finals victory, Pettit and the Hawks also made three other appearances in the Finals, losing to the Celtics each time. Pettit was easily the best player on each of those teams, and also on two other teams that lost in the Conference Finals. He was ranked among the top 5 players in the entire league for each of his first 10 season, falling out in season 11 due to an injury that caused him to retire.

David Robinson started off playing at a higher level than Pettit, and he also hung around longer and won one more championship than him, but he was never the best player in the NBA, which Pettit was for four seasons, and Pettit remained a superstar for much longer than Robinson. The four trips to the Finals were the final piece that pushed Pettit ahead of Robinson to a spot just outside the top 20 players of all time.