In early ’74, Dylan would twice make the cover of Rolling Stone. For his first time as a pro, Maravich made the cover of Sports Illustrated in November ’73. His shots were more carefully chosen and his stunning passes were perfectly executed, landing where intended. His play still dazzled, but he was now more of a team player. People were again taking notice of Maravich - they couldn’t help but not. With his running reverse lay-ups, Maravich appeared one part Bob Cousy and one part Alvin Ailey. During that ’73-74 season, Dave Anderson of The New York Times wrote that Maravich was “playing basketball as nobody ever quite did before.” Given his extraordinary play at LSU several years earlier, the Maravich that Anderson saw must have been other-worldly. Experiencing the best season thus far in his professional basketball career, Maravich was second in scoring in the NBA, at the time averaging just under 29 points a game. Leading the Atlanta Hawks to a victory over the Seattle SuperSonics, Maravich scored 34 points. A young woman seated close to the stage was seriously bothered, saying, “He has a nerve, ruining his song like that.”īut Dylan was in command, just as Pete Maravich was in that same building two nights before. Early in the show, when Dylan and The Band bounded through a hard-driving version of “Lay Lady Lay,” some in the crowd grew restless. Familiar songs performed quite differently than on the recorded versions. The 16,000 at the Omni on that January night in ’74 cheered to what was all at once a greatest hits show and a display of what’d be seen from Dylan in the years and decades to come: dazzling and intriguing performances with fiery independence and changes in presentation. Dylan and The Band had the ball in their court, so to speak. Opening their concert at the Omni with “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine),” Dylan was, in a sense, establishing his game plan for that evening in Atlanta, just as he had in other cities on his heralded comeback tour. … Bob Dylan and The Band kicked off the show like a basketball team on a fast-break. I Went Into The City, Went Into The Town .

David halberstam baseball books