Bob Pettit, the first winner of the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award and a Basketball Hall of Famer who in his later years became an admirer of Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, has died. He was 93.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced Pettit’s passing, calling him “a sleek, skilled big man who revolutionized the forward position.”
The 6-foot-9 forward and center starred for the Milwaukee and St. Louis Hawks across 11 NBA seasons, earning All-Star honors in each one. He won MVP awards in 1955-56 — the first ever presented — and again in 1958-59, and retired as the league’s all-time leading scorer. He was the first player in NBA history to reach 20,000 career points.
Pettit cemented his legacy in Game 6 of the 1958 NBA Finals, pouring in 50 points to lead St. Louis past the Boston Celtics for the franchise’s lone championship.
Pettit’s ties to the state ran deeper than watching from the stands. His father was from Denver and played at Westminster College.
He never met Jokic but saw him play multiple times when the Nuggets visited New Orleans, and again at the 2022 NBA All-Star Game in Cleveland, where Pettit was honored as one of the NBA’s 75 greatest players.
In a November 2024 interview with The Denver Gazette — the only in-depth feature connecting the first MVP to the modern one — Pettit did not hold back his admiration for Denver’s three-time MVP.
“He’s great,” Pettit told The Denver Gazette from his New Orleans home. “I love to watch him.”
“You watch him and he’s very mobile and he can hit from the outside,” Pettit said. “He’s a very good outside shooter. He’s just got a real good game. He’s very good fundamentally.”
Pettit, who followed the MVP race each season, went further: “They taught him well because he’s very good. I love watching him in Denver. They have a really nice team. He’s much better than some of the others that have played.”
Jokic surpassed Pettit on the NBA’s all-time scoring list during the 2024-25 season — the modern MVP eclipsing the original.
Born Dec. 12, 1932, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Pettit was cut from his high school basketball team as a freshman and sophomore before blossoming into a two-time All-American at LSU. He was drafted second overall by the Milwaukee Hawks in 1954 and won NBA Rookie of the Year honors.
He was an All-NBA First Team selection 10 times, won four NBA All-Star Game MVP awards — a record later matched only by Kobe Bryant — and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1970. He was named one of the NBA’s 75 greatest players in 2021.
After his playing career, Pettit became a co-owner of an investing company in New Orleans, where he lived until his death. He was a longtime New Orleans Pelicans season-ticket holder until giving up his seats after the 2022-23 season due to mobility issues.
“It’s so difficult for me to get up and down the stairs in an arena,” Pettit told The Denver Gazette in 2024. “It’s much easier to sit home and watch it on TV and not have to worry about falling. When you get to my age, a big concern is falling.”
Bill Russell, his great rival, once offered this tribute: “Bob made ‘second effort’ a part of the sports vocabulary. He kept coming at you more than any man in the game. He was always battling for position, fighting you off the boards.”
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KSE spending $135 million on Ball Arena — still no new practice facility for Jokic or MacKinnon