Hall of Famer Bob Pettit, the NBA's first MVP, dies at 93

Bob Pettit died Wednesday, September 23, at age 93, LSU announced Thursday. His death closes a life that connected the university's first men's basketball Final Four team to the NBA's formative years. LSU did not announce a cause of death.

Pettit became the league's first regular-season Most Valuable Player in 1956. He won the award again in 1959, made the All-Star team in each of his 11 NBA seasons and became the first player to reach 20,000 career points. Those firsts were not simply entries in an early record book. They helped establish what a dominant forward could be as the professional game grew.

He spent his entire NBA career with the Hawks, beginning in Milwaukee before the franchise moved to St. Louis. The team's championship came in 1958, in a Finals series against the Boston Celtics that remains one of the defining exceptions to Bill Russell's era of title-winning teams.

The title game that endured

In Game 6, Pettit scored 50 points and grabbed 19 rebounds as St. Louis beat Boston 110-109 to take the championship. The NBA's account notes that he scored 19 of the Hawks' final 21 points. It was the franchise's first and only title, and it remains the clearest single-game expression of his value to that team.

The achievement should not be reduced to a single night. The Hawks reached four Finals with Pettit, all against the Celtics. He was both a volume scorer and a relentless rebounder, and his face-up scoring helped expand the role of a big forward beyond working only with his back to the basket.

Across 11 seasons, his NBA regular-season averages were 26.4 points and 16.2 rebounds. He won four All-Star Game MVP awards and was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1996, a league panel selected him for the NBA's unranked list of 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. He was also named to the league's 25th, 35th and 75th anniversary teams. Each honor captures a different generation looking back and finding his career still central to the story.

A standard set across 11 seasons

His basketball roots remained in Baton Rouge. LSU credits Pettit with leading its 1953 team to the school's first Final Four and says his No. 50 was the first jersey number retired by the university in any sport. The Hawks later retired his No. 9.

Pettit's era offered far fewer televised games than modern fans can revisit. That makes the surviving record, and the testimony of those who played alongside and against him, especially important. The first MVP was also the player who gave the Hawks their championship moment. Those achievements will continue to introduce him to people who never saw him play.