Moses Malone, page 8
Haywood’s journey to the ABA and landmark case opened the floodgates for underclassmen to join the professional ranks. The NBA held a special hardship draft in 1971. Julius Erving, George Gervin, George McGinnis, and Phil Chenier were some of the players to leave school early for pro ball. A player jumping from high school to the pros was the next logical step.
* * *
The Stars didn’t intend to make a splash at the 1974 ABA draft. They hadn’t even discussed the possibility of selecting a high school kid. The team had been losing money, and owner Bill Daniels was trying to sell. Team president Vince Boryla believed it didn’t matter whom they drafted because there was no money to sign him anyway.16 The draft was held at Essex House in New York City on April 17.
Boryla spent nine seasons with the New York Knicks, first as a player, then a coach. He was friendly with the other ABA general managers, some of whom had played in the NBA. Al Bianchi, coach and GM of the Virginia Squires, had seen Moses play in high school. He told Boryla and the others, “You know the best damn ballplayer in this draft is a guy in high school.” Boryla didn’t know who he was talking about. The Stars’ president figured if Malone was really that good, he’d eventually sign with the NBA, but it was worth taking a flyer on him in the third round. Maybe they could trade the high school kid for cash. With the twenty-second pick in the 1974 ABA draft, the Utah Stars selected Moses Malone.17
Moses had no idea he’d be drafted. He was on his campus visit at the University of Maryland at the time. Some friends told him the news, and he said they were crazy. Then he heard about it on the radio.18 Coach Peal was shocked. “I think he should go to college,” he said. “You can’t jump right form high school to pro basketball.” Peal believed his star center needed to fill out before competing against grown men.19
“We think he might be in the caliber of Julius Erving or George McGinnis, both of whom left college early and became outstanding pros in our league,” Ferrin said.20 The Stars’ GM questioned whether Moses could get into or stay in college due to his academic struggles. He said the Stars wouldn’t push Moses to sign with them but merely present him with an alternative.21
The Stars had no money, their players were unhappy, and the owner was trying to sell the team. They informed Moses that they’d get back to him after the ownership change, though given the state of the team and the possibility of the league merging with the NBA or folding, there was no reason to believe anything would come of it. Moses went to College Park for the summer, where he worked a construction job in the mornings. During his free time, he played ball on an Urban Coalition team, in a tournament at Melvin’s Crabhouse, and in pickup games in Maryland and DC.22
Meanwhile, Bill Daniels sold the Stars to a group of Salt Lake City businessmen led by James “Jim” Collier.23 The new owners faced contract disputes with two of the team’s stars, Jimmy Jones and Zelmo Beaty, both of whom ultimately jumped to the NBA for the 1974–75 season. Beaty had been their starting center, and neither of the big men they drafted in the first two rounds joined the team. Desperate for size and a star to boost ticket sales, Collier turned to Malone.
Buckwalter, Collier, and Ferrin flew to Petersburg on August 22. They had until September 1 to sign Malone; otherwise, they’d lose his rights under ABA rules. Buckwalter sold Moses on the benefits of turning pro, most notably, four more years of earning power. Malone sat quietly and listened. He didn’t ask questions or provide responses. The big man just mumbled, “Mmmm” in a neutral pitch. Bucky didn’t know if Moses approved or disapproved of what he was saying.24
Buckwalter also focused on convincing Mary that it was in her son’s best interest to skip college. He found Mrs. Malone to be feisty and very protective of her son. She wanted Moses to attend Maryland. When Buckwalter suggested buying her a new house and securing her a better job, Mary opened to the idea of Moses going pro.25 Buckwalter had no moral issue with convincing Moses to skip college. He spent many years on the recruiting trail and was familiar with the promises, legal and illegal, that coaches and boosters made to high school kids, some of which weren’t kept. He knew that many athletes didn’t receive a quality education in college, and it was evident from the Malone home that the two needed the money.26
On Friday, August 24, Buckwalter picked up Moses and Mary, drove them to the Holiday Inn where he was staying, and offered Moses a contract. At that point, they agreed they should inform Lefty about their discussions. Buckwalter wanted to do right by the Maryland coach.27 The next day, Buckwalter drove to Driesell’s home in College Park with the contract. Lefty looked it over and called Donald Dell, a former professional tennis player who turned partner at the law firm of Dell, Craighill, Fentress, and Benton. The firm represented tennis players, and Dell had established a relationship with UNC coach Dean Smith, who recommended his players to the firm. Dell also did some work for Maryland star Tom McMillen.28
He and his partner Lee Fentress read the contract, then met with Moses, Mary, Lefty, and John Lucas. Dell noticed Moses looking at the ground and having a side conversation with his mother while the lawyer discussed the contract. Dell wanted to grab his attention. “Moses, have you ever heard of slavery?” he asked. Moses’s eyes opened wide. The attorney explained that although the contract was for eighteen years, it was only guaranteed for two, then the Stars had the right to renew it on an annual basis at the same terms. Moses stood up and said he was going to attend Maryland.
