HoopersParadise

2005 MVP Race

All-Time NBA Lineup: 1 Team Played For

Most 30 Point Games - Los Angeles Lakers Franchise History

1990 MVP Race

Wilt Chamberlain is the GOAT

Magic at 66.5% is wild

1962 MVP Race

Bill Walton Came Off the Bench for 20 Minutes a Night and Turned an Already Great Celtics Team Into One of the Greatest Ever Assembled

The 1986 Boston Celtics are one of the five greatest teams in NBA history.

Larry Bird. Kevin McHale. Robert Parish. Dennis Johnson. Danny Ainge.

That was already a championship roster. They had won it in 1984. They had won 63 games in 1985 before losing to the Lakers in the Finals. Something was still missing.

Then Red Auerbach traded for Bill Walton.

A former MVP. A former champion with Portland. A man whose body had been destroyed by foot injuries that cost him most of his prime. He was 33 years old and everyone assumed he had nothing left.

He was wrong about that.

Bill Walton gave the 1986 Celtics something no other team in the league could match. A legitimate Hall of Famer who could play 20 minutes off the bench as a third center. A man who understood winning basketball at the deepest level because he had been on one of the best teams in the sport a decade earlier. A player whose basketball IQ elevated every possession he was involved in.

He averaged 7.6 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 2.1 blocks in 18.9 minutes per game. Numbers that don't capture what he actually contributed.

Robert Parish described what happened in practice. Walton was blocking everything. McHale's jump hook. A shot that nobody in the league had ever successfully defended for twelve consecutive seasons. Walton caught it in his hands.

Parish's reaction: he'd never seen anyone do that to Kevin. Never ever.

When your third center is doing that in practice, you have a different team than everyone else in the league.

The 1986 Celtics went 67-15 and won the championship in six games. Walton won the Sixth Man of the Year award. Bird called it the greatest team he was ever part of.

They were already good. Bill Walton made them something that couldn't be stopped.

Moses Malone Won More MVPs Than Shaq and Nobody Talks About Him. That's the Biggest Disrespect in NBA History.

Every center conversation goes the same way.

Wilt. Kareem. Shaq. Hakeem. Bill Russell. The same rotation every single time. All of them deserving. All of them right.

Then someone might mention David Robinson. Patrick Ewing. Maybe Alonzo Mourning.

Moses Malone barely comes up. That's a problem.

Three MVP awards. The same number as Larry Bird. The same number as Magic Johnson. More than Shaquille O'Neal. Three times the league looked at every player in professional basketball and said Moses Malone was the most valuable one.

He averaged 20.6 points and 12.2 rebounds per game for 21 seasons. He is the all-time leader in offensive rebounds by a distance nobody has come close to closing. He grabbed 6,731 offensive boards over his career. Dennis Rodman is second at 4,598. The gap between Moses and second place is larger than most centers accumulate in their entire careers.

He went directly from high school to the ABA in 1974 as a 19-year-old. Played through two leagues, two eras, and four different decades of professional basketball. He was still averaging meaningful minutes in his late 30s.

His 1982-83 season with the Philadelphia 76ers is one of the ten greatest individual seasons in NBA history. 24 points and 15 rebounds per game. Then fo', fo', fo' in the playoffs — his prediction of sweeping every series. He was one game off. The Sixers swept everyone.

Hakeem Olajuwon credits Moses for building his entire game.

The greatest offensive rebounder who ever played. Three MVPs. Twenty-one seasons.

Say his name more often.