Bob Pettit Shut the Door on Basketball and Never Looked Back

Bob Pettit, the NBA’s first Most Valuable Player, died Sept. 23 at his home in Metairie, Louisiana. He was 93. His family said he died peacefully and gave no cause, and LSU announced his death on Thursday.

He left the St. Louis Hawks at 32 for a job at American Bank and Trust Co. in Baton Rouge, then spent more of his adult life in banking than he ever spent in the league that still lists him as a founder of the power forward spot.

A Baton Rouge Bank Set His Exit Date

The first contract, with the Milwaukee Hawks in 1954, paid $11,000. Pettit won Rookie of the Year, then the first MVP award the league ever handed out, and he still went home each summer to work in the family real estate and insurance shop because the season paycheck did not cover a life.

In 1963 the bank offered him a post on one condition: play two more years, then report for work. He told owner Ben Kerner to plan around the date. Kerner agreed. After the 1964-65 season, at age 32, Pettit walked away in his prime, having just become the first player to score 20,000 NBA points.

They weren’t throwing silver dollars around. You had to fight for every penny. It was a good learning experience, but the dollars were not there.

Bob Pettit, to Louisiana Life, 2009

He had already told Kerner, two years out, that basketball was not a pension. “All of us in those days understood that basketball was not something that at the end of your career, you could retire,” he said. “It isn’t like today.”

The choice reads strangely only because the job he invented later became a $50 million seat. In his time an eight-team league still sent its stars back to summer counters, and Pettit had taken insurance and real estate at LSU on purpose. Dinner at home, he said, ran to interest rates and points, not box scores.

April 12, 1958, Ended With a Tip-In

The night that still defines him came three years before that bank meeting. In Game 6 of the 1958 NBA Finals at Kiel Auditorium, Pettit scored 50 points and took 19 rebounds as the Hawks beat Boston 110-109, the franchise’s only championship in Milwaukee, St. Louis, or Atlanta.

He had 31 points through three quarters. Then he scored 19 of his team’s last 21, the final two on a tip-in with 15 seconds left that made it 110-107. Boston got one more basket and nothing else. Pettit went 19 of 34 shots from the field and 12 of 15 at the line in 42 minutes, with one foul.

GAME 6 AT KIEL AUDITORIUM

No one has scored more in a Finals closeout. The 50-point mark was tied by Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2021. “That was the best game I ever played,” Pettit said in 2003. “Especially because of what it meant.”

Teammate Ed Macauley put the debt in one line years later: “I have a ring because of Bobby.” Bill Russell, who had turned an ankle in Game 3, spent the rest of his life describing the man who finished that series. “Bob made ‘second effort’ a part of the sports vocabulary,” Russell said. “He kept coming at you more than any man in the game.”

Cut Twice at Baton Rouge High

Robert E. Lee Pettit Jr. was born Dec. 12, 1932, in Baton Rouge, an only child. His father served as East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff and postmaster; his mother sold real estate. The boy who became the first MVP was cut from basketball, football, and baseball in his first two years at Baton Rouge High.

He shot for hours at a backyard hoop until he made the team as a 6-foot-4 junior. By his senior year he had grown three inches and led the school to a state title in 1950. At LSU he was a two-time all-American, led the Tigers to their first Final Four in 1953, and took SEC titles in 1953 and 1954. In 72 college games he averaged 27.4 points and 14.4 rebounds.

Scouts still saw a 6-foot-9 frame at about 200 pounds and guessed he would bounce off NBA centers. Kerner drafted him anyway, second overall in 1954. After the 1956 MVP season Pettit went home to trainer Alvin Roy, lifted through the summers, and added 30 pounds of muscle over five years so he could survive a dozen nights a season against Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.

The Hall of Fame later called him one of the first big men to play facing the basket, lean enough to shoot, stubborn enough to bang. Red Auerbach, who coached the Celtics teams that kept running into him, said Pettit could do more than Elgin Baylor “because he could play some center and he was a much stronger rebounder.”

What the Hawks Have Not Won Since

St. Louis reached the Finals four times with Pettit, Cliff Hagan, and Ed Macauley as the core. They lost a double-overtime Game 7 to Boston in 1957, won the rematch in 1958, then lost to those same Celtics in 1960 and 1961. After 1958, Russell’s clubs took the next stretch of titles; the Hawks never got another ring, in St. Louis or after the 1968 move to Atlanta.

Pettit is still the only regular-season MVP in Hawks history. The retired No. 9 hangs at State Farm Arena in a city whose jersey he never wore. For a franchise that has spent 60 years hunting a second banner, the closer of the first one was also the last man who could write that ending.

HAWKS FINALS WITH PETTIT

• 1957: Lose to Boston in seven, Game 7 in double overtime.
• 1958: Win in six, Pettit 50 and 19 in the clincher.
• 1960: Lose to Boston in seven.
• 1961: Lose to Boston in five.

Casual memory jumps from George Mikan to Chamberlain and Russell and leaves a hole where Pettit actually stood, the scorer-rebounder who made the forward spot a primary option. The Hawks have been living in that hole ever since.

