The Los Angeles County Coroner received Peter’s body for examination. I do not know what the examiners expected to find, but what they discovered was truly remarkable: a rare, undiagnosed congenital defect, virtually undetectable in a living person.
Peter had been born with only half of a normal circulatory system. Specifically, he possessed a right coronary artery complex, but none on the left side. You are supposed to have two; Peter had only one. It was no surprise, then, that he had dropped dead at forty. Others with that same condition—though few in number—have collapsed and died in their early teens.
Medically speaking, this is the rest of the story. Coronary arteries provide the heart with oxygen. They are about the diameter of a common lead pencil and are the very vessels involved in bypass surgery when they become clogged with fat or plaque—a condition known as atherosclerosis.
A significant problem connected with this rare abnormality, where only half of the coronary artery system is present, is that the victim has no natural protective response to such clogging. Normally, the heart can compensate for a narrowing in one artery by re-routing blood flow from the other. But with this congenital defect, the victim has no other source of what is termed 'collateral blood flow.' Consequently, the heart becomes starved for oxygen, and all too often, the patient dies.
But Peter didn't die that way. Not from atherosclerosis. The coroner’s report found no evidence of life-threatening plaque formation in the arteries he did have—a finding consistent with his lifestyle.
For years prior to his death, Peter had been a staunch vegetarian, a vociferous advocate of physical fitness, good nutrition, and abstinence from dissipating habits. His medical complaints were very few, with only one substantial issue regarding an ambiguous nerve problem in his right arm.
It was the condition itself that killed him. After nearly a week of microscopic examination, the County Coroner concluded that Peter had died not of atherosclerosis, but of a sudden heart attack caused by the gradual deterioration of the heart muscle. They say this inherited cardiological deformity is so rare that a hundred cardiologists, throughout their entire careers, might encounter it only once.
Yet Peter had that condition.
The only thing more incredible than his diagnosis is how he managed to do what he did all those years. For in the annals of American basketball, one name shines as brightly as any: Peter, nicknamed "Pistol Pete" Maravich. His Louisiana State University statistics made him the greatest scorer in college basketball history. His ten-year NBA career cemented his legacy as a five-time All-Star and the league's leading scorer in 1977.
Therefore, it is not at all amazing, the medical experts say, that Pistol Pete played with Hall of Fame caliber intensity. What is instead astonishing to the entire medical fraternity is that Pete Maravich could ever play basketball at all.
And now you know the rest of the story.
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