ON September 13 the National Basketball Association (NBA) lost one of the greatest centers and players to have stepped into the basketball hard court.
Moses Eugene Malone, the man who helped bring the Sixers’ franchise and their fans in 1983 to the Promised Land (the Larry O’Brien trophy which symbolizes the NBA world championship), died of natural causes at the age of 60.
Malone played for 21 seasons from 1974 to 1995, both in the now-defunct American Basketball Association (ABA) and the NBA. He was a three-time Most Valuable Player (MVP) and was a 12-time All-Star. He won both the league and finals’ MVP in 1983. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001.
According to ESPN.com, “Malone was the first player to go pro right out of high school, signing with the Utah Stars of the ABA in 1974.” Imagine if this man went through college and absorbed knowledge and fundamentals of the game from the best basketball minds and tacticians in the US at the time, he would have been nearly unstoppable in the low block. He set the standards from players coming straight out of high school into the NBA. In our mind, only Kevin Garnett comes closest to that standard.
The ABA saw his potential and so did the fans which made him an All-Star in his rookie year. Malone played for two seasons until the ABA and the NBA merged in 1976. In the NBA, Malone played for the Buffalo Braves and then later on was traded to the Houston Rockets. With the red-and-yellow-clad Rockets, Malone became a five-time All-Star in six seasons. He led the league in rebounding in 1979and won the MVP for the first time in his career. Malone led the Rockets to the finals in 1981, losing in six games to the Boston Celtics which was then led by a pretty good player named Larry Bird.
Malone won his second MVP award in a1982 but was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers the succeeding season. He won another MVP accolade both in the regular season and in the finals, in the process helping the Sixers win the title in only his first year with the franchise. Malone was an All-Star in each of his four seasons with the Sixers.
The Sixers traded Malone to the Washington Bullets, now known as the Washington Wizards, and was an All-Star in the two seasons he played for the then Bullets’ franchise. He signed up as a free agent with the Atlanta Hawks, earning his 12th and final All-Star appearance in this first season with the Hawks. AT the twilight of his career, he played for the Milwaukee Bucks, went back to the 76ers and hung up his jersey after a stint with the San Antonio Spurs.
Malone led the league in rebounding six times, five of them over a consecutive period, from 1981 to 1985, thus earning the title, “Chairman of the Boards.” The accolade was in recognition of his relentless and ferocious rebounding on both ends of the court. Malone is the all-time leader in offensive rebounds leading both the ABA and the NBA a combined nine times. He is the seventh career all-time leading scorer in NBA history with 29,580 and third in most rebounds in league history with 17,834. Malone was named to both the ABA all-time team and the NBA’s 50 greatest players of all time.
It was a sad day for basketball when Malone passed away.
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WE watched on TV the Philippines’s gallant but losing bid for an Olympic berth in the International Basketball Federation Asia Championship in Changsha, China. The host had all the odds stacked in their favor: from their tremendous height and heft advantage, to the raucous hometown crowd, to questionable off-court tactics like the delayed pick up of the Philippine team because, according to Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan, “the e-bus failed to charge,” to arranging the Philippines’s game schedule so that the Pinoys would not have enough time to rest from the previous days’ ferocious game. This just goes to show what people will to do to win and to have their way not only in sports, but also in other geopolitical fields.
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CONGRATULATIONS are in order to the De La Salle University Green Archers for that come-from-behind 80-76 victory over archrival Ateneo last Sunday at the Mall of Asia Arena. The Archers were down at one point in the second quarter by 15 points but managed to get their acts together and grabbed the lead halfway into the third quarter with a three-point shot from Jason Perkins. The coup de grace, was however, was delivered by rookie Josh Torralba by converting from beyond the arc right in front of the La Salle bench to put the Archers ahead, 77-76. The Archers’ victory further tightened up the race to the Final Four.