Dell assured him the Stars would come back with another offer and encouraged Moses to call him with any questions. Dell and Fentress couldn’t formally represent Malone because he’d lose college eligibility, so they offered to serve as unpaid advisors.29 The next day, Buckwalter laid out the $5,000 in cash on the Malones’ table and began negotiating. Moses called Dell for advice—eleven times. Dell told him not to sign anything.
Lucas called a meeting with his Maryland teammates. The players were given $15 a month for laundry and agreed to offer Moses their share to stay at Maryland. It was wishful thinking. That was a pittance compared to the millions Moses and the Stars were discussing. On the morning of August 28, Lucas woke Moses up for the first day of classes. Moses told him he was going pro.30
Moses and Mary drove to Washington to meet with Dell and Fentress again, at which time Moses informed the lawyers that he was going pro and wanted them to represent him. Dell felt obligated to include Lefty in the meeting. Moses and Lefty met alone in Dell’s office. Lefty said they’d win the ACC and compete for a national championship if he stayed. He talked about the importance of a college education and argued that Moses would be able to command more money after college. Moses told him about the note he put in the Bible and that he was worried God would punish him if he broke his promise to turn pro after high school. Lefty suggested God wouldn’t mind if he waited a year.31 Sensing he was losing his star recruit, the coach implored Moses to consider attending Maryland for one season, at which point he’d have bargaining power by declaring for the NBA as a hardship case. Moses listened for a while, then forcefully stated, “Stop jivin’ me, coach.” The conversation was over.
Fentress considered how overwhelming it must have been for the nineteen-year-old. Big-time college and professional teams were vying for his services, and he didn’t know whom to trust or have a father to help him through the process.32 Buckwalter realized the young man was a lot sharper than he appeared. More than twenty years later, he and Moses were on the same NBA goodwill trip to China and went out for a drink. Bucky was shocked to hear Moses repeat to him verbatim the things he’d said when he was trying to convince him to sign with the Stars years earlier.33
Dell, Fentress, and the Stars agreed on a deal. Then Moses’s lawyers realized he had to be twenty-one to sign a contract in Washington DC, so the group drove to the Ramada Inn in Rosslyn, Virginia, at 10:30 p.m., for the nineteen-year-old to sign.34 There were varying reports as to the terms of the deal, with some speculating it was worth as much as $3 million. The actual number was more in the range of $200,000 to $250,000 per year for five years and included money for college, a house and monthly allowance for Mary, and other incentive-based compensation.35
On August 29 Fentress, Mary, Moses, and neighbor Leroy Cole flew with the Stars executives to New York for a press conference at the Americana Hotel. Moses arrived in sweatpants and basketball sneakers. The Stars provided him with a sport jacket and bowtie, then took him shoe shopping at Florsheim in Times Square.36 It made for a funny anecdote, but Mary took offense to the notion that she couldn’t afford shoes. “I always kept shoes on his feet and clothes on his back,” she said proudly.37
Moses spoke at the press conference about his idol Spencer Haywood and the promise he made in his Bible. Then the media peppered him with questions. In a sign of things to come, he was evasive. Fentress deemed all questions pertaining to money as “personal.” When asked his middle name, Moses replied, “They call me Sweet Moses.” (His middle name was Eugene.) When a reporter inquired as to his date of birth, he said, “See my lawyer.”38
Michael Goldberg, the general counsel for the ABA, was in attendance. It was the first time he’d seen Moses and thought he looked like a “very large pencil, tall and thin.” The boy was quiet and shy. Goldberg thought to himself, My goodness, we’re taking a player like this? He looks like he belongs in school and that his mother should be bringing him in the morning.39
