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NBA: 30 best careers from players who skipped college

By Josh Cornelissen

LeBron James, Miami Heat and Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers. Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images
LeBron James, Miami Heat and Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers. Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images /
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Moses Malone
Moses Malone, Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images /

30 best careers from players who skipped college – 4. Moses Malone

Moses Malone was a quiet, towering teenager on his way to the University of Maryland when the ABA’s Bucky Buckwalter dropped a stack of 100 dollar bills onto his coffee table. As Jonathan Abrams relates in his book “Boys Among Men,” this was the opening of a new path for Malone: a way to instantly bring home money for his family. While this decision was unique in 1974, it was the same decision hundreds of teens would have to make a few decades later.

Malone initially chose college, trying to honor his mother’s desire for him to get an education. Yet after getting up in the wee hours of the morning his first few days at Maryland for basketball practice, Malone made his decision. As Abrams quotes him, Malone told his roommate John Lucas “Big Mo going pro. Big Mo can’t take these d**n college hours.”

Thus, Malone signed a contract with the Utah Jazz of the American Basketball Association, a league that would eventually merge with the more popular but less flashy NBA. He immediately made an impact, averaging 18.8 points and 14.6 rebounds as a rookie. His success empowered a couple of other teams to take swings at high school players, which worked in the case of Darryl Dawkins and did not in the case of Bill Willoughby, who did not make this list.

After a year with the Spirit of St. Louis, Malone would join the NBA and become a dominant force inside over a long, 21-year career. Six times he led the league in rebounding, and three times finished second in scoring. He won the league’s MVP award three times, once for the Houston Rockets and twice for the Philadelphia 76ers. In fact, he remains the only player to win the MVP award for two different teams in separate conferences.

The pinnacle of Malone’s career was with the 76ers in the early 80s when he won two of his MVPs and a championship in 1983 alongside Julius Erving, Maurice Cheeks and Bobby Jones. By the end of his career, Malone had totaled up 13 All-Star appearances, eight All-NBA selections and two All-Defensive team selections. He is still the career leader in offensive rebounds, third in total rebounds, and ninth in points scored. Malone is a top-30 player all-time no matter how you slice it, a feat all the more remarkable given his path into the NBA.