Moses Malone: The ultimate hard hat and 1980s NBA icon

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Perhaps no player better symbolized the NBA as it was (as opposed to the way it is) than Moses Malone.

You can talk about analytics and spacing and corner threes all you want, and that’s fine. All that has its place.

Moses just wanted to kick your ass.

He was coming at you, and he was going through you. And if you weren’t prepared for that, you were gonna wind up sprawled on the apron of the court with a bloody lip, or on the bench with five fouls. Likely both.

There was no varnish on Moses’ game, only hard bark. And he was an all-purpose mangler. Didn’t matter if you were a stiff or star; he was gonna turn and go to the rack, as he liked to say. (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, it should be noted, developed more than his share of Moses-related migraines, leaving him safely ensconced on the concierge level of some Marriott or other, as opposed to the low block.)

And no, this is not some back-in-my-day rant brought on by Malone’s death Sunday at age 60. There is nothing more enjoyable than watching the current Spurs or Warriors carve someone up with their skill and precision. It’s just to say that Moses was a man of his time, as gritty as the Petersburg, Virginia, playgrounds that produced him.

Acquired by the Sixers in September 1982, he proved to be the missing piece for some elegant teams — the teams of Julius Erving, et al. — that were soft in the middle. Where they were once bullied by the Celtics, they now had the toughest guy on the block. Where they were once shredded by the Lakers, they now had the ultimate antidote; rebounds that had fueled Showtime now became stick-backs for Moses.

It produced the 1982-83 championship, the title foretold by Malone himself, in one of the greatest rallying cries ever uttered: “Fo’, fo’, fo’.” They were close, losing only once in 13 playoff games, and emblazoned on the side of every championship ring was “Fo’, Fi’, Fo’.”

Moses led the league in rebounding that season, one of six times he did so in his 21-year career, and always led the league in effort. As Daily News columnist Mark Whicker wrote during the 1982-83 title run, “Moses doesn’t get tired, but he’s a carrier.”

A few years back retired NBA center Danny Schayes, son of Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes, told me that guarding Malone was unlike any other task he faced during his 18-year career. Other guys were more skilled, he said, but no one played with the ferocity Malone did.

“Moses had an ugly shot,” Schayes said, “and he dribbled inefficiently. … But he was just everywhere. He was relentless. And he was effective as hell, doing whatever he was doing. That made him a tough guard. He was unpredictable.”

He was also clever. Malone’s contemporaries have long claimed that he missed on purpose to pad his offensive-rebounding stats, and Schayes is no different. “He did it all the time,” he said.

Schayes also believes Malone set picks for teammates that were “just good enough to get you open, but not good enough to get you open for a shot.” That way the guard or small forward would more than likely have to dump it inside to Moses.

Everything on his terms — that was Moses. His coach with the Houston Rockets, Del Harris, once told me that he took a team including Malone to the Dominican Republic one summer. Several of the players joined together to exchange the local currency for American money.

Malone struck out on his own, and wound up getting a better exchange rate than everybody else.

Harris asked him why he had done it so quickly.

“Don’t want no money that doesn’t have George Washington’s picture on it,” he said, according to Harris.

And Moses had little regard for reporters, employing an approach to media relations that could also be described as old school. If present-day players hide behind pasted-on smiles and armies of PR dweebs, Malone was his own gatekeeper.

The memory remains of Moses wrapped in a towel and sitting Buddha-like at his spot in the Spectrum locker room after a playoff game in 1982-83. The Inquirer’s George Shirk stood to one side of him, the Daily News’ Phil Jasner to the other. Other lesser lights (like myself) tiptoed over.

And … nothing.

Malone’s arms were crossed, his scowl forbidding, his eyes downcast. Finally he said, “Ain’t got no comment.”

Shirk and Jasner looked at one another knowingly, and the media mob quickly dispersed.

Which is not to say that Malone was unaware of the members of the Fourth Estate. Jasner, who passed away in 2010, liked to talk about the time during Charles Barkley’s rookie year (1984-85) when he had a beef with Daily News columnist Stan Hochman.

“Who is Stan Hochman?” Barkley yelled, as he stood in the locker room at St. Joe’s.

Moses, standing across the room, did not skip a beat.

“Short guy,” he said. “Gray hair. Dresses nice. Never know where the man is bleepin’ coming from.”

Around his coaches and teammates Malone was far more forthcoming, far more jovial. He called teammate Mark McNamara “Tank,” after the comic-strip character. He joked that the rented Dodge Colt driven by strength and conditioning coach John Kilbourne was “a Matchbox car.” He gave Andrew Toney grief about his wardrobe.

But mostly, Moses was all business. And perhaps the greatest tribute paid to him was the one witnessed by Clayton Sheldon, then the Sixers’ assistant director of group sales, during the championship parade.

Some 30 construction workers happened to be on their lunch hour when the flatbed truck carrying the players passed the site where they were working. And upon seeing Malone the workers raised their lunch pails to the ultimate hard hat.

It would be altogether fitting and proper if we all took the time to do the same now.

And just for good measure, do it fo’ times.

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