Lefty was devastated. “The night I lost Moses, I went home and slept like a baby,” he told the Rotary Club of Annapolis a few weeks later. “I woke up every hour and cried.”40 Most of his public comments weren’t so good-humored. He lashed out at the ABA, calling it a “bush league, a beach ball league.”41 Coaches at other colleges expressed outrage over the Malone signing as well, fearing that they too would lose talented recruits to professional teams. Jim Kehoe, the Maryland athletic director, claimed the Stars “came by the back door secretly with subterfuge and deceit to prevail upon a high school graduate in this way.” Tellingly, he moved on to the money, complaining that the university had sold out every game based on Malone’s commitment.42 Kehoe went so far as to pursue a congressional inquiry into professional sports teams signing high school athletes. He blasted what he called “the growing arrogance and insensitivity of pro sports owners, who are motivated by pure selfishness and greed and have no regard for the long-range interests of athletics or the individuals involved.”43
There was blatant hypocrisy in Kehoe’s comments. The college coaches pursuing Malone were so intrusive that Moses felt compelled to lie on the floor of his house with the lights off. At least in the pros young men were paid what they were worth, unshackled from the label student-athlete, a legal construct first developed by the NCAA to avoid paying workers compensation to the family of a player who was killed on the football field.44 By designating athletes amateurs, the NCAA kept the millions of dollars flowing through college sports in the hands of universities and coaches. Athletes generated the revenue but weren’t allowed to receive a salary or profit off their name, image, or likeness.
It was a sham. Football and basketball players at big-time college programs weren’t regular students. Being a college athlete was essentially a full-time job. They often had their own dorms, cafeterias, and less demanding academic schedule. Many were receiving money under the table. As Larry Merchant of the New York Post noted, “Wherever he went, Moses Malone would have been, by any honest definition, a professional.”45
Not all coaches objected to Moses’s decision. Digger Phelps of Notre Dame and Lou Carnesecca of St. John’s said they couldn’t blame the kid for taking the money. Norm Sloan wondered, “What’s so bad about a player becoming a guaranteed millionaire at 19? Why should he have to wait until he’s 24?”46
It wasn’t just coaches who were critical of the Stars signing Malone. “How low will the pros go in their quest for talent?” scoffed Rob Sieb of Basketball Weekly. “If a college degree is superfluous, then might not a high school diploma also be considered unnecessary?”47 Sieb failed to consider that Moses was unique. You could count on one hand the number of players who had been considered ready for pro ball out of high school in the preceding twenty years, and only two more were given the opportunity over the next twenty.
Coaches and members of the media preached about the sanctity of a college education, as if Malone wouldn’t have been pushed through the system at Maryland. For many, if not most athletes, college is the best path forward, though it is not for everybody. Baseball and tennis players had been choosing pro sports instead of college for years. There appeared to be a more paternalistic view of the system that exploited the labor of primarily Black basketball players.
African American columnist Carl Rowan opined, “The overriding factor is that in playing for the Stars, Malone will not gain the education, the self-assurance, the ability to cope in all situations—things he needs far more desperately than a pocket full of money.”48 That’s easy to say when you don’t have a hole to the outside world in the wall of your bedroom. After Moses signed his contract, he purchased his mother a new house in nearby Ettrick. The old one was condemned, deemed unlivable. Moses was more prepared to play pro ball than to take college courses and needed the money more than an education. His contract with the Stars also set aside money for him to earn a degree.
