Bob Pettit, the first man to be named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player and the first to score 20,000 points, has died at the age of 93. He died on 23 September, with LSU, his alma mater, announcing the news a day later. No cause of death was given.
Pettit spent all 11 of his professional seasons with the Hawks, was an All-Star in every one of them, and delivered the franchise the only championship it has won — a 110-109 Game 6 victory over the Boston Celtics on 12 April 1958 in which he scored 50 points and took 19 rebounds. He finished with 20,880 career points at 26.4 per game and 12,849 rebounds at 16.2 per game, retiring in 1965 as the league’s all-time leading scorer.
The night in St Louis that still stands alone
The 1958 Finals rematch with Boston was the Hawks’ second shot at Red Auerbach’s emerging dynasty, and Pettit settled it almost single-handedly. He had 31 points through three quarters at Kiel Auditorium, then scored 19 of St Louis’s final 21 points, the last of them a tip-in with 15 seconds remaining that made it 110-107. The Celtics’ Bill Sharman cut the gap to one at the buzzer. It was not enough.
His 50 points remained the most ever scored in a title-clinching game for 63 years, until Giannis Antetokounmpo matched the figure for Milwaukee in 2021. The Hawks have not won a championship since — through the move to Atlanta in 1968 and 58 subsequent seasons — which leaves Pettit’s performance as the single defining night in the club’s history rather than the start of anything.
Boston went on to win 11 titles in 13 years. St Louis, with Pettit, Cliff Hagan and Slater Martin, were the only team to interrupt that run between 1957 and 1966.
A big man who was built, not born
Pettit was cut from his high school team in Baton Rouge before a late growth spurt took him past 6ft 9in. At LSU he led the Southeastern Conference in scoring in each of his three varsity seasons — 25.5, 24.9 and 31.4 points per game — and became an All-American. His No. 50 hangs in the rafters at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center; he is one of three LSU players in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, alongside Maravich and Shaquille O’Neal.
Taken second overall by the Milwaukee Hawks in the 1954 draft, he was Rookie of the Year in 1955, then moved with the franchise to St Louis. In 1955-56 he led the league in both scoring, at 25.7 points a game, and rebounding — and was handed the newly created MVP award. He won it again in 1958-59 at 29.2 points a game.
The record that best captures how his peers saw him is the All-Star Game MVP: he won it four times, a total matched only by Kobe Bryant. He never averaged fewer than 20 points in a season, and he did it in an era when a forward was expected to be a rebounder first. The Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 1971, described a “sleek, skilled big man who revolutionised the forward position”.
What his death takes with it
Pettit’s passing removes one of the last direct links to the NBA’s formative decade, when the league had eight or nine teams, played in arenas that doubled as ice rinks, and was fighting for column inches against college basketball. He was the sport’s first great power forward and the first player the league could point to as a statistical landmark — reaching 20,000 points in November 1964, a threshold that has since become routine.
He was also, unusually for his generation, financially secure through his own planning: he returned to Baton Rouge after retiring at 32 and built a long career in banking and financial consulting, remaining a fixture at LSU and New Orleans Pelicans games well into his eighties.
The Hawks, who retired his No. 9, said in a statement that the jersey “continues to hang proudly at State Farm Arena as a lasting reminder of the impact he made on our organisation”. Pettit was named to the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team in 2021, one of the few players from the 1950s to survive every round of the league’s periodic re-rankings.
The award he won first is now the Michael Jordan Trophy. The name on the first one was his.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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