Moses Malone exceeded the hype

I HAD TICKETS for Game 5 of the 1983 NBA Finals at the Spectrum. It was just before I got into the writing business full-time and nine years after I was supposed to see Moses Malone at Cole Field House.

Caesar Alsop, my great friend from the University of Maryland who would become the Daily News sports editor, had been telling me stories about how this Moses was going to take the Terps to the Promised Land. C-Man grew up in Virginia and knew all about the man-child from his home state.

Turned out Moses was so good that there was no Game 5 in 1983, no trip up I-95 from Baltimore for me then, no need for him to play one day of college basketball.

I always wondered how good he would have been at Maryland, playing with John Lucas, Mo Howard and Brad Davis in the 1974-75 season, throwing outlet passes to start one of the great fastbreaks in college basketball history. I can't imagine how the Terps would have lost a game. Moses, of course, ended up with the Utah Stars in the ABA that season, averaging 18 points and 14 rebounds, ridiculous numbers for a kid right out of high school.

That kid, of course, would become a basketball legend, the force that made the great Sixers teams of the early 1980s into champions. I think you could make a strong case that he was the greatest offensive rebounder who ever lived. Moses did not play above the rim; he played around the rim, tracking down missed shots, his and everybody else's, like his very existence depended on him getting the rock.

Malone was never elegant like Kareem, his older contemporary through much of his NBA career. He simply found a way to put the ball in the basket through sheer force of will.

Moses was the only player to be MVP in consecutive years for different teams (he averaged 31 and 15 for the Rockets in 1981-82). I was asked yesterday to compare Moses to somebody who plays today or ever played. I could not. Nobody played like Moses. He was his own model.

His Petersburg (Va.) High teams won 50 consecutive games. He could not be guarded. He was a program changer, so in demand that Maryland coach Lefty Driesell sent then-assistant Howard White to live in Petersburg during Moses' senior year. You could do things like that back then. Moses committed to Maryland, enrolled for summer school in 1974 and actually went for a few weeks.

Then, the Stars drafted him and he was gone. No unbeaten season at Maryland.

So I did not see Moses at Maryland. I did not see him in Game 5. But I was in the Springfield (Mass.) Civic Center in 2001, the night when Mike Krzyzewski, John Chaney and Moses Malone were inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

I don't remember much about the speeches, other than Chaney promising immediately to go way over his allotted time. He did.

I knew Chaney and Coach K. I did not know Moses, but felt like I did. He was a word-of-mouth high school star. It was a simpler time without instant answers on video or access to stories that could make unknowns into instant celebrities. The Moses reality turned out better than the hype.

When I got to the DN in February 1985, Moses was a certified superstar, the center for one of the great teams in the NBA, rookie Charles Barkley on the come, the great Doctor J closing on the finish line. I remember how exciting it was to watch those Sixers teams. It was great hoops.

What I remember vividly about Moses as a player was the sweat. It just poured off him and perfectly explained him.