Moses Eugene Malone (born March 23, 1955 in Petersburg, Virginia) is a retired American Hall of Fame basketball player who starred in both the American Basketball Association and the National Basketball Association.
A three-time NBA MVP and one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players, Malone was the most successful prep-to-pro player of his era, going straight from Petersburg High to a twenty-one year career in professional basketball.
By the time Malone retired after 19 seasons in the NBA he was the last former ABA player active and held numerous distinctions in both leagues, including a championship ring and NBA finals trophy won with the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers.
The ABA-NBA merger occurred after the 1975–76 season, but the Spirits of St. Louis were one of the ABA teams that did not join the NBA. In the ABA Dispersal Draft held on August 5, the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers selected Malone from the Spirits of St. Louis with the fifth overall pick.
The 21-year-old center never played a regular-season game for the Blazers, however. Prior to the first game of the 1976–77 season Portland traded him to the Buffalo Braves for a 1978 first-round draft choice. Even then, Malone’s travels weren’t over. After only two games with Buffalo he was traded by the Braves to the Houston Rockets for two future first-round draft choices.
Malone found a home in Houston, where he was reunited with Coach Tom Nissalke, who had coached him in his rookie season with the ABA’s Utah Stars. With the Rockets, Malone established himself immediately as one of the NBA’s most ferocious rebounders, particularly on the offensive end. He appeared in 82 games overall for both Buffalo and Houston and finished with averages of 13.2 points and 13.1 rebounds per game. He ranked third in the NBA in rebounding behind Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and established a new NBA record for offensive rebounds in a season, with 437, shattering Paul Silas’s old mark of 365. (Malone would break his own record two years later.) Malone also ranked seventh in the league in blocked shots, with 2.21 per game.
He delivered in the playoffs, helping the Rockets to the Eastern Conference Finals, which they lost to the Philadelphia 76ers in six games. Malone averaged 18.8 points and 16.9 rebounds in 12 playoff games. He set an NBA Playoff record with 15 offensive rebounds in an overtime victory against the Washington Bullets in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
Malone’s second NBA season ended prematurely when he suffered a stress fracture in his right foot and missed the Rockets’ final 23 games. Remarkably, he still led the NBA in total offensive rebounds (380) and finished second in rebounding average (15.0 rpg) behind Leonard “Truck” Robinson (15.7).
Malone made the first of what would be 12 consecutive All-Star Game appearances in 1978, the year that would have been his senior season had he chosen to play college basketball. His scoring output surged to 19.4 points per game, third best on the Rockets behind Calvin Murphy’s 25.6 and Rudy Tomjanovich’s 21.5.
Career accomplishments
* was named one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players in 1997.
* was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001.
* played more seasons (21) in the NBA/ABA than any other player.
* was both the NBA Most Valuable Player and Sporting News MVP in 1979, 1982 and 1983.
* is the only player in NBA history to average 20 points and 10 rebounds on four different teams. Three others have done it three times, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, and George McGinnis, McGinnis accomplishing the feat a fourth season while playing in the American Basketball Association before joining the NBA
* became the first player in NBA history to earn five consecutive rebounding titles (1980-1984).
* did not foul out during his final 1,212 games, the longest streak without a disqualification.[2]
* has the highest number of offensive rebounds (6,731) since the NBA started tracking offensive and defensive rebounds separately in 1973-74
* is second only to Karl Malone in overall (NBA and ABA) free throws made, with 9,018
* is second behind Karl Malone in overall (NBA and ABA) free throws attempted, with 11,864
* is eighth all time in games played (1,329)
* is tenth in minutes played (45,071)
* is 13th in NBA field goal attempts (19,225)
Lifetime statistics
* Games: 1,329
* Points: 27,409
* PPG: 20.6
* RPG: 12.2
* APG: 1.4
* BLK: 1,733
* FG%: .491
* FT%: .769
