Three-Time MVP Moses Malone Dies Unexpectedly at Age 60
Moses Malone and Julius Erving at the 2005 ABA Reunion in Denver
(photo copyright David Friedman)
This has been a terrible recent period for the NBA family.
Darryl Dawkins passed away less than three weeks ago, Roy Marble just succumbed to his battle with cancer, Flip Saunders is taking a leave of absence to fight cancer and it has just been reported that Moses Malone (who replaced Dawkins at center for the Philadelphia 76ers) passed away. Malone jumped straight from Petersburg (Va.) High School to the ABA in 1974 and he enjoyed a 21 year career during which he became one of the
most decorated players in pro basketball history, winning three regular season MVPs (1979, 1982-83), one NBA Finals MVP (1983) and six rebounding titles (1979, 1981-85).
Malone made the All-Star team 13 times (once in the ABA and 12 times in the NBA), earned eight All-NBA Team selections (including four All-NBA First Team honors) and was twice chosen for the All-Defensive Team. Malone led the league in total offensive rebounds a record nine times (this statistic has been charted since 1967-68 in the ABA and since 1973-74 in the ABA). He ranks third in pro basketball history (behind only Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell) with 17,834 career rebounds and he ranks seventh in pro basketball history with 29,580 career points.
The numbers and honors speak to Malone's dominance, durability and dedication but you had to see him play to fully appreciate his impact. Malone was not flashy but he was relentless, energetic and powerful. He was the best rebounder of his era by far and the most dominant inside player in the NBA from the late 1970s until the mid-1980s. He was also a tremendous scorer who finished in the top five in that category five times, including two times as the runner-up (27.8 ppg in 1980-81 and a career-high 31.1 ppg in 1981-82). Although best known for his rebounding and scoring prowess, Malone was an above average defensive player as well.
Malone posted his best individual statistics during his six year run with the Houston Rockets and he carried the Rockets to the 1981 NBA Finals but he will always be most remembered for his four year stint with the Philadelphia 76ers. When Malone arrived in Philadelphia in 1982, the 76ers had posted the best overall regular season in the league since the 1976 ABA-NBA merger and had made it to the NBA Finals three times but they could not get over the hump. The 76ers had no answer in the middle for Hall of Fame centers like Bill Walton, Wes Unseld, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Parish. Malone changed all of that. Malone teamed up with Julius Erving to form one of the best single season one-two punches in pro basketball history as the 76ers made a run at 70 wins before settling in at 65-17. During the playoffs, they were even more dominant, setting a record by going 12-1, punctuated by a 4-0 sweep of the defending champion L.A. Lakers.
Injuries and aging ensured that the 1983 championship represented the culmination of the Julius Erving era as opposed to the start of a dynasty but for a one season stretch that starting five was as good as any that has ever been assembled: Malone (the 1982 MVP who went on to win the 1983 MVP) and Erving (the 1981 MVP) had great chemistry together, point guard Maurice Cheeks was a top notch playmaker, defender and efficient shooter, shooting guard
Andrew Toney was headed for the Hall of Fame before injuries shortened his career and power forward Marc Iavaroni did all of the dirty work (five-time All-Star Bobby Jones ranked fifth on the team in minutes played, providing firepower of the bench en route to capturing the 1983 Sixth Man of the Year Award).
The last hurrah for the Malone-Erving 76ers came in 1984-85, when they advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals before falling in five games to the Boston Celtics. Near the end of the 1985-86 season, Malone suffered an orbital bone fracture that forced him to miss the playoffs. The 76ers traded Malone prior to the 1986-87 campaign, which turned out to be Erving's "Farewell Tour," and in the nearly 30 years since that time the 76ers have never come close to matching the sustained success that they enjoyed during Erving's prime.
