How did Pete Maravich die? Exploring the hidden heart defect that claimed his life

Modified Feb 23, 2024 14:11 GMT

One could argue that no other college basketball player is as legendary as LSU's "Pistol" Pete Maravich. As the current all-time NCAA leading scorer (in a game where there was no 3-point shot), Maravich treated fans to scoring displays that, to his day, have never been seen before. Playing for the Tigers from 1967 to 1970, Maravich scored 3,667 points, averaging 44.2 points per game.

While he could never bring LSU to the top of the college basketball world, Pete Maravich remained a legend for everything he did on the court. He eventually had a career in the NBA and remained successful there, too. But one fateful day, on Jan. 5, 1988, the basketball icon "Pistol Pete" suddenly left this world to the shock of everyone who knew him.

How did Pete Maravich die?

Pete Maravich's official listed cause of death was congenital heart failure--"congenital" in layman's terms means it was inborn. He died suddenly during a pickup basketball game with a handful of regular folks, during a time when he was seven years removed from the NBA.

During an autopsy, it was revealed that Maravich's heart was completely missing the left coronary artery. Responsible for supplying blood to the heart's muscle fibers, the artery's absence forced Pistol Pete's right coronary artery to grow abnormally bigger to compensate.

Pistol Pete reportedly just collapsed face-first into the floor after telling a guy who asked how he was feeling, in his own words, "I feel great." The group, which included known evangelical author James Dobson, corroborated that Maravich said his final words less than a minute before he died.

Pistol Pete reportedly 'predicted' his own death years before

Stories of people allegedly predicting their deaths can almost certainly be apocryphal. One could argue that Maravich's prediction of his demise is the same, but it's interesting to learn about nonetheless.

A 1974 interview that Pistol Pete apparently had with Andy Nuzzo, who was a sportswriter for the Beaver County Times, alleges that the then-25-year-old hoops star said this to him (via the New World Encyclopedia):

"I don't want to play 10 years in the NBA and then die of a heart attack at 40."

A quick Google search lends eerie credence to that alleged statement from Pete Maravich. Pistol Pete played ten seasons in the NBA, spending time with the Atlanta Hawks, the New Orleans Jazz (before the franchise moved to Utah) and the Boston Celtics from 1970 to 1980.

The age that he died in? Forty years old, of a heart attack.