Let’s go over what this mini-series is about. Pretty much the lockout drove me to the point of looking for anything to write about for the Sixers. Finally, I decided on this. What were going to do here is compare past winners of an end of season award winner. If that player won the award with the Sixers, he’s up for debate. I’m doing MVP, Sixth-Man, and Coach Of Year. Now there are other awards too, but only one Sixer has won in those categories so there’s no other Sixer to compare him to that won the award.
I look at the stats of each player. That’s the main difference maker but I’ll also look at the impact he made for the Sixers (leader, off the court drama). Today is the Most Valuable Player award. 4 Sixers have won that award: Wilt Chamberlain, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, and Allen Iverson. Chamberlain won 4 of them, but only won 3 of them as a Sixer, all three of them in a row. Erving is a bit more complicated. He won MVP four times but his first three were for the American Basketball Association (ABA) and not the NBA. He did win the ABA one three times in a row. But when he won in the NBA, he was a Sixer. Malone won 3 total. He won two in a row with two different teams: Rockets and Sixers. That’s consistency for ya to be able to adjust to different plays and players and still be the best. He’s the only player in history to win the MVP back to back on different teams. And Iverson won only one but he had quite a season. So which MVP year was the best?
When Wilt won his second MVP with the Sixers, they won the championship. But the year before, 1965-1966, he averaged 33.5 points per game. Not only that (and this always blows my mind) he averaged 24.6 rebounds too. Pretty amazing stats, he probably even purposefully fought his teammates for some of those rebounds though. Then, in 1966-1967 he led a team that is considered one of the best teams to ever grace the court and who eventually won the championship. He averaged 24.1 points and had more rebounds than that (ok it wasn’t much of a difference) with 24.2. He even was third in assists with 7.8. In his third year, it was 24.3 points, 23.8 rebounds, and 8.6 assists. All three of these years looked incredibly similar although in his first year he was more focused on scoring. But the coach wanted him to try passing more and it got them a championship.
Erving won only one NBA MVP award. His averages in points, rebounds, and assist are not even in the top 5 rankings but he still won the MVP. It helps when your team has the best record in the league though. But I must point out that Celtics had the same record and won the tie-breaker. He had 24.6 points, 8 rebounds, and 4.4 assists. Compared to Chamberlain, it’s not that great. But player size, number of teams, and level of competition have change in the decade.
Malone had only one MVP with the Sixers; but it’s widely thought that Malone was the final piece the Sixers needed to win the championship. And that’s what makes his MVP season so special. 24.5 points, and league leading 15.3 rebounds helped the Sixers win 62 games. And it brought in the famous quote from Malone “Fo, fo, fo!” He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. But what he meant was that the Sixers would sweep their way to and through the finals by winning four (fo) games. After the first sweep, it looked like Moses was on to something, but they lost a game to the Bucks. They did sweep the Lakers in the finals though so Moses’ prediction was off by one game. I’m sure no one cares though since they won anyway.
And then there’s Iverson, who just about single handedly led the Sixers to a tie for the second best regular season record at 56-26. The little guy averaged 31.1 points and grabbed 2.5 steals. After leading the Sixers to the finals, including two thriller game 7 series, he couldn’t get his team over the hump, losing to the Lakers 4-1. But he clearly was the best player on the floor during the series and had what has become a signature moment in his career by stepping over a fallen Tyronne Lue in front of the Laker bench in the Staples Center in game one. That was the only game won for them as they lost four games in a row in somewhat of a sweep.
My choice: I dropped Wilt and Dr. J. I battled with Iverson and Malone. I was leaning towards Iverson because he really was the Most Valuable Player since he pretty much carried the Sixers on his back. Dikembe Mutombo, at the time, was one of, if not the best, defender in the league and they also had Aaron McKie who was the Sixth-Man, but Iverson was clearly the only chance the Sixers had of winning the series. I was leaning for Moses since he also was a valuable player for the Sixers as they only won the championship once they got him and he continued his dominance in the playoffs and was the finals MVP when they won. And so I say Moses Malone was the best MVP winner for the Sixers.
The next time we’ll look at Aaron Mckie and Bobby Jones and see who was the better Sixth-Man. All info was from Basketball-Reference