On a personal note, I met Malone during the
2005 ABA Reunion in Denver. Malone was famously reticent in his dealings with the media and he declined my request for an interview--but he agreed to let me take a photo of him alongside Erving (see above). I will always treasure the memory of sharing that moment with the two stars of the 1983 NBA champions and I think that the arm in arm pose aptly captures the feelings of camaraderie that the two men shared. When Erving and Malone teamed up it was never about who was the man but only about one thing: winning the title together. It is a shame that they did not join forces about five years earlier, because it would have been a sight to behold if they had been paired during their primes.
Labels: Darryl Dawkins, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Philadelphia 76ers
posted by David Friedman @ 4:06 PM
The NBA in the 1970s
Note: On April 18, 2005, Hoopshype.com published an excerpt of my contribution to the anthology Basketball in America: From the Playgrounds to Jordan's Game and Beyond (Chapter 12: "Chocolate Thunder and Short Shorts: The NBA in the 1970s"). That link no longer works, so I have reprinted the chapter excerpt below. The timing is particularly apropos--and poignant--in light of the recent untimely passing of Darryl Dawkins.
Spencer Haywood Jumps Leagues; The Bucks Blank The Bullets
The economics of pro
basketball exploded in the 1970s. The average player salary rose from
$35,000 in 1970 to $180,000 a decade later and franchise values went up
more than 600% in the same period. The major cause of the skyrocketing
salaries was the competition between the NBA and the ABA for star players.
The ABA opened a new front in this war with the signing of Spencer
Haywood, the 19-year-old star of the 1968 U.S. Olympic gold medalists.
Haywood had only played one year of junior college ball and one year at
the University of Detroit before he joined the ABA's Denver Rockets
for the 1969-1970 season. At this time, NBA teams abided by the "four-year
rule," which stipulated that a player could not be drafted or signed
to an NBA contract until his college class graduated; that is why Wilt
Chamberlain played a year with the Harlem Globetrotters after he left
Kansas before his senior year. The ABA subsequently signed numerous underclassmen,
most notably Ralph Simpson (1970), Julius Erving (1971)
and George McGinnis (1971), each of whom became All-Stars.
Haywood enjoyed a
spectacular rookie season, leading the ABA in scoring (30.0 points per
game) and rebounding (19.5 rebounds per game). He won the Rookie of the
Year, the regular season MVP, and the All-Star MVP and averaged 36.7 points
per game and 19.8 rebounds per game in the playoffs.
Not surprisingly,
Haywood's success caused him to take a second look at his contract. Little
did he know that his case would eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court
and forever change American sports. When Haywood signed with the Rockets,
his contract was announced as a six-year, $1.9 million deal. In fact,
the vast majority of the value of his contract ($1.5 million) would be
paid to Haywood at the rate of $75,000 a year for 20 years after Haywood
turned 40. The ABA devised this type of deferred compensation arrangement
(known as the Dolgoff Plan) in order to be able to offer huge contracts
to players. It involved paying a portion of a player's salary into a mutual
fund or other growth fund for a ten-year period.
Payments to the player
commenced after waiting for an additional ten years and typically lasted
for 20 years. It was not clear if Haywood would receive the $1.5 million
if, for any reason, he did not play the full six years for the Rockets
or if the ABA folded at some point in the future. Haywood was unable to
reach an agreement with the Rockets to restructure his contract, so he
jumped leagues and signed a six-year, $1.5 million deal with the Seattle
SuperSonics. This contract paid Haywood $100,000 a year
for 15 years--all cash, no deferred compensation and no Dolgoff
Plan. Agent Ron Grinker later observed, "The ABA paid in paper
money, but the NBA responded to that by paying in real dollars, and it
nearly bankrupted both leagues."
Haywood's case involved
a tangled web of legal issues. The Denver Rockets accused attorney Al
Ross of convincing Haywood to breach his contract with them, while
Haywood and Ross responded that the Rockets had signed Haywood when he
was still a minor and did not have proper legal representation; the NBA
objected to Seattle signing Haywood before his college class had graduated;
the ABA wanted Haywood to be forbidden from playing for Seattle and compelled
to fulfill the terms of his Rockets' contract; the NBA Buffalo Braves
felt that they should have the rights to draft Haywood and attempt to
sign him before any other NBA club dealt with him.
