*[There’s a GREAT new book out about Moses Malone from author Paul Knepper. It’s a biography that had to be written, and Knepper left no stone unturned to capture Malone’s fascinating life story. Knepper literally talked to everyone who returned his calls and emails to weave together this comprehensive tale titled simply, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet. For all you Moses Malone fans out there, do yourself a favor and get the book. *

Until then, here’s a little something to tide you over on Malone’s leap from prep to pros. This story comes from the prolific Bert Rosenthal, who penned this piece for the February 1975 issue of the magazine Super Sports. The story records the challenges faced by Malone in his historic leap and, now with the benefit of 50 years, how he proved his naysayers wrong.]

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Pro basketball has gone through varying eras of dominating big men—players who could control the flow, the tempo, the pace, the score, and the winning of a game, a division title and a league championship.

They began with bespectacled George Mikan of the old Minneapolis Lakers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Then came the Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain period of the late 1950s and 1960s. Next came Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who established himself as a “franchise maker,” by turning the Milwaukee Bucks, from also-rans into championship caliber. And this season, there is Bill Walton, the red-haired, freckle-faced, three-time All-American who has revitalized the Portland Trail Blazers.

And there is Moses Malone.

Malone is the 6-foot-10 ½, 215-pound teenager who has made the rare and monumental leap from high school over the collegiate mountain and directly into the pros. Perhaps it would be putting too much pressure on Malone to compare him with such proven superstars as Mikan, Russell, Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar—and even Walton. But there doesn’t seem to be any uncertainty that it will not be long before he ranks alongside them.

“At similar stages of their careers, Moses Malone is better than Wilt Chamberlain in all phases of the game,” said wizened Eddie Gottlieb, who was the owner of the Philadelphia 76ers when Chamberlain played for them.

“Moses is as good right now as Bill Walton,” commented George Raveling, the basketball coach at Washington State University.

“Malone is ready to play pro basketball right now,” offered Marty Blake, who operates a scouting service for about 25 of the 28 teams in the National and American Basketball Associations. “A lot of baseball players turn pro right out of high school, why can’t a kid like Malone?”

Of course, there are others who feel that the 19-year-old Malone should not have leaped directly from high school into the pros with the ABA’s Utah Stars.

“Moses hasn’t ever been on the bench in his entire basketball career,” explained Maryland coach Lefty Driesell, who won the collegiate recruiting battle for Malone only to see him vanish before playing even a single game for the Terrapins. “And if they (the Stars) play him, he doesn’t have the physical maturity to dominate the league. The people are going to come see him once, and then they’re going to go home wondering why everybody was so excited about him,” continued Driesell.

“But you give Mo four years of college basketball,” he added, “and he’d go into either league and he would dominate. He would eat everybody alive.”

Malone at home in Petersburg

“He’s gonna sit there and dry rot,” said Bob Kilbourne, the athletic director at Petersburg High School in Virginia, where Moses first achieved national a claim at the school he attended before signing with the Stars. “He’s gotta be in the limelight. Now he knows that if he made a mistake, it’s his baby.”

“A kid like Moses has to be active, he has to perform,” commented “Pro” Hayes, Petersburg’s basketball coach. “Unlike other sports, you could lose your basketball touch just in one summer.”

Joe Hall, basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, was concerned that Malone would not have the maturity to cope with the pros. “It takes a very special person,” said Hall. “That would be my concern if it were my child, and I’d have a lot of concern for any boy of 18 or 19. You just can’t go on the road and make decisions that have to be made in the adult world.”

None of the detractors, however, said that Malone didn’t have the talent to be an outstanding pro. They seemed more concerned with the idea that he might be uncomfortable and unaccustomed to sitting on the bench, that he might be in over his head among the more experienced centers in the ABA, that he might not be mature enough, smart enough, or psychologically tough enough to cope with the immediate and overwhelming problems that were to face him.

But Moses wasn’t worried. He was as confident as a man who had once parted the Red Sea.

“He thinks of himself as a starter,” said Arnie Ferrin, the Stars’ general manager, “and nothing could please us more if he does so.”

Ferrin also quoted Malone as asking, “Who are those two dudes I’ve got to beat out (for the Stars’ starting center job)?”

Actually, there were three at the time. Jim Eakins, an all-star last season with the Virginia Squires; Randy Denton, a veteran whom Utah had acquired from the Memphis Sounds; and Zelmo Beaty, the Stars’ No. 1 pivotman last season and a perennial all-star.

Beaty, however, became engaged in a contract disagreement with the Stars and was let go prior to the 1974-75 season. Eakins and Denton, meanwhile, did not figure to offer much competition for Malone, except for the experience. Both were slow-footed, bulky, with a little, jumping ability or agility, and a poor assortment of shots.

Jim Eakins shooting

Malone, on the other hand, was a dazzling shotmaker, who averaged 39 points per game as a senior at Petersburg. He also averaged 26 rebounds and 12 blocked shots in leading the school to its second-straight 25-0 season and second consecutive state title. After the season, he scored 31 points, grabbed 20 rebounds, and was named the Most Valuable Player in the Dapper Dan Classic, a highly competitive and well-respected prep all-star game played annually in Pittsburgh.

Granted, those accomplishments were against high school players, not pros, or even collegians. But then during the summer, Malone proved his mettle against such players as Bob Dandridge of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, and Len Elmore, the highly touted rookie of the ABA’s Indiana Pacers. Playing in a league in Washington, D.C., in which Dandridge and Elmore also participated, he averaged 30 points and 20 rebounds per game in nearly 10 games.

