photo: si.com

Tenacious! Relentless! Ferocious! Unrelenting work ethic. The Chairman of the Boards.

Those are the words that immediately come to mind when I think of one of the game’s true pioneers, Moses. He was the modern era’s trailblazer that went from ashy to classy, straight from high school to the pros, and blossomed into one of the greatest big men the game has ever seen. The time has now come to step into another chamber, the one reserved for the big boys who called the paint home.

Moses Eugene Malone grew up poor and was raised by his mother, Mary, in Petersburg, Virginia. Mary, a nurse’s aide, raised her son in a two-bedroom row house that was less than a block away from the Virginia Avenue playground. By the time he was 12, the young boy, who was admittedly shy and clumsy, was already 6′3″. Football held his interest early on. But once he cradled a rock in his hands, the singlemindedness and determination that proved a hallmark to his later success became evident.

“When Mo first started playing on Virginia Avenue, he was still growing fast and he was very awkward,” his close frien David Pair told Sports Illustrated’s John Schulian in 1974 during Malone’s senior year in high school. “They used to laugh at him and beat him all the time. Now when we have games there, we make Mo agree not to come inside. He has to shoot from outside, or we don’t let him play.”

“I didn’t pick up a basketball until I was 13 and a half, but I worked hard even then,” Moses said in a 1984 Playboy Magazine interview. “Every day after school, I’d go over to the playground and play ball until about two in the morning. The only trouble I had was I kept wearing out my shoes. Back then, I didn’t get no high-priced shoes; I had to get them old P.F. Flyers. I’d wear them for about five days and then it was time for a new pair.”

photo: si.com

The 6′11″ manchild led the Petersburg High School to 50 straight victories and back-to-back state championships, initiating an avalanche of salivating recruiters that descended on the town.

Howard Garfinkel, the legendary scout and Five-Star All-Star Camp czar, once said that, “Moses is the first kid that’s been bigger than the camp itself. He’s the best we ever had.”

Washington State coach George Raveling, during Malone’s senior year when he averaged 36 points, 26 rebounds and 10 blocked shots a game, said, “Moses will rewrite the 10 commandments of basketball.”

In the first ever McDonald’s Capital Classic game in ‘74, which matched a team of U.S. all-stars against the best from the D.C. area, the guard play dominated as NYC star Butch Lee from Dewitt Clinton HS earned MVP honors with 23 points. But Moses grabbed 17 rebounds and tossed many a weak shot into the stands, while altering countless others.

photo: abamemorabilia.com

Over 300 colleges offered the big man a scholarship. A lot of them came bearing gifts while dangling cars, cash, houses, girls and the moon. Oral Roberts himself showed up and went so far as to promise that he’d cure his mother of a bleeding ulcer. He saw through the game from the get go, digesting the business side much more than people knew.

“Sometimes they brought me in to meet the president of the university, who talked to me like he wanted to be my father,” Moses once told Sports Illustrated’s Pat Putnam. “That made me laugh. They fixed me up with dates. Then when I got home those girls called me long distance and pretended they were in love with me. What kind of stuff is that?”

Malone always wore a serious expression on the court, during his recruitment and while interacting with the media. His shyness and penchant for saying only what was necessary with a deep baritone in the speech pattern vernacular of his southern upbringing fooled many into thinking that he was dumb.

“Some people mistake that shyness for stupidity,” Virginia Commonwealth Coach Chuck Noe once said. “But he’s a lot smarter than some of the people who are recruiting him.”

While Maryland and Lefty Driesell won the recruiting war, the Utah Stars of the A.B.A. drafted Moses in the third round and no one really took the selection seriously. They thought it was a marketing ploy. But Utah came after Moses hard. He was actually enrolled in classes for a few days in College Park when the negotiations began. Suffice it to say, Lefty Driesell was not the happiest camper.

But if the Utah Stars reps thought the negotiations were going to be cake, they had another thing coming. They arrived on a Thursday and a deal did not get done until a week later.

“It was unreal,” Bucky Buckwalter, the Stars coach once said. “We put 932 miles on the car in six days just going between Petersburg and Washington.”

Most thought the kid wasn’t ready and didn’t have the physical toughness required for pro ball. But he did have some intiation into the what can happen inside the pro combat zone. His high school team played a lot of exhibition games against inmates from the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond.

“You know they were rough,” Moses told SI’s great writer, Roy S. Johnson, in the early ’80s. “They had this guy called Milkman, who was bigger than I was and knew no fouls.”

When Johnson asked how Milkman acquired the nickname, Moses laughed and shook his head saying, “Cause he killed one, MAN!”

photo: si.com

Early on in his first pro season, at a slim 215 pounds, his ability on the boards and defense shocked many seasoned b-ball men who’d been around the game for a while.

“He’s so quick it’s unbelievable,” Buckwalter told SI’s Pat Putnam. “One minute he’s just loping down the court, maybe a little more than halfway, and then you blink and there he is coming down with a rebound. He just stuns me. Here he is only an inch or so under seven feet and he’s as quick as a guard. Hell, he’s quicker than a lot of guards.”

That quickness was augmented by springs and innate instincts, almost a telepathy, around the rim. And the question of being able to take the pounding quickly lost its mystery.

photo: si.com

“There is the matter of toughness,” Buckwalter continued. “They know he’s young and a lot of guys have really laid it on him, trying to intimidate him. Elbows, knees, grabbing, shoving, the whole bag. And he’s given it right back. That kid doesn’t back up an inch. I knew what was going to happen, so I told our guys to go after him right from the first day of practice. We had to find out. They used to kid him by calling him ‘the rookie.’ Then one day after a rough workout he walked into the locker room and told them, ‘You guys can keep on calling me a rookie, but I’m the toughest damn rookie you ever saw.’ ”

As a 19-year-old, first year pro, he averaged 19 points and grabbed 15 boards. THAT’S INCREDIBLE!

After another year with the Spirits of St. Louis, the leagues merged and Moses wound up a Houston Rocket. In his first year in the NBA, he shattered Paul Silas’ offensive rebounds record (though the stat was not kept when Bill Russell and The Big Dipper played) and led the Rockets to the Eastern Conference Finals (they were in the East back then).

photo: si.com

By his fifth pro year (which would have been his rookie campaign had he stayed at Maryland) at the age of 23, he was the league’s MVP (Think about who was playing then in ‘78 -’79 and let me hear you say DAYAMN!) while putting up 25 points and 18 rebounds a night (feel free to say DAYAMN!!! again).

Without going into his accomplishemnts, which would keep me here all day, understand that he dominated the paint on par with the best of the best. In ‘83, after being named MVP again the previous year, he took one of the greatest teams ever, the 76′ers with Doc, Mo Cheeks, Andrew Toney, a.k.a. “The Boston Strangler”, and Bobby Jones to the crescendo.

The ‘83 Sixers lost only one playoff game as Moses put up 26 points and 16 boards per game during the postseason. The previous year, without Moses, Philly lost to the Lakers in the Finals. In ‘83, he dominated Kareem on the boards as Philly swept the series, almost making good on his infamous “Fo, Fo, Fo” prediction for the postseason.

He was a pro’s pro for 21 years, one of the best big men, leaders, defenders and rebounders, particularly on the offensive end, that the game has and will ever see.

photo: si.com

And stay tuned for Part II, where Moses coagulates into a vision never seen before.

If it wasn’t for the rural Virginia playground game, Moses never leads the masses to the promised land. And if it wasn’t for Moses – LeBron, KG, T-Mac and Kobe never make the jump.

THE PLAYGROUND IS NOT THE PROBLEM. IT IS THE SOLUTION!