The NBA's four-year
rule was declared illegal by the courts and Haywood was permitted to play
with the SuperSonics until the remaining legal issues were resolved. The
legal wrangling wiped out most of Haywood's 1970-71 season and he played
in only 33 games for the SuperSonics, posting very respectable averages
of 20.6 points and 12.0 rebounds. Haywood's case was eventually settled
out of court, with the end result that he was allowed to remain with the
SuperSonics permanently.
The overturning of
the four-year rule had a lasting impact on collegiate and professional
sports. In 1971, the NBA instituted a "hardship" rule that allowed
underclassmen to be drafted as long as they proved that they suffered
from financial hardship.
Needless to say, such
declarations were a mere formality, as noted by
Sport writer Jackie Lapin:
"Almost anyone who has been any good at the game in the past decade
would qualify--with the probable exception of Bill Bradley,
the banker's son."
The competition between
the leagues for players also extended into a battle for markets. In 1970-71,
the NBA expanded into Buffalo, Cleveland
and Portland,
in no small part to keep the ABA out of those cities. After the addition
of those teams, the NBA reorganized the Eastern and Western Divisions
into conferences with two divisions each; also, Atlanta switched to the Eastern Conference and Milwaukee
moved to the Western Conference. The defending champion New
York Knicks won the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference
with a 52-30 record, while the 42-40 Baltimore
Bullets took the Eastern Conference's Central Division.
The Los Angeles Lakers acquired high-scoring guard Gail Goodrich
in the offseason but lost Elgin
Baylor to a season-ending knee injury after only two games.
They still finished first in the Western Conference's Pacific Division
with a 48-34 record.
The Milwaukee Bucks
pulled off the biggest offseason trade in the league, shoring up their
backcourt with Oscar Robertson, nine-time member of the All-NBA
First Team. Robertson teamed with second year players Lew Alcindor
(later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Bob Dandridge to turn
the Bucks into a dominant team. Milwaukee went a league best 66-16, broke
the Knicks' one-year-old record by winning 20 straight games, and easily
captured the Midwest Division by 15 games over Chicago.
Alcindor won the scoring title (31.7 points per game), ranked fourth in
rebounding (16.0 rebounds per game) and was selected regular season MVP.
The only blemish
on the Bucks' season was a 1-4 record versus the defending champion Knicks.
A championship showdown between the teams seemed to be inevitable but
Knick center Willis Reed was hampered by a knee injury and the
Bullets defeated the Knicks 93-91 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference
Finals. Milwaukee overwhelmed the Lakers four to one in the Western Conference
Finals, winning Game 5 116-98; Baylor and Jerry
West both missed the 1970-71 playoffs due to injuries.
In the Finals, Wes
Unseld, the Bullets' valiant but undersized (6-7) center,
proved to be no match for Alcindor and the Bucks notched the first Finals
sweep since 1959.
Enter the High Schoolers: Moses From Virginia And Chocolate Thunder From Lovetron
Once the Haywood case
made the four-year rule passe, it was only a matter of time until players
would be signed straight out of high school. In 1974, the ABA Utah
Stars selected Moses Malone of Petersburg, Virginia in the
third round of the draft. His high school team had won 50 straight games
and two consecutive state championships, attracting the attention of more
than 200 colleges--despite the fact that Malone's grade point average
was not high enough to be eligible for an NCAA scholarship until he suddenly
became an "A" student during his last semester. The miraculous
grade increases and the tons of money being offered under the table led
ACC Commissioner Bob James to call Malone's situation "the
worst recruiting mess I've ever seen."
