In 1974, Petersburg High School beat West Springfield 50-48 to remain basketball champions of the Commonwealth of Virginia. That season, Moses Eugene Malone, a Petersburg senior, scored 896 points to set a 12th-grade record that stood for almost forty years.1
Then, twenty-one years before Kevin Garnett started the wave, the ABA's Utah Stars selected Malone in the third round, at a time when no other team was willing to have anyone make that jump.2 3
He had 1,209 rebounds, including a league-leading 455 offensive, his mark of 128 blocks was among the league's top ten, and his .571 field goal percentage was third-best in the league. His play was good for an All-Star Game appearance and a place on the All-Rookie Team.
The next season, after the team folded, he played with the Spirits of St. Louis, but due to his injury and his contract holdout, he took the court nearly halfway through.
He made his NBA debut with the Buffalo Braves, Portland having claimed him in the dispersal draft. After two games, he was traded to Houston. Each team got draft picks for Malone; Portland drafted Rick Robey, while Buffalo drafted Wesley Cox and Micheal Ray Richardson. The latter ended up being dealt to the Knicks and started a solid career.
As for Moses, you don't need me to tell you what happened next. I could just throw a bunch of numbers, many pertaining to his rebound totals, but here's the nitty-gritty. Over the course of 19 seasons, he was a three-time MVP, a 12-time All-Star, and Most Valuable Player of the '82-83 NBA Finals. His jersey number, 24, is retired in Houston. In Philadelphia, his #2 should be. He was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in 1996 and gained a place in the Hall of Fame five years later.
Here's to the career that began in the year of '74.
1. [Andrew Rowsey of the 2013 Rockbridge County Wildcats now holds that record.]↩
2. [The next year, by the way, NBA teams drafted two guys out of high school. And also, he's not the first player to make it to the pros without going to college, as I've heard at least once today; I remember from an old sports almanac that a few guys did so in the '40s (namely Kappen, Simmons, and Graboski).]↩
3. [His Topps NBA cards are unusual in that a simple "NO" follows the colon after "DRAFTED." He was drafted, just not by an NBA team at first.]↩
