When Bob Petit had just graduated from the University of Louisiana in 1954, no one thought he would be able to become a professional basketball player with the physical condition and technical level. Petit, who was 2.06 meters tall at the time, weighed only 91 kilograms, but the lack of physical talent did not knock down the teenager, which at the time also urged him to work harder than others in training.
He succeeded, and after 11 years of playing for Milwaukee and St. Louis, he has become the first 20,000-point gentleman in the league after retiring, which is epoch-making. At the same time, he has been named an All-Star 11 times, a best first team and a best second team, and he has never fallen into the league's top seven points per game. In terms of other individual honors, he has also won 2 MVPs and 1 championship in his 11-year career.
After Petit retired, Boston Celtics Hall of Fame center Russell said of his white opponent: "Bob coined the term 'second offense' in basketball. He's always fighting you for a position, and he seems like he's going to have to beat you in a scramble for rebounds. ”
Petit was born in 1932, it was his father who took him to the road of basketball, Petit's basketball career began after graduating from junior high school, in order to be able to pursue a career in basketball in the future, he chose Baton Rouge High School after graduating from junior high school, but in his first and second years of high school, he was twice cut by the varsity team, and his basketball path was unfavorable. But with her father's encouragement, Petit Jr. began to work hard to improve his skills, and his main training method at that time was to constantly practice shooting on the court in his backyard.
In his junior year of high school, he finally returned to the varsity team, and his height had soared to 6 feet 4. In 1950, already a varsity team leader, he led Barucher High School to its first state championship in more than 20 years.
Petit later recalled that winning the high school championship was one of the two games he remembers the most in his life, and the other game that he will never forget was the sixth game of the 1958 NBA Finals, in which he scored a career-high 50 points, and finally Petit also led the Hawks to defeat the Celtics and win the only championship ring of his career. "Of course the two races can't be directly compared, but winning the statewide high school championship at that time was really too important for me." Petit recalled.
In 1954, Petit was selected by the Milwaukee Hawks in the first round of that year's draft, but at the time, there were not too many people who were optimistic about the emaciated teenager, and many people thought that his physical condition was probably difficult to gain a foothold in the league, but although Petit was only 200 pounds at the time, he was not soft at all, and he not only adapted to the cruel NBA game that season, but he also won the rookie of the year with an average of 20.4 points and 13.8 rebounds per game. At the same time, he also participated in the All-Star Game for the first time that season and was named the Best Team of the Year.
Although Petit won the best rookie of the season, the team's record was only a pitiful 26 wins and 46 losses. In the offseason after the end of the season, Eagles owner Ben Kona moved the team from Milwaukee to St. Louis. In the following 1955-56 season, the Eagles' first year in St. Louis, they made some progress, and in that season they had won seven more games than last year. The reason why the Hawks have made great progress that season is actually largely due to Petit's brave performance, who averaged 25.7 points and 16.2 rebounds per game that season, and was the top in the rankings of points per game and rebounds that season, which also helped him win the MVP of the season. At the same time, he also won the MVP of that season's All-Star Game, in which he slashed a quasi-triple-double with 20 points, 24 rebounds and seven assists.
Due to poor results, the Hawks underwent a massive restructuring before the start of the 1956–57 season. In the offseason, the Hawks traded the pick for Bill Russell from the Boston Celtics for Edward McCauley and rookie Cliff Hagan; in another deal with the New York Knicks, they also got guard Slat martin; and then they got Alex Hannham, who had just been cut by the Pistons.
The Hawks have changed managers three times this season, and Hannum has coached 31 of them as a player-coach, and during his time in charge, the Hawks have gradually begun to play their own rhythm. Soon after, however, Hannum finally accepted Petit's proposal for the benefit of the team. 'I was an old guy when he [Petit] was a rookie and I watched him step by step become a great player. In the Houston chronicle, Hannum said, "He was a winner, both at the card table and on the court. I often say that playing cards with Petit is a fun-free thing because his goal is only to win, not to relax. ”
In the 1956-57 season, the St. Louis Hawks finished with a record of 34 wins and 48 losses, which is not far from the 33 they scored last season. However, due to the overall weakness of the West End at that time, although their record was not outstanding, they could still tie for the top spot in the division with the Lakers and Jazz that season. They then beat their two rivals in succession in the playoffs to reach the Finals. Among them, in the battle between the West And the Lakers, they swept the opponent without bloodshed.
That season, the Hawks' opponent in the Finals was the Celtics. At the time, everyone thought that St. Louis could not pose any threat to Boston, the league's best record. But what everyone didn't expect was that in the first game of the series, St. Louis surprised them, and they went through two overtime hours on the spot and finally won the game 125-123. Boston then managed to save their second home field, followed by a win for each team in St. Louis. In this way, after four games, the total score of the two sides was tied 2-2.
In the fifth game, Boston eventually won 124-109. Two days later, in Game 6 of the series, Hagen of the Hawks scored a key shot missed by Petit in the final moments of the game, allowing the Hawks to narrowly win by two points, and to preserve the suspense of the championship that year until the last game.
