LSU announced on Saturday night that Josh Maravich, a former basketball player and the son of legendary basketball player Pete Maravich, has passed away at the age of 42 in Covington, Louisiana.
He died at home on Friday, according to a statement from LSU. The cause of death remains undisclosed.
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Josh Maravich was a reserve for LSU, which plays its home games in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, from 2001-02 to 2004-05, under then-coach John Brady.
For the younger Maravich, playing for LSU was a childhood aspiration, as his father established the men’s NCAA Division I scoring record of 3,667 points between 1967 and 1970.
“I wanted to come here for my dad to make him proud,” Josh Maravich stated in a 2005 piece in The Daily Reveille, the LSU student newspaper. “I knew I wasn’t going to be a star player, but for me, being a walk-on was what I always wanted to do.”
Throughout his NBA career, Pete Maravich was a prolific scorer, but the lingering effects of a catastrophic knee injury he suffered a few years earlier cut his career short in 1980.
He died in 1988, at the age of 40, from an undiagnosed heart disease.
Earlier this year, he made news again when Iowa star Caitlin Clark (3,951 points) eclipsed his Division I scoring record, which had stood unmatched by any men’s or women’s player for more than 50 years.
When LSU erected a bronze statue of Pete Maravich outside their basketball facility in 2022, sculptor Brian Hanlon attributed Josh Maravich and his older brother Jaeson Maravich with coming up with the idea to depict their father, who was famed for his theatrics and innovation, making a behind-the-back pass.
