20 NBA Hall-of-Fame careers that were cut short by injury

NBA Hall-of-Fame career cut short: Pete Maravich

One of the greatest nicknames in NBA history, “Pistol” Pete Maravich is also one of the greatest college basketball players to ever lace them up. He is still the all-time leading NCAA Division I scorer, pouring in 3,667 points over a three-year career from 1967-1970 (freshmen weren’t eligible to play for the varsity team back then). He reached that total despite no 3-point line and no shot clock, averaging 44.2 points per game. It’s a mind-boggling statistic.

That level of college production is why Maravich was the third overall pick of the Atlanta Hawks in the 1970 draft, and he just kept on scoring in the NBA. Pistol Pete averaged 24.3 points across four seasons in Atlanta, making two All-Star Games, before joining the New Orleans Jazz and making another three. He led the league in scoring in 1976-77 with 31.1 points per game, a top-50 mark all-time.

The next season, however, things started to unravel. Maravich injured not one but both knees over the course of the season, missing 32 games, and it only got worse from there. His game and minute totals decreased each of the next two seasons until in 1979-80 he was waived by the newly relocated Utah Jazz. He played 26 games as a bench “gunner” for the Boston Celtics alongside a rookie Larry Bird, but then hung up his sneakers rather than continue to try and gut through his knee issues.

That final season of his career, the NBA instituted a new rule: a 3-point shot, worth more if you made the basket from outside of the arc. Maravich hit 10-of-15 3-pointers that season, a small-sample illustration of his perfect jumper. The Pistol is in the Hall of Fame as much for his college accolades as his professional ones, but if he had stayed healthy he not only could have racked up more honors, he could have shown off his outside shot in a way that would have made him the first great 3-point marksman of all time.