By KENT LOWE
LSUSports.net
It surprises me as a basketball fan and an LSU basketball guy when I hear people talk about the history of the game at our school and the names are thrown out of the great and near-great players that have worn the purple and gold in the last 100-plus years.
What saddens me is when they forget a name that should be on the list without any exceptions, reservations or qualifying monikers.
Robert “Bob” Pettit.
Come this Saturday at soon after 4:30 p.m., maybe Bob Pettit will be recognized and remembered by a new group of basketball fans who may not be aware or who may have forgotten what a great star of the game he was.
He will join Shaquille O’Neal as the second player to have a statue unveiled for him outside the practice facility of the building named for another of the LSU greats, Pete Maravich.
Pettit will be there to unveil his playing likeness and even at 83, this gentle giant of a man could probably still take on a few in a game of “horse.”
He is one of the standard bearers of LSU Basketball.
My point is very simple. If you are a basketball fan of any kind in Baton Rouge you should make the effort to come to the statue area and celebrate the life and legacy of a special basketball legend. A Louisiana guy. Future statues and location and all that rhetoric is just so much noise. Those things will happen and are for another time. This is the time to salute Bob Pettit and remember why this guy is in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
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