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How Moses ‘Mumbles’ Malone skipped college to save his family — and rule the NBA
t was the dog days of summer 1974, and University of Maryland basketball coach Lefty Driesell was very, very angry. He had spent the better part of a year scouting a star high-school basketball player from Petersburg, Va., named Moses Malone — 6 feet 10 inches, 220 pounds, 19 years old and, according to one scout, a “pro talent — now.” After a heated recruiting battle, Malone signed a letter of intent with the Terrapins. But, before his first game, the huge center defected to the Utah Stars, dealing the Maryland basketball program a huge blow. But this wasn’t just about the Terps, Driesell said. This was about a young man — the first young man in history — to forego a college education and jump right from high school on to a pro court. It just wasn’t appropriate. “I think they’re taking advantage of Moses,” Driesell said. More than 40 years later, Malone — who died of an apparent heart attack over the weekend at 60 — has left a legacy many an NBA pro would kill for. With 7,382 offensive rebounds, the man who helped take the Philadelphia 76ers to a world championship was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2001, the first year he was eligible. But a generation ago, this silent and, some said, not very smart giant was at the center of a controversy about sports and education — and race — that rages to this day. If the American Basketball League — which merged with the NBA two years after Malone was recruited — needed the perfect player to justify scooping right out of high school, Malone certainly fit the bill. First of
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once her son got his payday. “The plumbing often didn’t work, and for a long time there was a big hole in a wall where a window was supposed to be,” DeFord wrote. “When the house would become overrun with recruiters (on soft nights some would sleep on the porch), Moses would climb out a window, get onto the roof and take off.” The recruiters weren’t just supposed to be selling Malone on their college teams. They were supposed to be selling him on college. Malone’s family, however, wasn’t just in dire circumstances. He was also a middling student — at best. Of the “C” average Malone would need to get into a worthy school:
Moses Malone shack — one that was condemned all, he was incredibly poor. after Malone’s mother moved out “It was obvious that they were (continued on page 3) broke,” Larry Creger, who scouted Malone for Utah, told Terry Pluto for the 2007 book “Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball League.” The house had no paint. There wasn’t any grass where the lawn was supposed to be. The whole neighborhood was like that, extremely poor.” Malone was an only child — of a woman who battled serious health problems even as she worked as a Safeway checker for $100 per week. Mary Malone had left school after the fifth grade to keep her family afloat, and kicked Malone’s father out of the house when he took to drinking. “I didn’t like him to do no work at all,” she told sportswriter Frank The NAACP’s “America’s Journey for Justice” came through Virginia by DeFord of her son in 1979. “I know way of Richmond on Sept. 12. The 860-mile march from Selma, Ala. to how hard I come up, so I didn’t want Washington, D.C., started Aug. 1 and is designed to raise awareness about him to.” education equity, fairness in the criminal justice system, sustainable jobs The Malone homestead DeFord and living wages and voter access. described was little more than a
On a ‘Journey for Justice’