Even though Malone's
body had not yet filled out and matured, he averaged 17.7 points per game
and 12.9 rebounds per game in two ABA seasons, making the All-Star team
as a rookie. After the NBA-ABA merger, Portland
selected him in the ABA dispersal draft but traded him to the Braves for
a first-round pick. He played briefly for the Braves before Houston
acquired him for two first-round picks. Two years later, he won the first
of his three regular season MVPs and the first of his six rebounding crowns
en route to a Hall of Fame career.
Malone's success
did not go unnoticed. The 76ers looked far and wide for a dominant big man as part of their rebuilding
process after the disastrous 1972-73 season. Darryl Dawkins, a
6-10 senior center at Maynard Evans High School in Orlando, Florida, impressed
Sixers' coach Gene Shue with his play in the 1975 state finals.
Once the Sixers' brass decided to select Dawkins it became imperative
to keep word of their young prospect from other teams. They convinced
Dawkins to not play in postseason tournaments so scouts from other NBA
organizations would not find out about him. The Sixers accomplished this
by hiring Dawkins' high school coach to be Philadelphia's Florida scout,
his first job being to "baby-sit" Dawkins and keep him hidden
until the NBA draft. The plan worked and the 76ers made Dawkins the first
high school player ever chosen in the first round of the NBA draft. He
signed a $1.5 million, seven-year deal with the Sixers.
Dawkins enjoyed a
long NBA career and played in the NBA Finals three times as a Sixer but
he never made the All-Star team and, unlike Malone, did not become a dominant
NBA center. He is best known for shattering two backboards and the creative
nicknames he invented to describe himself (Chocolate Thunder, Master of
Disaster, Sir Slam) and his spectacular dunks (Gorilla, Yo Mama, In Your
Face Disgrace, Left Handed Spine Chiller Supreme, Hammer of Thor, etc.)
Borrowing lingo from
Parliament Funkadelic, he spoke of his "interplanetary funkmanship"
and claimed to be from the planet "Lovetron." His backboard-shattering
dunk over the Kings'
Bill Robinzine inspired this momentous sobriquet from Dawkins:
"Chocolate Thunder Flying, Robinzine Crying, Teeth Shaking, Glass
Breaking, Rump Roasting, Bun Toasting, Wham, Bam, Glass Breaker I Am Jam."
Ironically, the careers
of the two trendsetting big men intersected when Malone replaced Dawkins
as the Sixers' starting center in 1982-83 and led the team to the championship,
winning the regular season and Finals' MVPs in the process.
Another player made
the jump straight from high school to the NBA in 1975. Bill Willoughby,
a second-round pick of the Hawks that year, played eight NBA seasons but
never averaged even 10 points per game. It took 20 years until Kevin
Garnett became the next player to make the leap directly
to the NBA from high school, but the signings of Malone, Dawkins and Willoughby
paved the way for this to happen and also made it seem less shocking when
increasing numbers of players invoked the hardship rule to leave college
for the pros after only one or two seasons.
Labels: Basketball in America, Darryl Dawkins, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Oscar Robertson, Spencer Haywood
posted by David Friedman @ 1:21 AM
Darryl "Chocolate Thunder" Dawkins Leaves Behind a Legacy of Dunks, Laughter and Love
Dunking a basketball on a regulation hoop is a feat that is fascinating to virtually every child and unattainable to most adults. When I was a child, I marveled at the high-flying acrobatics of my favorite NBA player,
Julius Erving, and my favorite college player, Roosevelt Chapman, the University of Dayton star who led the 1984 NCAA Tournament in scoring (105 points in four games for a 26.3 ppg scoring average). I also was thrilled by the antics of Erving's teammate Darryl "Chocolate Thunder" Dawkins, who had the charm and audacity to name his dunks, including two that shattered NBA backboards. I only saw Dawkins play in person once, in a preseason game at the University of Dayton when Dawkins rode the bench for the Detroit Pistons near the end of his 14 year NBA career.
