Photo courtesy of Vedia on Flickr
I’m fixated on Moses Malone. That’s a more academic way of saying I’m slightly obsessed. Last summer I was killing offseason time working on a PBT piece about Yao Ming. The idea was to compare Ming solely within the context of the Rockets. The Rockets have a long history with championships and great players but aren’t inundated with great players which relegate great players to “pretty good” status like the Big 2 do. My expectation was to find The Dream with a healthy level of domination and Moses somewhere on the list with someone I didn’t expect mixed in and Yao drifting along.
Instead?
Moses. Sitting there, staring at me and laughing at the fact that I know nothing about him other than “he was great at basketball.” How great?
To pound out numbers in the context of great players usually means they get lost in the middle. Wilt’s numbers obliterate everything without context. Russell obliterates everything with, and Jordan is Jordan and Shaq Shaq and the beat goes on. So instead, try and get outside the fences of whatever logo-laden pasture of fandom you happen to inhabit and let’s just look at what these numbers mean.
In 1981-1982, Moses Malone secured his second MVP with the Houston Rockets. He averaged 31 points per game. In the annals of NBA history that’s not elite. Well, okay, it’s pretty elite when you consider the vast number of players who have ever played in the NBA and that Moses ranks 36th all time in that category. Top 40 for single season scoring won’t get you talked about in the top five talks but it’s not exactly a slouch thing to score over 30 points per game. But what’s stunning is that he did it while averaging 14.7 rebounds per game. 31 points, 15 boards. There have been two players since 1980 to average 30 points with a double double. Karl Malone averaged 11 rebounds in 89-90, and we’re all very happy for him. Malone was the other. Â Now a days if someone logs 15 boards we throw a little party for them (making Kevin Love that much more impressive). Moses logged that many (rounded!) over a season, and dropped in 30 points per game at the same time. 30 points per game. I don’t know how better to describe dominance than in those figures, except to note that while Moses was not flashy in his approach, watching him constantly out-wit, out-muscle, out-effort, and out-produce everyone else on the bevy of video available on the series of tubes does a pretty good job as well.
Diversion.
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There’s a certain familiarity with Blake Griffin, except not at all. The effort’s there, but Griffin has charisma, flash, style. He doesn’t ask to be seen, just like Moses did not, but when the light flashes upon him, Griffin smiles, and shows why someone will eventually give him an obscene amount of money to smile that same smile while holding a product. Griffin is 21 years old averaging 20 points and 11.7 rebounds. When Moses was 21 he was averaging 13.5 points and 13.4 rebounds (15.6 and 15.4 per 36 it should be noted). So Griffin is simultaneously not the beast on the glass Moses was (who has ever been?), but is more of the scorer, already.
And that’s pretty terrifying.
This isn’t to compare the two in any meaningful way. From background to personality, to game, there are no similarities. In reality I’m simply looking for someone new to dominate the game the way Moses did. But when examined, Moses isn’t considered to have dominated, even when he dominated. In that way, maybe he’s closer to a grumpy Dwight Howard. But it’s not what’s said about Moses that bugs me. It’s that Blake Griffin could very well have a book written about him within three years.
That same book has never been written about Moses Malone.
Resume.
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image by Sheyenne Rad
From the 1982 Sports Illustrated profile of Moses Malone by Anthony Cotton:
“I can do so many things that people don’t recognize yet,” Malone says. “If people want to find something bad about Moses this year, they won’t be able to find it. I’m not gonna fool anybody, not gonna promote myself to people. I just want them to respect me.”
via Moses Malone is aiming to earn his $13.2 million by – 11.01.82 – SI Vault.
This from an MVP who just switched teams in order to try and win a championship next to Doctor J, Bobby Jones, and Mo Cheeks (say hey, Marc Iavaroni). Â This from a man that should have been the simple idol of every big man worldwide. Instead the league was in full Lakers-Celtics obsession. Moses wasn’t sexy. He wasn’t infectious with Magic’s ability to disarm people, draw them in, make everyone feel like they were part of the party with him. Nor was he outwardly obsessive like Bird, driven to some sort of psychotic need to reach the end of the question “How good can I be?”
