'Pistol' Pete Maravich was 'in a league by himself' in H-O-R-S-E

As he waited last week in his car at a Whole Foods parking lot while his wife shopped, playing it safe during these times as a 68-year-old, Bob McAdoo laughed a knowing laugh.

Because for all the trickery cobbled together by the contestants in ESPN’s H-O-R-S-E competition last week, the former Miami Heat assistant coach and current scout knew none, including eventual winner Mike Conley Jr., had experienced what he had experienced more than 40 years ago while participating in such an NBA exhibition himself.

Back in 1977-78, when the NBA’s games were broadcast by CBS, the network offered weekly taped H-O-R-S-E competitions at halftime, similar to the format ESPN utilized for its production amid the NBA’s shutdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Basically, if one participant cannot match a successful attempt by his opponent, he receives a letter. Five letters, H-O-R-S-E, and you’re out. No dunking allowed, then or now.

For McAdoo, an outside-shooting big man when big men simply did not shoot outside, it was the perfect setup, including a victory in a preliminary round over Boston Celtics guard Charlie Scott.

And then?

“And then, Pistol Pete,” McAdoo said with a laugh, referencing Aliquippa’s Pete Maravich, the all-time Division I scoring leader.

Understand, that was a season when McAdoo would average 26.5 points for the New York Knicks on 52-percent shooting, a time before the NBA advent of the 3-point shot.

“I knew I was in trouble,” he said. “I knew Pistol had a lot of tricks in his bag.”

And Maravich pulled them all out, especially after McAdoo went up by two letters.

Thing is, McAdoo actually matched the attempt when Maravich called, “around the back, through the legs, up from the other side.” At 6-foot-9, McAdoo was quite the sight with that one.

But then Maravich, at the time playing for the New Orleans Jazz, started to make McAdoo feel closer to his current age than his 26 at the time.

“He started doing between his legs and stuff, and that stuff I had never worked on,” McAdoo said of a competition that was held in high enough esteem at the time to also draw the likes of Rick Barry, David Thompson, Rudy Tomjanovich, George Gervin, Doug Collins and Dan Issel, among others.

“I was basically a shooter from deep range. Now that I look at it, I say I probably should have taken him outside. But he could make those shots, too.”

In the end, during the event taped in Atlanta at what now is the CNN Center, McAdoo only could watch as Maravich advanced to the finals, with the competition won by Paul Westphal when Maravich was unable to continue because of a knee injury.

“He was in a league by himself,” McAdoo said of Maravich, who died in 1988 at the age of 40 because of a previously undetected heart defect. “He would pull those shots off in a game, too. I’d seen him do tricks in a game, where he would fake people out. On the fast break, he was a nightmare.”

Ultimately, even after working with the likes of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Tim Hardaway and Dan Majerle during a Heat coaching run that ran until 2014, never was there anything like that time McAdoo tried to match Pistol Pete shot for shot.

“No,” McAdoo said. “Only Pistol Pete had all the ‘oohs’ and all the ‘aahs.’ ”