Sixers great Moses Malone dies at 60

The 76ers were practicing for the start of the 1983 playoffs when coach Billy Cunningham approached Moses Malone in front of reporters and asked him: "How do you think the playoffs will go?"

"Fo, fo, fo," Mr. Malone reportedly replied in regard to how many games the Sixers would need in each of the three series to sweep the playoffs and win the NBA championship.

The Sixers actually needed one more game to go all the way, but the words uttered by Mr. Malone became a permanent part of the lexicon in Philadelphia and gave him legendary status alongside Julius Erving, Maurice Cheeks and other stars of the city's last NBA title team.

Mr. Malone, one of the greatest rebounders in NBA history who was brought in to become the last missing piece for the Sixers, died Sunday in his sleep at a hotel in Norfolk, Va., at the age of 60.

According to Norfolk police, officers went to Mr. Malone's room shortly before 8 a.m. after he failed to show up to participate in a charity golf tournament and found him unresponsive. Norfolk Fire Rescue was summoned and pronounced him dead at the scene.

Detectives said there was no sign of foul play, said Norfolk police spokesman Daniel Hudson. Mr. Malone's body was taken to the medical examiner's office to determine the cause of death. Some published reports quoted a friend, former teammate Calvin Murphy, as saying he suffered an apparent heart attack.

Murphy told a Houston television station that he had spent the weekend with him at the induction ceremonies for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and at the golf tournament.

"It hurts real bad," Murphy said. "There is a pain in my heart. I loved that man. I never heard him say one harsh word about anybody."

"It is with a deep sense of sadness that the Sixers family mourns the sudden loss of Moses Malone," 76ers chief executive officer Scott O'Neil said in a statement. "It is difficult to express what his contributions to this organization - both as a friend and player - have meant to us, the city of Philadelphia and his faithful fans.

"Moses holds a special place in our hearts and will forever be remembered as a genuine icon and pillar of the most storied era of Philadelphia 76ers basketball. No one person has ever conveyed more with so few words, including three of the most iconic in this city's history. His generosity, towering personality and incomparable sense of humor will truly be missed."

NBA commissioner Adam Silver called Mr. Malone "among the most dominant centers ever to play the game and one of the best players in the history of the NBA and the ABA.

"Even more than his prodigious talent, we will miss his friendship, his generosity, his exuberant personality and the extraordinary work ethic he brought to the game throughout his 21-year pro career," Silver said in a statement.

Mr. Malone, who was 6-foot-10 and 260 pounds, was nicknamed the "Chairman of the Boards" and it was easy to see why. He led the NBA in rebounding six times and is one of only four players to amass 25,000 points and 15,000 rebounds in his career. He was a three-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a 12-time all-star who averaged 20.6 points and 12.2 rebounds for his career.

"I've said this many times, that Moses was the James Brown of basketball, the godfather, the hardest-working man in the business," said Sonny Hill, a longtime organizer and advocate for basketball in the Philadelphia community. "There is not one player that I've seen work harder than Moses Malone and gave the kind of effort that he gave relentlessly."

Though he wasn't a great leaper and rarely dunked, Mr. Malone had an uncanny knack for finding the spots on the floor where the rebounds would fall. He once had 21 offensive rebounds in a game. Cheeks, his Sixer teammate, joked that half of his offensive rebounds came on his own misses.

Mr. Malone, who spent 21 years in professional basketball, 19 in the NBA, played with the Sixers for five seasons. In his last two years, he was teammates with both Erving and Charles Barkley, who said he called him "Dad."

"Words can't explain my sadness," Barkley said in a statement. "I will never know why a Hall of Famer took a fat, lazy kid from Auburn and treated him like a son and got him in shape and made him a player. I hope he knew how much I appreciated and loved him."

John Nash, who was the Sixers' assistant general manager when Mr. Malone was acquired, said Barkley told him he took Barkley "under his wing and told him if he ever wanted to be successful, he was going to have to get in shape. He called him 'Fat Boy.' Moses kind of told it like it was."

Mr. Malone, named one of the NBA's 50 greatest players and inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001, was the first player to go from high school to the professional ranks. He graduated from Petersburg (Va.) High School in 1974 and was drafted by the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association.

After two seasons in the ABA, Mr. Malone jumped to the NBA and played briefly for Buffalo before moving on to the Houston Rockets, where he made the playoffs five times and was named the league's MVP in 1979 and 1982.

Before the start of the 1982-83 season, the 76ers, who had been defeated by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980 and 1982 NBA Finals, were looking for an inside presence to help neutralize Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and invited Mr. Malone, then a restricted free agent, to a meeting in New York. He signed an offer sheet to play with them.

"We all knew in that room that this was a monumental signing," Nash said. "However, we weren't assured we were going to get him because back in those days, the prior team had the right to match. The process took a while."

Nash said owner Harold Katz then directed general manager Pat Williams to negotiate a trade and Mr. Malone became a Sixer, signing a six-year, $13.2 million contract that Nash called "the largest contract in the history of professional sports at that time."

Mr. Malone won over the fans right away, not only with his style of play but also when he told reporters at his first news conference, "This is Doc's team," referring to Erving, the superstar.

"The big concern was how were Moses and Julius going to relate and how were they going to play together and how were they going to get along," Williams said. "Moses defused that as only he could when he said, 'This is Doc's team. I'm just here to help Doc.' He came here with that kind of humble spirit. He did not have any big shot-itis."

Mr. Malone averaged 24.5 points and 15.3 rebounds in the 1982-83 championship season, and 26.0 points and 15.8 rebounds in the playoffs, being named NBA Finals MVP. The Sixers swept the New York Knicks, defeated the Milwaukee Bucks in five games and then beat the Los Angeles Lakers in four straight to take the trophy.

A parade down Broad Street followed, and Williams remembers a time on the route when about a dozen construction workers eating lunch spotted the flatbed truck carrying Mr. Malone and raised their lunch boxes in honor.

"They lifted their lunch pails in unison paying tribute to a lunch-pail center," he said.

After four seasons in Philadelphia, Mr. Malone and the Sixers had an unpleasant parting. Disagreements with Katz and coach Matt Guokas prompted his trade to Washington, a controversial deal that started the Sixers on a slide that saw them fail to return to the Finals until 2001.

Mr. Malone played for Atlanta and Milwaukee before returning to the Sixers in the 1993-94 season. He concluded his career the next year with San Antonio.

Mr. Malone loved being around basketball after he retired. He played almost regularly at the Fonde Recreation Center gym in Houston. He worked with Rockets great Hakeem Olajuwon when he joined the NBA in the mid-1980s and sustained the relationship through the years. He joined the Sixers as an assistant coach in 2006-07.

He might have been a quiet man, and maybe a bit intimidating, but judging from the tributes Sunday on social media, he was anything but.

"My condolences to the family and friends of Moses Malone. You will truly be missed. Rest in peace Big Mo!!!" former Sixer Allen Iverson posted on Twitter.

"Just saw Moses Malone yesterday and he's gone today. Thank you Mo for making me smile and laugh as you have so many," tweeted Philadelphia native and South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, who posted a picture of her with Mr. Malone towering over her.

"He was not expressive verbally but expressive in terms of his deeds," Hill said. "Moses was a tremendous human being. If you talk to anybody that's been around him, they will tell you the same thing . . . a far better human being than he was a basketball player."

Mr. Malone's death followed the passing of two other former great 76ers centers, both from heart attacks, within the last year. Darryl Dawkins, 58, died on Aug. 27 and Caldwell Jones, 64, passed away last Sept. 21.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.