Welcome to the NBA 75, The Athletic’s countdown of the 75 best players in NBA history, in honor of the league’s diamond anniversary. We’ll unveil a new player on the list every weekday through Feb. 18, culminating with the man picked by a panel of The Athletic NBA staff members as the greatest of all time.
Less than a week before he died, Moses Malone was still sweating.
If you were in the gym of a hotel in Springfield, Mass., during the second week of September 2015, you would have seen him, on the elliptical, getting it in. This wasn’t a casual, leisurely, let-me-do-my-20-minutes-on-Level-3-while-watching-TV kind of workout.
In town for that year’s Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame ceremonies, Big Mo had a towel on his head. His shirt was soaked. He had what could only be described as a metric ton of water alongside him. And he was working. Sweat poured down his face. He had already been there for quite a while and was going to remain there for quite a while. It was the kind of workout you remember — the workout of a still-vibrant man and the kind of workout you respectfully don’t interrupt, even to just say hello.
This made Malone’s death — at age 60, just a few days later, of what Virginia’s chief medical examiner ultimately determined was hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease — feel impossible. Unbelievable. Kind of like Malone’s life.
Malone comes in at No.