That year's Game Seven was one of the most exciting games in NBA Finals history. A large number of spectators sat in front of the TELEVISION to watch the match, which took place on Saturday afternoon local time. In that game, the scores of the two sides have always been intertwined, first the Celtics led, and then the Eagles immediately equalized. Towards the end of the game, the Hawks were two points behind, but in the final moments of the game, Petit finally dragged the game into overtime with two free throws she had hit.
In the first overtime, Jack Coleman's final-minute shooting success was another life extension for the passive Hawks. But toward the end of the second overtime, a free throw by Celtics forward Jim Loskotov gave the home team a two-point lead. With little time left, Petit had to rush in before the bell rang in the Hawks' final shot, and his last shot ended up with only a weird three-no-stick. At the end of the game, the Celtics finally beat the Hawks 125-123 to win the game seven, so they also won the championship trophy of the year with a 4-3 overall score. Although the Hawks lost, it did not hide Petit's brilliant performance in the playoffs, and he averaged 29.8 points and 16.8 rebounds per game in the playoffs that season.
In the 1957–58 season, the St. Louis Hawks continued to work hard, winning 41 games that season and winning consecutive division titles. Bob Petit averaged a double-double of 24.6 points and 17.4 rebounds per game, and he also won the MVP again in that year's All-Star Game with 28 points and 26 rebounds.
In the Finals, the Hawks and Celtics met in the Finals for the second consecutive year. The Hawks narrowly won by two points in the first game, and then Boston equalized after the second game. However, in the third game, Russell unfortunately injured his ankle, and since then, the balance of the game has gradually tilted towards the Eagles, and in the end the Eagles have not given up on this low-hanging on to the victory. After losing the fourth game, they won again in the fifth game with a score of 102-100. The Hawks took a 3-2 lead on aggregate.
Moving to St. Louis in the sixth game, Russell played most of the time but did not perform well due to injuries. Petit, on the other hand, had one of the most glorious moments of his career in this game - he scored a career-high 50 points in this game, and the Eagles eventually narrowly beat the Celtics by 1 point and successfully crowned the NBA championship that year.
For the next three seasons, the St. Louis Hawks never left the West End in the top spot, and in 1959, Petit won the MVP again, he averaged 29.2 points per game that season to top the league's scoring list, and in the rebounding list, he averaged 16.4 rebounds per game after Russell. For the next two seasons, he averaged fourth-highest points per game in the league (26.1 points per game in 1960 and 27.9 points per game in 1961).
But no matter how hard Petit tried, the Hawks didn't touch the championship trophy again in the next few years. In 1959, they were eliminated by the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, in 1960 they were beaten by the Celtics in the Finals, and in 1961, the two sides met for the fourth time in five years in the Finals, but this time, the Bostonians won the entire series in just five games.
In 1962, the St. Louis Hawks were no longer glorious, and they finished fourth in the West End with a record of only 29 wins and 51 losses that season. However, Petit played the most perfect season of his career this year. In the 1961-1962 season, he averaged 31.1 points per game, which was also the highest season average in his career. In addition, he can also steal an incredible 18.7 rebounds per game. By the end of the season, Hawks owner Ben Kona had officially appointed Petit as the team's head coach, and he had led the team to a good record of 4 wins and 2 losses in the next 6 games.
In the 1962–63 season, owner Ben Kona hired former New York Knicks great "war horse" Harry Gaillatin as the team's new head coach, and the Hawks made a comeback under his leadership. That season, the Hawks climbed back to second place in the West End, and Petit handed over a glorious list of results as usual: he averaged 28.4 points and 15.1 rebounds per game that season. However, in the playoffs, although the Hawks eliminated the Pistons in the first round, in the divisional finals, they finally lost to the Los Angeles Lakers led by West and Baylor after seven hard battles, and missed the finals.
In the following 1963-64 season it was almost a remake of the previous season. St. Louis once again finished second in the division and lost seven games in the divisional finals, but this time they have become the San Francisco Warriors. That season, Petit averaged 27.4 points and 15.3 rebounds per game. At the end of the season, he was named to the First Team of the Year for the tenth and last time.
In 1964–65, Petit played only 50 games throughout the season with a knee injury, the first time in his career that he had missed so many games (it wasn't the first time in his career that he had been injured, he had played only part of the season in 1957–58 with a hand injury, but that didn't stop him from scoring 28 points in that year's All-Bright Race). But in the dozens of games Petit has led the team, he can still contribute an average of 22.5 points per game. That year, the Hawks again finished second in the division, but this time they were beheaded by their opponents in the division semifinals.
After the end of the 1964-65 season, 32-year-old Bob Petit announced his retirement. In his career, he scored a total of 20,880 points (an average of 26.4 points per game), which was the top score in NBA history at the time, and 12,849 rebounds made him the second place in the total number of rebounds in history at that time. He's never averaged more than 20 points per game in a single season, and he's never missed an All-Star Game in his career. In addition, his rebounding ability is not to be underestimated, his season average of rebounds per game has never been less than 10, and his career average has reached 16.2 rebounds - but this is still the third in history after Chamberlain and Russell.
In 1970, at the age of 38, Bob Petit was inducted into the N.A. Smith Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 1996, Bob Petit was officially inducted into the NBA's fifty-year-old superstars.