The Golden Hawk

Suddenly the whirling, full-court action of last week's pro All-Star game in St. Louis became a duel between two agile giants: Bob Pettit (6 ft. 9 in.) of the home-town Hawks, the finest offensive player in the National Basketball Association, against Bill Russell (6 ft. 10 in.) of the Boston Celtics, the league's finest defender. Twice Pettit leaped for his jump shot. Twice Russell knocked the ball away. Pettit had a broken left hand protected by a heavy cast, but he managed to grab both rebounds. On his third try Pettit twisted and faked, swept clear for a split second and whished the ball home.

The stands bellowed with delight, and the pros nodded knowingly. Even with a broken hand, Pettit was still the slickest shotmaker in the business. Before he was through, Pettit had scored 28 points (an All-Star record) and taken 26 rebounds (another record), although his Western team lost to the East, 130-118. For such heroics Pettit was named the game's most valuable player.

The honor was not lightly won; seldom have the pros played more brilliant basketball. For the West, little (5 ft. 10 in.) Slater Martin of St. Louis and aging (31) Dick McGuire of Detroit whistled the ball down the floor on the furious fast breaks that kept their team in the ball game. Basketball's Nijinsky, Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics, still slick and sly at the tree-ripened age of 29, broke the game wide open for the East in the last five minutes when he ran up seven straight points.

But even against such competition, Pettit's spectacular play put him in a class apart, just as it has all through this most impressive of his four pro seasons. Because of Pettit's basket-stuffing and superb all-round game, the St. Louis Hawks have a long lead in the Western Division of the N.B.A.

Rites of Passage. As a 5 ft. 9 in. freshman on the Baton Rouge High School team, Pettit was so awkward he was cut from the squad. Then he began to grow, by his senior year was 6 ft. 7 in., and, although he moved like an unhinged giraffe, scored enough to get scholarship bids from some two dozen colleges. Pettit chose Louisiana State University, was an All-American for two years in a row, and in 1954 was the first-draft choice of the St. Louis Hawks. A handsome, lithe giant, Bob Pettit soon found that the pros play their own rugged brand of ball, but he survived the rattling rites of passage. On offense, his soft, floating jump shot is a model for the league. On defense, he has tactics for every player, e.g., against Cincinnati he presses hook-shooting Clyde Lovellette, but he lies back for the dribbling of Maurice Stokes. In addition, Pettit's rubber-legged rebounding starts the Hawks hustling on their fast break.

Bless Bob. In the 1954-55 season, Pettit was the N.B.A.'s rookie-of-the-year. Two years ago he led the league in scoring. Last year a broken arm kept him from topping Minneapolis' George Mikan's scoring record of 1,932 points. This year Bachelor Bob, 25, was again leading the league when he snapped a bone in his hand a month ago, has since slipped to a respectable third (behind Detroit's George Yardley and Syracuse's Dolph Schayes). For these deeds Pettit gets about $20,000 a year from the Hawks, and the devout admiration of St. Louis fans. If he stays in one piece, say the experts, Bob Pettit may turn out to be the greatest player in the history of the game. Even St. Louis Captain Chuck Share's two-year-old daughter Susie realizes who is really leading her daddy's team into basketball's World Series this spring. Susie's nightly prayers might well be murmured by all St. Louis basketball buffs: "God bless Mommy, God bless Poppy, and God bless Bob Pettit."

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