Pistol Pete smiles tonight

By Rick Morris

Early disclaimer -- I love Pistol Pete Maravich. I'm too young to have seen anything other than the tail end of his career, but to me he was just awesome. When you watch tapes of him -- there are no words for that. He was just a freaking artist. I'm not much of a pickup player, but on the rare occasions I'm out there, I'm firing up a myriad of odd shots like the Pistol (surprisingly, I'm not bad on some of them) and having fun just like he did. Plus, I respect everything he accomplished later in his too-short life when he was trying to spread the Good Word to people. In short, I'm just a huge Pistol Pete mark.

So now that we've established that I am completely biased here ...

I was very happy to see John Brady get whacked from his perch as LSU hoops coach today. You probably will be too when you read this paraphrasing from the book "Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich."

How? How do you hold down a job as head coach of the alma mater of your school's greatest legend -- and coach in a gym named for him -- and crap all over one of his sons who has chosen to play for you?

To clown him by saying to another player in practice, "You just let Josh Maravich score on you, son?"

Disgusting.

Anyone with an ounce of class or decency would never have treated the son of a legend -- put that aside for a second, he was a great man -- in such a manner. It was John Brady's privilege to walk every day in the footsteps of the Bayou hero and to even have some association with his family by coaching his son. And he never appreciated it.

Hope he appreciates his pink slip. Good luck in your next job, coaching in front of 150 people in a small, smelly fieldhouse somewhere.