Pistol Petro

As I catch up on my DVR shows, I watched the 30 for 30 show on Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic.  Another good show and a good example of how a region can throw up a great group of athletes in some particular sport in a short time frame.  Similar to how Argentina did a few years back, the Yugoslavs were terrific.  They had size and skill and it was fun to watch them play.

It was also a great reminder of how good Drazen Petrovic was and what we lost when he died.  The other players in Yugoslavia spoke of him with awe and talked about him dropping 50 and 60 on teams all the time.  Of course when you're watching highlights everyone looks good, so I looked up the numbers.  As a starter for only 2 full years in the NBA you can see that he was a truly remarkable shooter.  Playing shooting guard he averaged over 20 and impressively shot 51% from the field and an even more impressive 45% from 3pt range.

Watching clips you can see that he had some Pistol Pete in him and Danny Ainge even brought up the comparison.  He was bold enough to try those crazy passes, he played with total confidence, and he just shot the lights out.  Unfortunate for basketball fans that we didn't see him longer.  Even Larry Bird chimed in talking about how he took it to the Dream Team and Kenny Anderson told a story about him talking trash to Michael Jordan.  He could play.

S