BATON ROUGE — LSU basketball legend and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Pettit died Thursday, the Hall of Fame said.

Pettit, a Baton Rouge native, played as a center at LSU from 1951 to 1954, averaging 27.8 points a game.

He was drafted second overall in the 1954 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Hawks. LSU would retire Pettit's No. 50 and induct him into the LSU Athletics Hall of Fame. Pettit is also a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame (inducted 1973) and the inaugural class of the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.

The Naismith Hall of Fame called Pettit "a sleek, skilled big man who revolutionized the forward position during his career."

The Hawks would eventually move to St. Louis, where Pettit would win the NBA Championship in 1958. The 11-time NBA All-Star and 2-time MVP retired as the all-time leading scorer in NBA history.

"Pettit defined what the modern power forward should be in the NBA and set standards that have been hard to duplicate in professional basketball. His career began at a time when television was still limited, and film preservation of athletic events was haphazard at best. His finesse and force combined made him extremely difficult to stop," LSU said in a statement.

Funeral arrangements are pending at this time, LSU said.