26.4 PPG, 16.2 RPG, 3.0 APG, 44 FG%, 76 FT%
“When Bob Pettit came out of college in 1954, no one thought he was talented enough to make it as a professional basketball player. Although he had been a prolific scorer at Louisiana State University, the tall, thin forward was deemed too slight at 200 pounds to survive the pounding of an NBA season. However, the scouts failed to factor in Pettit’s willingness to work harder than anyone else on the court in order to succeed.
And succeed he did. After 11 years with the Milwaukee and St. Louis Hawks, he retired having become the first player in the league to top 20,000 points. The greatest forward of his era, Pettit was an All-Star in each of his 11 seasons, an All-NBA First Team selection 10 times, and an All-NBA Second Team pick once. He never finished below seventh in the NBA scoring race, and he left the sport with two Most Valuable Player Awards and an NBA championship ring.
After Pettit’s playing days had ended, rival Bill Russell offered this tribute: “Bob made ’second effort’ a part of the sport’s vocabulary. He kept coming at you more than any man in the game. He was always battling for position, fighting you off the boards.”
Born in 1932, Robert E. Lee Pettit Jr. learned about second effort long before he reached the professional ranks. His basketball career had gotten off to a discouraging start after he was cut from the Baton Rouge (Louisiana) High School team, first as a freshman and then as a sophomore. But with encouragement from his father, a county sheriff, the younger Pettit worked endlessly to improve his game, firing countless shots at the basket set up in his backyard.” [Read]
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[Sources: NBA.com, YouTube, Basketball-Reference.com]