While the Stars and the University of Maryland were struggling for his services, under the finest of cloak-and-dagger circumstances, Malone had said he would not be influenced by any large amounts of money. “I’ve got to live my life,” he commented, “I’ve got to do my own thinking. Nobody is gonna tell me what to do.”

Despite Malone’s contention, money obviously was a major factor in his decision. Neither the Stars—nor anyone else—would disclose the financial aspects of the contract. They would only say there was a clause providing for $120,000 whenever Moses decided to go to college.

The length of the contract was settled on as five years. Originally, there was a clause binding Malone to the Stars for 15 years, although the team was responsible to him for only four. That finally was straightened out after Malone received help from attorneys Lee Fentross and Donald Dell.

Driesell, exceedingly upset that he had failed in convincing Malone to attend Maryland even for a short time, said he told Moses his contract would increase “by at least one million dollars” if he played at least one year in college.

“If he had played one season at Maryland, he could have gotten three or four times more,” claimed Kilbourne.

“I would have wanted him to get a couple of years of education,” said Hayes. “If he could get a million dollars for a high school education, what could he get after two years of college?”

“If he can get $3 million, well, I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t sign,” commented Guy Lewis, coach at the University of Houston.

Asked if he thought the other players would resent his whopping contract, Moses, generally a slow-talker, answered quickly, “I think they’ll love me.” Then he added, “I’ll be the kind of player who’ll play with ‘em.”

Malone said he patterns his play after Spencer Haywood, a former ABA star and now an all-star with the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics. “Spencer’s real cool and real smooth about what he’s doing,” said the mighty Moses.

”Moses does things the way Haywood does them,” said Bucky Buckwalter, who formally coached Haywood at Seattle and now is the Utah coach. “He can overpower you from the inside and shoot well from the outside. He also is a great shot-blocker and rebounder.”

Buckwalter is a firm believer in the run-and-shoot style of basketball, and with Malone in the lineup instead of Eakins and Denton, the Stars are a much better fastbreaking team. Moses is quick enough to pick off a rebound, fire an outlet pass to guards Jimmy Jones or Ron Boone, and then get down the other end of the court to get the final pass and score. His shot-blocking skills—also superior to Eakins’ or Denton’s—puts the fear into opposing players of driving in the middle against the Stars and enables his Utah teammates to concentrate more on trying to steal the ball, knowing that if they miss, Malone will be there to pick up their man. “I’m not selfish, and I like to rebound, and I like to block shots,” Malone said in assessing himself.

He also disclosed that he is ambidextrous. “I can hook right, I can hook left, I can slip into the corners for a jump shot, and I can go to the rack or go under the rack for a shot,” he said.

Buckwalter said he likes to think of Malone as a center along the lines of Bob McAdoo of the Buffalo Braves, who won the NBA scoring championship last season in only his second year in the pros. McAdoo’s performances were among the chief reasons the Braves made the playoffs for the first time in their history and why Buffalo was such a big attraction around the NBA, both at home and away. Malone should ensure Utah of making the playoffs, help extend the Stars’ string of first-place finishes in the ABA West of three in a row going into this season, continue the team’s record of 50 or more victories in a season (a feat accomplished the past four years), and help put the club’s attendance among the best in the ABA. Lack of attendance almost cost Utah its franchise this season.

Despite its success on the court, the Stars’ home attendants had been dwindling. So when owner, Bill Daniels announced he was putting the club up for sale to enter politics in his home state of Colorado, he was shocked to find there was little interest in keeping the team in Utah. Finally, a group headed by James A. Collier, a Salt Lake City businessman, agreed to buy the club, provided there was a minimum of 7,000 season tickets sold. That figure was reached just prior to the deadline, and Collier and his five partners took over the club.

Their first major project was the signing of Malone, who already had signed a grant-in-aid with Maryland. Again, there was a deadline to beat. This time, it was the ABA rule that if a player is still in college and was not signed by September 1, he could not be signed until after that school term ended. Only about a week before the deadline, Collier headed a Utah contingent that went to Petersburg with the idea of convincing Malone to join the Stars immediately.

“When we left Salt Lake City, our intention was to present an offer he could consider without compromising his collegiate eligibility or putting him under any undue pressure to sign,” said Collier. “We believe at no time did we lose sight of this intention.”

Despite Collier’s contention, the pressure was enormous. For five straight days, Malone, a rather inarticulate youngster, was besieged by representatives of the Stars and the University of Maryland. At the same time, those of the news media—sportswriters and columnists, photographers, radio and television broadcasters—hovered day and night, either inside or outside his ramshackle house, chronicling his every move.

The experience left him dazed and cynical, but after much soul-searching and several discussions with his mother, Mary, who was earning a minimum $100 a week as a supermarket checker (his father left home when Moses was age two), the young Malone reached his dramatic decision: He would turn pro.

“This is a goal, something I’ve had on my mind for five years,” exclaimed Malone. “I wanted to be the first dude to go straight to the pros from high school.” (Actually, he wasn’t the first; Joe Graboski was. But Moses is too young to remember Graboski, who signed with the Philadelphia Warriors in the 1950s).

Guaranteed, the Stars will not hesitate in playing him as often as possible this season. He is too valuable a commodity—and too good a product, both on and off the court—to waste sitting on the bench. He is a big hope for now and an even bigger hope for the future.

Malone will be under close scrutiny from everyone from here on, and how well he responds may determine if a great prospect gets ruined or fulfills the promise. The ABA can well use another big name in its battle for survival, and Malone must prove whether he’s a pawn or a king in that battle.