Dawkins passed away on Thursday at the age of 58. When Wilt Chamberlain died at 63 in 1999, it seemed shocking that such an athletic marvel could die so young and I had similar thoughts regarding Dawkins as I first learned of his death via the ESPN ticker while I did my evening workout. We are all mortal and we only occupy a living, physical space on this planet for a brief time, so what matters is how we use that time and what legacy we leave behind. Dawkins' most visible legacy consists of his dunks but his lasting legacy is laughter and love.
When Dawkins jumped to the NBA from high school in 1975, he seemed to have the size and talent to be the next Chamberlain--but Dawkins did not have the necessary desire or focus to live up to those expectations. After Dawkins had a big game one night, Philadelphia owner Harold Katz congratulated him and Dawkins replied that he hoped Katz did not expect that from him every night--not exactly the mindset of Julius Erving, Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. Dawkins worked hard enough, though, to become a very good NBA player, posting career averages of 12.0 ppg, 6.1 rpg and 1.4 bpg. Dawkins was a key member of three Philadelphia teams that advanced to the NBA Finals (1977, 1980, 1982). After the 76ers acquired Moses Malone prior to the 1982-83 season, Dawkins landed with the New Jersey Nets. The 76ers won the 1983 title but Dawkins received a measure of revenge the next season when the Nets knocked out the 76ers in the first round of the playoffs.
Tom Friend, one of the last remaining masters of long form narrative non-fiction, captured the essence of Dawkins' life and character in a 2010 article titled
Old College Try. Here are some telling excerpts, but do yourself a favor and read the entire piece:
If his coaches thought he was a fool or uncouth, it was because they
knew nothing about him. They didn't know that, growing up in Orlando,
Fla., he hadn't had indoor plumbing until he was in middle school. They
didn't know he turned pro to buy homes for his mother and grandmother.
They didn't know he was planning to send all seven of his brothers and
sisters to college. They didn't know that after a Sixers home game, he
saw a disheveled kid standing in the rain and drove the kid home to the
slums. They didn't know that after the next game the same kid showed up
and invited him back to the slums for dinner. They didn't know Darryl
Dawkins had heart--and, problem was, Dawkins didn't either...
When Darryl was a teenager in Orlando, he had a job picking oranges,
earning $20 a week, and he siphoned the money to two places. Half of it
went to his mother to help pay the phone bill, and of his remaining 10
bucks, $4 went to kids in the neighborhood so they could buy ice cream.
Darryl soon was the king of that neighborhood and a bevy of others.
Later, because of the broken backboards and his raps, he'd be mobbed
everywhere by kids who would beg him to rhyme. And as an NBA player, he
ended up working as many as 85 basketball camps a summer...
He never became Wilt, but he was as popular as any All-Star, and he
finished his 14 seasons with a .572 shooting percentage, fifth-best all
time. He showed NBA execs it was feasible for a high school kid to go
pro, setting the stage for Kevin Garnett, Kobe and LeBron. According to
Dunleavy, he was a mini Shaq. But all of that didn't alter the
perception of him--fair or unfair--as an underachiever, and he was
forced to conclude his career overseas, out of the spotlight.
The most touching part of Friend's article is when he describes Dawkins' devotion to his wife Janice Hoderman and Hoderman's daughter Tabitha, who suffers from Down's Syndrome. Dawkins and Hoderman later had two children of their own together, son Nicholas and daughter Alexis.