Moses instead knew he was pretty good. He liked being good. He played a lot of basketball and enjoyed his money and played ball for a good long time (20 FREAKING SEASONS), and then he went back to Sugarland, Texas and hung out. That’s it.
But in 1982, he was the MVP, joining a team with a legend, and it would be he who would let Doc walk out with the requisite ring for inclusion in The Club.
Cotton’s piece is insightful, even if it’s your basic profile, and just as obtuse as any feature on Moses (and they’re all obtuse).
“I don’t wanna be the best player; there are better players on the team than me. They win 55, 60 games every year. I just want to help them win a few more.”
via Moses Malone is aiming to earn his $13.2 million by – 11.01.82 – SI Vault.
Again, that kind of honesty, that kind of humility, that kind of workman’s ethic, even if he was just spouting off cliches to a reporter? You don’t see that anymore. And you certainly don’t see it from MVPs. Steve Nash was too cerebral, Dirk Nowitzki was too self-unaware, and Kobe and LeBron would never admit anyone was ever better than them at anything (and in doing so would be simultaneously loved and hated). Moses? Just thought he was pretty good at what he did.
Diversion.
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In the Cotton piece, Moses shows up at a local wing joint for lunch in his $50,000 Mercedes (in 82!), and has “strawberry soda pop” with lunch. For some reason I consider this to be my favorite piece of information regarding Moses I’ve found. The MVP drinking strawberry soda pop. I love strawberry soda pop. On a hot day it’s one of those things that simultaneously is so sweet you can’t understand how anyone could drink it and yet is so satisfying you want to go swimming in it. (That would be sticky.)
You can’t imagine LeBron drinking strawberry soda pop. You can’t imagine Kobe drinking it unless someone bet him he wouldn’t and the only thing he would taste is the crushing defeat of those who doubted he would drink said strawberry soda pop. You can imagine Dwight Howard drinking it, but it would be intentional, part of his long-tenured media buy and he may have abandoned that perception in favor of this new “the kidding is over” nonsense. Kevin Durant? Yeah, Kevin Durant would have strawberry soda pop,but even then you’d have to wonder if he was doing it just to pursue this same Mickey Mouse set of public ears he’s had on for so long.
But Moses? Strawberry soda pop.
In August I went to Memphis with a group of friends from high school. From an era I very much want to forget, these friends remain ideal in the fact that I find their company both entertaining and their grown personalities interesting. One of the things we did was visit Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. The wait was long, and the ceiling fans did not do the job in stifling the oppressive heat. But good God. Memphis fried chicken with an ice cold ICB Root Beer? Nothin’ better. It wasn’t the finest beverage I could have, it wasn’t edgy or hipsterish. But in the name of all that is holy, it was just really, really good.
Moses.
Resume.
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Again, from the Cotton piece, this time the words of Julius Erving:
“Mo has been one of the fellas from the first day of camp. He said, ‘Don’t worry about getting the ball to me, I’ll just go to the offensive boards and get in shape.’ Now that might not be as newsworthy, but the team will be successful.”
Imagine that. The MVP joins a great player on a great team and there’s no posturing or struggle with minutes or shots because one guy simply says “I’ll go do the dirty work and we’ll win a bunch of games.”
Not to hate on a generation that is decidedly more mine than “Mo’s” (which I am loathe to do because I already feel this era is preemptively underrated in comparison to prior ones), but how much further can Amar’e Stoudemire, or Chris Bosh, or Dwight Howard, or Andrew Bynum get from what Moses was? And while being that way, he was still the best. Even if it was only for a very select series of years as Simmons states in his book, being the best, being a winner, and not disrupting a great team while you do it?
I am jealous of that era for having Moses. Transcendent point forward who can play center or whip out assists in transition? I’ve got my own, even if he isn’t as good. I’ve got that, even if it’s a watered down, hard to swallow version. Transcendent shooting guard who can fill up the point sheet and nail clutch jumper after clutch jumper because he simply wants it more? Yeah, I’ve got one of those too. Great point guards with expert vision, dominant big men who are more physically gifted than others, intense defensive-minded power forwards, I’ve got ‘em.
