re: Caitlin Clark is better than Pete Maravich

“Pete Maravich had incredible numbers as a college player in his day for a few reasons.

He was an incredible offensive player who oozed talent.
His dad was the coach who gave him free reign to shoot the ball as often as he wanted, and he wanted to shoot it often.
The level of athleticism in basketball was quite low compared to today, so the gap between the athletic ability of Pete and his defender (and teammates) was typically quite high.
The pace of play was much, much faster.
If Pete played today, he’d still be an incredible offensive player who oozed talent, and he’d have a 3 point line to bolster his stats further. It’s much less likely that his dad would be the coach. Back in the day, it was not uncommon for teams to hire a kid’s dad as coach to get him to play there. Pete played 3 seasons for LSU. His father, Press, coached those three years and just three others. It seems pretty clear to me that he was hired because of his son. This practice has fallen out of favor in the NCAA. The last time I can think of it happening for a really high level talent was Wade Houston, father of Allan Houston, who coached at Tennessee for just 5 years (four of which Allan played for him). That was in 1989.

If Pete didn’t play for his dad, it’s likely that his coach would prioritize winning instead of prioritizing getting his son more shots. Now, having Pete shoot A LOT would still be part of a winning strategy, but perhaps just not quite as much as he shot back in the day. Pete put up a staggering 38.1 shots per game as a college player. For some perspective, among Power 5 teams, the current leader in shots per game is Buddy Boeheim — perhaps not coincidentally, also the coach’s son — who averages 16.4 shots per game. Buddy is no Pete, but even if Pete took a staggering 25 attempts per game — far more than anyone in recent history — you could expect his number of makes to drop off by over 30%.

The other key difference is that there are far, far more players with great athleticism to try to guard Pete than there were in his day. They’d make it a little harder for him to score. It’s hard to guess how much harder, but it would be noticeable. He’d also have better, more athletic teammates to incentive him to pass more.

Lastly, teams hold the ball much more now than they did in Pete’s era. Even if LSU were to play an extremely up-tempo style, the opponent’s time per possession would cause a big drop in offensive possessions for LSU. Pete’s team would get off 20 fewer shots per game, and many of those would be shots Pete would have taken.

My bottom line speculation is that if you could somehow transport Pete to LSU today, he’d probably score 20–24 points and get 6–8 assists per game. He’d be a shoe-in to win player of the year. But those scoring numbers would end up at about half of what they were during his actual career.”