Labels: Chocolate Thunder, Darryl Dawkins, Julius Erving, Lovetron, Philadelphia 76ers, Roosevelt Chapman
posted by David Friedman @ 5:15 PM
The NBA in the 1970s: Enter The High Schoolers: Moses From Virginia And Chocolate Thunder From Lovetron
I wrote the chapter about the NBA in the 1970s for the 2005 anthology Basketball in America: From the Playgrounds to Jordan's Game and Beyond. This is the sixth of 12 installments reprinting that chapter in its entirety. I have removed the footnotes that accompanied the original text; direct quotations are now acknowledged in the body of the work and I will post a bibliography at the end of the final installment. I hope that you enjoy my take on one of the most fascinating and eventful decades in NBA history.Enter The High Schoolers: Moses From Virginia And Chocolate Thunder From LovetronOnce the Spencer Haywood case made the four year rule passe it was only a matter of time until players would be signed straight out of high school. In 1974, the ABA Utah Stars selected Moses Malone of Petersburg, Virginia in the third round of the draft. His high school team had won 50 straight games and two consecutive state championships, attracting the attention of more than 200 colleges--despite the fact that Malone's grade point average was not high enough to be eligible for an NCAA scholarship until he suddenly became an "A" student during his last semester. The miraculous grade increases and the tons of money being offered under the table led ACC Commissioner Bob James to call Malone's situation "the worst recruiting mess I've ever seen." Even though Malone's body had not yet filled out and matured, he averaged 17.7 points per game and 12.9 rebounds per game in two ABA seasons, making the All-Star team as a rookie. After the NBA-ABA merger, Portland selected him in the ABA dispersal draft but traded him to the Braves for a first round pick. He played briefly for the Braves before Houston acquired him for two first round picks. Two years later he won the first of his three regular season MVPs and the first of his six rebounding crowns en route to a Hall of Fame career.
Malone's success did not go unnoticed. The 76ers looked far and wide for a dominant big man as part of their rebuilding process after the disastrous 1972-1973 season. Darryl Dawkins, a 6-10 senior center at Maynard Evans High School in Orlando, Florida, impressed Sixers' Coach Gene Shue with his play in the 1975 state finals. Once the Sixers' brass decided to select Dawkins it became imperative to keep word of their young prospect from other teams. They convinced Dawkins to not play in postseason tournaments so scouts from other NBA organizations would not find out about him. The Sixers accomplished this by hiring Dawkins' high school coach to be Philadelphia's Florida scout, his first job being to "baby-sit" Dawkins and keep him hidden until the NBA draft. The plan worked and the 76ers made Dawkins the first high school player ever chosen in the first round of the NBA draft. He signed a $1.5 million, seven year deal with the Sixers.
Dawkins enjoyed a long NBA career and played in the NBA Finals three times as a Sixer but he never made the All-Star team and, unlike Malone, did not become a dominant NBA center. He is best known for shattering two backboards and for the creative nicknames he invented to describe himself (Chocolate Thunder, Master of Disaster, Sir Slam) and his spectacular dunks (Gorilla, Yo Mama, In Your Face Disgrace, Left Handed Spine Chiller Supreme, Hammer of Thor, etc.) Borrowing lingo from Parliament Funkadelic, he spoke of his "interplanetary funkmanship" and claimed to be from the planet "Lovetron." His backboard shattering dunk over the Kings' Bill Robinzine inspired this momentous sobriquet from Dawkins: "Chocolate Thunder Flying, Robinzine Crying, Teeth Shaking, Glass Breaking, Rump Roasting, Bun Toasting, Wham, Bam, Glass Breaker I Am Jam." Ironically, the careers of the two trend setting big men intersected when Malone replaced Dawkins as the Sixers' starting center in 1982-1983 and led the team to the championship, winning the regular season and Finals' MVPs in the process.
Another player made the jump straight from high school to the NBA in 1975. Bill Willoughby, a second round pick of the Hawks that year, played eight NBA seasons but never averaged even 10 points per game. It took 20 years until Kevin Garnett became the next player to make the leap directly to the NBA from high school, but the signings of Malone, Dawkins and Willoughby paved the way for this to happen and also made it seem less shocking when increasing numbers of players invoked the hardship rule to leave college for the pros after only one or two seasons.
Labels: BIll Willoughby, Darryl Dawkins, Moses Malone
posted by David Friedman @ 2:13 AM