We don’t have a Moses.
But then, no one has a Moses. None of us ever did.
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The crux of this entire thing is that there’s no book on Moses.
Not one. No cheap portfolio written by someone who managed to cobble together quotes from former, lesser teammates or middle-school friends. No personal statement written to promote religious beliefs or some self-help guide. No “Moses Malone Teaches All-Star Rebounding!” or personal tear-jerker about his personal life. Nothing. Moses is mentioned in Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball on 31 pages, 11 references in the index, and five pages dedicated to him in the Pantheon setting. He shows up periodically throughout the great works, in Breaks of the Game and The Punch, in Tip Off and anything that goes in depth on Charles Barkley or Hakeem Olajuwon. Why? Because this supposedly inarticulate man was the best professional mentor for those two.
Moses Malone mentored Charles Barkley and Hakeem Olajuwon. That’s the kind of impact he had. He validated Doctor J’s career. He was a thee-time MVP, an NBA champion, an 11-time All-Star, a Finals MVP, a two-time member of the All-Defensive team, an eight-time All-NBA team member, and a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.
No book.
Not a single tome.
I’m not saying it would be easy. Moses is legend for being imperceptible. Simmons mentioned this Frank Deford piece from ’79 in the Book of Basketball:
Malone is not particularly articulate about all this. Indeed, in his heavy bass voice, speaking in the argot of his impoverished Southern subculture, he sometimes seems obtuse. He grew up in a tumbledown frame house with only his mother, who had left school after the fifth grade; the only literature on the premises was a worn Bible and, later, newspaper clippings of his exploits. But syntax and structure are not everything; young Moses Malone has always had the most express vision of these two places: the rack and the future. And that, for him, has been quite enough.
via Moses Malone jumped from high school to the pros, where – 02.19.79 – SI Vault.
And that’s who he’s been. Fourteen years later this is what we get from a piece on Moses teaching Shawn Bradley:
At first glance, he seems miscast as a tutor. He is often gruff, with a low rumble of a voice that comes across like distant thunder and makes much of what he says sound like “hrrumph.” The police should put out an APB on his smile.
via Moses Malone – 11.08.93 – SI Vault.
So I’m not unaware that coaxing the story of Moses Malone out would be difficult, even as it seems that the people and careers that his life and game touched seem abundantly prepared to open up about him. But the attempt should be made. That Moses isn’t running head-first into the folds of attention and publicity makes it all the more important that now, in the era of TV specials for free agency declarations and press conference tweaking of officials and coaches is the norm, that we recognize Moses. Moses, who didn’t need to beat us over the head with his personality, nor tell us how good he was.
From Deford:
“There are no tricks to the way he plays it. “Basically, I just goes to the rack,” he says.
Rack is a rather obscure colloquialism, meaning the rim of the basket, but the way Malone gives voice to it, the rack takes on the aspect of a specific territory, demarcated as surely as the lane or the crease or the mezzanine or the city limits; you’ll know just where to find him.”
A player that simply used his game to back up his game. Ain’t that something.
We live in an era where Bil Walton is revered as the next coming who never came. Shaq is the biggest legend you can find. Books on players from this era will pile up and pile up. Somewhere, somehow, we are missing out on an opportunity to appreciate the free standing greatness of Moses Malone. Getting the right book on Moses Malone may be difficult. So was going to the rack.
Conclude.
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Moses wasn’t a saint. He’s not a sublime ambassador of the game that’s looked over like David Robinson is. He was a surly dude that had no time nor patience for reporters, publicity, or really, anyone. He did what he wanted and he switched teams time and time again. He didn’t belong to the Rockets fans or the Sixers fans or really anyone. But he’s part of our lore, and as all of us are keepers of the game, we owe it to ourselves and those that come after to try and remember him before he’s gone.
You think about that while you watch Tim Duncan this season. Just keep it in mind.
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