The following extract is taken from a biography of Pete Maravich, a famous basketball player. In the extract, the writer describes Maravich taking part in a friendly game eight years after his retirement from professional basketball. They cannot see him, this slouched, ashen-faced man in their midst. To their oblivious eyes, he remains what he had been, unblemished by the years, much as he appeared on his first bubblegum card: a Beatles-esque halo of hair, the fresh- faced, sad-eyed wizard, cradling a grainy leather orb. One of the regulars, a certified public accountant, had retrieved this very artefact the night before. He found it in a shoebox, tucked away with an old train set and a wooden fort in a crawlspace in his parents' basement. He brought it to the gym this morning to have it signed, or perhaps, in some way, sanctified. The 1970 rookie card of Pete Maravich, to whom the Atlanta Hawks had just awarded the richest contract in professional sport, notes the outstanding facts: that Maravich had been coached by his father, under whose tutelage he became 'the most prolific scorer in the history of college basketball.' Other salient statistics are provided in the small print: an average of 44.2 points a game, a total of 3667 (this when nobody had scored 3000). The records will never be broken. Still, they are woefully inadequate in measuring the contours of the Maravich myth. Even the accountant, for whom arithmetic is a vocation, understands the limitation in mere numbers. There is no integer denoting magic and memory. 'He was important to us,' the accountant would say. Maravich wasn't an archetype; he was several: child prodigy, prodigal son, result of his father's proverbial deal with the devil. He was a creature of contradictions, ever alone: the white hope of a black sport, a virtuoso stuck in an ensemble, an exuberant showman who couldn't look you in the eye, the athlete who lived like a rock star, a reckless genius saved by God. Still, it's his caricature that evokes unqualified affection in men of a certain age. Pistol Pete, they called him. The Pistol is another relic of the seventies, not unlike Bruce Lee flicks: the skinny kid who mesmerized the basketball world with Globetrotter moves, floppy socks, and great hair. Pistol Pete was, in fact, his father's vision, built to the old man's exacting specifications. Peter's father, Press Maravich, was a Serb. Ideas and language occurred to him in the mother tongue, and so one imagines him speaking to Pistol (yes, that's what he called him, too) as a father addressing his son in an old Serbian song: Listen to me, eyes of mine, guard that which is thine ... * * * The game in progress is a dance in deference to this patrimony. The Pistol is an inheritance, not just for the Maraviches, but for all the American sons who play this American game. The squeak of sneakers against the floor produces an oddly chirping melody. Then there's another rhythm, the respiration of men well past their prime, an assortment of mainly white guys: the accountant, insurance salesmen, financial planners, even a preacher or two. 'Just a bunch of duffers,' recalls one. 'Fat old men,' smirks another. But they play as if Pistol Pete, or what's left of him, could summon the boys they once were. They acknowledge him with a superfluous flourish, lingering teenage vanity – an extra behind-the-back pass or an unnecessary between-the-legs dribble. The preacher, a gentle-voiced man of great renown in evangelical circles, reveals a feverishly competitive nature. After hitting a shot, he is heard to bellow, 'You get that on camera?' The Parker Gymnasium at Pasadena's First Church of the Nazarene could pass for a good high school gym a clean, cavernous space with arching wooden rafters and large windows. At dawn, fully energized halogen lamps give off a glow to the outside world, a beacon to spirits searching for a game. As a boy, Maravich would have considered this a kind of heaven. Now, it's a way station of sorts. Pete begins wearily. He hasn't played in a long time and moves at one-quarter speed, if that. He does not jump; he shuffles. The ball seems like a shotput in his hands, his second attempt at the basket barely touching the front of the rim. But gradually, as the pace of his breath melds with the others' and he starts to sweat, Pete Maravich recovers something in himself. 'The glimpse of greatness was in his ballhandling,' recalls the accountant. 'Every once in a while the hands would flicker. There would just be some kind of dribble or something. You could see a little of it in his hands, the greatness. Just the quickness of the beat.' There was genius in that odd beat, the unexpected cadence, a measure of music. The Pistol's talent, now as then, was musical.