Bob Pettit

Bob Pettit died peacefully at his home in Metairie, Louisiana, on 23 September 2026. He was 93. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame confirmed his death, and family statements described him as an amazing father who was kind, humble, and gentle. A cause of death was not made public. He was survived by three children and ten grandchildren. Tributes from LSU, the Hawks franchise, and NBA historians emphasized his place as the league's first MVP and as the man who carried St. Louis to its only NBA title.

Robert Lee Pettit Jr. was born on 12 December 1932 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His father came from Denver and had played basketball at Westminster College before serving as sheriff of East Baton Rouge Parish from 1932 to 1936. His mother was from Mississippi.

Basketball did not come easily at first. At Baton Rouge High School he was cut from the varsity as a freshman and again as a sophomore. He played in a church league, grew roughly five inches in less than a year, and returned as a junior starter who made the All-City team. As a senior near 6-foot-7 he led Baton Rouge High to its first state championship in more than twenty years and was chosen for a North-South all-star game in Murray, Kentucky. That state title remained, by his own account, one of the two games he remembered most clearly all his life.

The Milwaukee Hawks selected Pettit with the second overall pick of the 1954 NBA draft. He signed for $11,000, then an NBA rookie high, after encouragement from his third cousin, NBA player Frank Brian. Coach Red Holzman shifted him from center to forward. In 1955 he won Rookie of the Year at 20.4 points and 13.8 rebounds a night.

After the club moved to St. Louis, Pettit won the league's first MVP award in 1956 while leading the NBA in scoring (25.7) and rebounding (16.2). In 1958 he scored 50 points in the Finals-clinching Game 6 win over Boston, still among the great close-out performances in Finals history. A second MVP followed in 1959 after a then-record 29.2 scoring average. He made every All-Star Game of his career, earned All-Star Game MVP four times, and was named All-NBA First Team ten times. On 18 February 1961 he scored 57 points with 28 rebounds against Detroit. In 1960-61 he averaged 20.3 rebounds a game, joining a tiny group ever to average 20 points and 20 rebounds in a season.

Injuries limited him to 50 games in 1964-65. He retired in 1965 as the NBA's career scoring leader with 20,880 points and the second-leading rebounder with 12,849. He never averaged under 20 points or under 12 rebounds in any season. He briefly coached the Hawks for six games in 1961-62 (4-2).

After retiring from the NBA, Pettit built a second career in Louisiana finance. He worked in banking in Baton Rouge and Metairie for twenty-three years, then entered financial consulting in 1988 and later co-founded Equitas Capital Investors, retiring from the firm in 2006.

He was married to Carole Pettit, who died in 2010. They had three children and ten grandchildren. He remained closely tied to LSU and to the Hawks franchise after it moved to Atlanta, appearing at alumni events, anniversary celebrations, and campus dedications. Family statements after his death described him as a kind, humble, and gentle father.

Pettit is widely ranked among the greatest power forwards in NBA history and remains the Hawks' franchise leader in career rebounds and rebounds per game. He is still the only regular-season MVP in franchise history. Historians credit him with helping invent the facing-the-basket big forward who could score from midrange, attack the offensive glass, and draw fouls.

He is one of only four players named to all four NBA anniversary teams (25th, 35th, 50th, 75th), alongside Bob Cousy, George Mikan, and Bill Russell. LSU retired his number, named Bob Pettit Boulevard in Baton Rouge for him, and unveiled a campus statue. The Atlanta Hawks retired his number 9. Bill Russell's tribute became a standard line in Pettit biographies: he made "second effort" part of the sports vocabulary.

Pettit chose Louisiana State University from fourteen scholarship offers so he could stay close to home. Freshmen could not play varsity then; he averaged about 30 points for the freshman team before three All-Southeastern Conference varsity seasons (1951-54).

He led the SEC in scoring each year, earned consensus All-America honors as a junior and senior, and helped LSU to the 1953 NCAA Final Four, the program's first. As a senior he averaged 31.4 points and 17.3 rebounds, set a then-SEC scoring record of 60 points against Louisiana College, and saw LSU retire his number 50 in 1954, the first number retired in any Tiger sport. He earned a business degree and later recalled that those four years gave him schooling, the sport he loved, and lasting friendships. He was also a member of the Zeta Zeta chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon.

Pettit talked often about work rate rather than natural gifts. In a 2021 NBA.com interview he said the thing he was most proud of was rebounding, and that he never watched the ball off a teammate's shot. He watched the defender trying to box him out, fought for position, and went after every rebound. He told young players to build mental toughness, spend long hours in the gym, and develop shooting form, adding that skinny players had to lift weights and that greatness required more than "working hard enough to get by."

He credited David Stern as the single biggest modern influence on the NBA's growth and named Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, and Bill Russell among the best he had seen, while also praising later stars he never faced, including LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Major honors include NBA champion (1958); NBA Most Valuable Player (1956, 1959); NBA Rookie of the Year (1955); eleven-time NBA All-Star (1955-1965); four-time NBA All-Star Game MVP (1956, 1958, 1959 shared with Elgin Baylor, 1962); ten-time All-NBA First Team (1955-1964) and All-NBA Second Team (1965); two-time NBA scoring champion (1956, 1959); NBA rebounding leader (1956); Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (inducted 1970, enshrined 1971); Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame; LSU Hall of Fame; number 50 retired by LSU; number 9 retired by the Atlanta Hawks; NBA 25th, 35th, 50th, and 75th Anniversary Teams; Living Legend recognition at the 1999 SEC Tournament.

Pettit was a frequent subject of mid-century sports magazines, including a notable April 1957 SPORT profile on his shift from college center to NBA forward. NBA.com and the Naismith Hall of Fame maintain legends biographies and archival film of his 1958 Finals close-out and All-Star performances. He appeared in later oral-history and Q&A projects around the NBA's 75th anniversary as a designated ambassador. Highlight packages of his 50-point Game 6 and career retrospectives circulate widely on YouTube and team channels. In Baton Rouge his name remains part of local geography through Bob Pettit Boulevard and LSU campus tributes.

Pettit's public record is largely free of personal scandal. One recurring historical note about the 1958 St. Louis Hawks is that they were the last NBA champion without an African American player on the roster, a fact of the segregated labor practices of that era rather than a personal controversy attached to Pettit himself. On the court he was known for relentless physical play and free-throw drawing, traits rivals respected even when they complained about the contact. No major off-court legal or ethical controversies dominate his biographical record.