The Firsts He Took Into Retirement

Across 11 seasons and 792 games, all with the Hawks, Pettit averaged 26.4 points and 16.2 rebounds plus 3.0 assists. He scored 20,880 points and grabbed 12,849 rebounds, first and second in league history when he stopped. He never averaged under 20 points in a season. He made every All-Star Game he was eligible for.

THE LINE HE LEFT IN 1965

He was the first MVP, the first to 20,000 points (he crossed it in 1964), and the first four-time All-Star Game MVP, winning in 1956, 1958, 1959, and 1962. In the 1962 All-Star Game he scored 25 and took 27 rebounds against Russell and Chamberlain on a night he later described as a game they “played for blood.” He made first-team all-NBA in each of his first 10 seasons and slipped to second team in the 50-game finale, the season he had already promised to the bank.

His peak scoring year, 1961-62, went for 31.1 points a night. His peak rebounding year, 1960-61, went for 20.3. He is one of four players named to all four NBA anniversary teams, with Bob Cousy, George Mikan, and Bill Russell. The Hall of Fame enshrined him in 1971. The league put him on the 50 Greatest list in 1996 and the 75th anniversary team in 2021.

He Did Not Live in the Past

Pettit worked summers at the bank in his last NBA years, then went full time in Baton Rouge after the last playoff loss, a 109-103 defeat to the Bullets. He later moved the work to Metairie, stayed in banking for 23 years, and in 1988 shifted into financial consulting. In 2002 he and three partners founded Equitas Capital Advisors. He retired from the firm in January 2006 and kept an office in downtown New Orleans anyway.

THE SECOND CAREER

1. 1963: American Bank and Trust offers the post and a two-year runway.
2. 1965: Retires at 32; congratulatory telegrams arrive from Auerbach and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
3. 1988: Leaves daily banking for financial consulting.
4. 2002: Co-founds Equitas Capital Advisors in New Orleans.
5. January 2006: Retires from Equitas, still keeping a desk.

He did a few seasons as an SEC television analyst and quit that too. “I never wanted to coach,” he said. “Once I quit basketball, I shut the door and never looked back.” The line that aged best came in 2009, when the first MVP was 76 and still going to the office.

An awful lot of former professional players continue to look back on basketball as the greatest part of their life. They always live back in the past and I have not been bothered by that problem.

Bob Pettit, Louisiana Life, 2009

He married Carole Crowell in 1965. They had three children. She died in 2010. He later married Alma Slatten. Ten grandchildren stood with him when LSU unveiled his statue in 2016.

LSU Put His Statue Beside Shaquille O’Neal

The bronze sits outside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, next to Shaquille O’Neal, with Pete Maravich and Seimone Augustus added later. His No. 50 was the first LSU athletic number ever retired. At the unveiling he said he had only wanted a high school letter, “and now, here I am all these years later with a statue next door to Shaquille O’Neal. Did I ever dream it? No, never.”

Joe Dean, the late LSU athletic director and Pettit’s old teammate, called him the best basketball player the school ever had, ahead of Maravich and O’Neal. Collis Temple, another LSU forward, said Pettit “always reached out and supported me” and “leaves behind a tremendous legacy on the LSU basketball brotherhood.” The New Orleans Pelicans, covering the hometown star who never played for them, called him a person “whose impact extended far beyond the court.”

The Hawks said the No. 9 “continues to hang proudly at State Farm Arena.” The Hall of Fame called him “a sleek, skilled big man who revolutionized the forward position.” The league put its own notice on the record the same night.

The NBA family mourns the passing of Naismith Hall of Famer Bob Pettit, a two-time NBA MVP and a member of all four NBA Anniversary Teams.  He raised the bar for excellence as the league’s first MVP, first 20,000-point scorer and first four-time All-Star Game MVP.  His iconic… pic.twitter.com/y9CIxazjP5

— NBA (@NBA) September 24, 2026

The family spoke for the man, not the résumé. “Dad passed away very peacefully at his home in Metairie, on Wednesday, September 23,” the statement said. “He was the most amazing father. The most kind, humble and gentle soul. We are so blessed to have him in our lives and we will miss him dearly.”

The No. 9 that Atlanta still hangs belongs to a player who took the bank’s offer, worked the next four decades, and treated the first MVP trophy as a closed file. The league that could not keep him spent those same years naming teams in his honor. He was already downtown, at a desk.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Was Bob Pettit Drafted, and by Which Team?

The Milwaukee Hawks selected him with the second pick of the 1954 NBA draft on April 24. He debuted on Oct. 30, 1954, and never played for another franchise, following the club from Milwaukee to St. Louis.

What Was Bob Pettit’s Single-Game Career High?

His regular-season highs were 57 points and 35 rebounds. The 50-point night in Game 6 of the 1958 Finals remains the figure most associated with him because it closed a title.

Who Else Has Won Four NBA All-Star Game MVP Awards?

Kobe Bryant later matched Pettit’s four All-Star Game MVP awards. Pettit won his in 1956, 1958, 1959, and 1962, the first player to reach four.

What Did Bob Pettit Average in Each LSU Season?

He averaged 25.5 points as a sophomore, 24.9 as a junior, and 31.4 as a senior, when he also pulled 17.3 rebounds a game. Freshmen were not on the varsity then, so those three seasons are the full college record.