There were basketball-related concerns about Moses’s jump to the pros. The professional game was much more physical and complex than high school ball. Celtics coach Tommy Heinsohn stated, “It’s utterly ridiculous to pay this kind of money to a kid like this. He may be great but there’s no way a 19-year-old kid is going to step into pro basketball and be great right off the bat. I’ve seen all of them—Chamberlain, Jabbar—all of them—and I don’t think any of them could have played right out of high school.”49 It was also fair to wonder whether Moses had the emotional maturity to be a professional. It helped that at nineteen he was a year older than most high school graduates.
Even some close to Malone questioned the wisdom of his decision. “I would have wanted him to get a couple of years of education,” said Pro Hayes. “If he could get a million dollars for a high school education, what could he get after two years of college?” Kilbourne assumed Moses wouldn’t play much early on and worried about his confidence.50 It didn’t take long for Moses to prove his doubters wrong.
8
A Star Is Born
George Mikan was the first NBA star, a 6-foot-11-inch behemoth who led the Minneapolis Lakers to five BAA or NBA championships in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The ABA tabbed him as its first commissioner, believing he would provide instant credibility and NBA connections that could help with a merger. Mikan was nearsighted and wore coke-bottle glasses. He could barely see the NBA’s orange ball on grainy black and white television sets and enthusiastically adopted a suggestion by one of the league’s founders, Connie Seredin, that the ABA’s ball should be red, white, and blue.1
That ball came to symbolize the fledgling league, for better or worse. It was popular among children, though NBA people believed “that red, white and blue ball belongs on the nose of a seal.”2 The league had eleven teams in its inaugural season, with names like the Minnesota Muskies and Dallas Chaparrals, and a ragtag bunch of owners who scraped together $50,000 or $100,000 in the hope of earning a payday through a merger.3 The ABA lacked a television contract, and attendance was sparse.
Teams tried everything to put fans in the seats. The Miami Floridians hired ball girls to prance around in bikinis. The Pacers had Victor the Wrestling Bear perform at halftime and a cow-milking contest during intermission of another game. Some teams, like the Virginia Squires, split their home games between numerous cities. Franchises were constantly on the brink of folding and regularly changed owners, names, and locations. Players worried their checks would bounce and rushed to the bank to cash them.
The league accumulated talent by opening its doors to those cast aside by the NBA: Black players who were victims of the NBA’s unofficial quota system; New Yorkers Roger Brown, Connie Hawkins, and Doug Moe, who had been banned from the senior league for tenuous relationships with gamblers; and underclassmen like Haywood, Erving, and Gervin.4 The upstart league also convinced NBA stars Rick Barry, Billy Cuningham, and Zelmo Beaty, as well as coaches and officials, to jump leagues. Freddie Lewis, who played in the NBA before the ABA, believed the ABA was initially like a Minor League, but by the time his Pacers won their second ABA championship in 1972, there wasn’t much difference in quality between the two leagues.5
The Anaheim Amigos were charter members. After one season, they were sold and renamed the Los Angeles Stars. In 1969–70, they advanced to the ABA Finals, losing to the Pacers. Still, the team failed to draw. Only 971 fans showed up for a playoff game against Dallas, and that included a giveaway of 500 free tickets. In 1970 a cable television entrepreneur named Bill Daniels bought the team and moved it to Salt Lake City, Utah.6
The largely Mormon community embraced the Utah Stars immediately. People in Salt Lake had developed an appreciation for quality basketball by watching BYU and the University of Utah, which won a national championship in 1944 and reached the Final Four twice in the 1960s. Salt Lake radio stations played a catchy jingle welcoming the team: “Here come the Stars, Here come the stars, Here come the Stars. Pro basketball is here at last, Here come the Stars.”7
