A Look Back At The Incredible 1983 Sixers
By Josh Wilson
Building A Championship Winning Team
Let’s set the scene once more. Sick of losing in the Finals, a new owner came into his era with the Sixers looking to shake things up, looking to finally win. This wasn’t going to be done with the current roster. Although it carried great players like Darryl Dawkins and Caldwell Jones, they moved them in order to acquire Moses Malone from the Houston Rockets.
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This is just one way they attacked the Los Angeles Lakers. Kareem Abdul Jabaar had destroyed them in the Finals previously, and Dawkins and Jones were unable to shut him down. Malone was supposed to have the ability to do that.
Still, in today’s world, I would imagine fans throwing a fit over trading their starting front court for just one player. Still, it all worked out in the end, as Malone successfully kept him under 30 points in every single game of the Finals.
While this doesn’t seem great, before the Finals, he was averaging 28.4 points per game. Against the Sixers in the Finals that year, he averaged 23.5 points per game. This, still was not an improvement as far as points compared to the previous year, when he averaged 18 in the Finals against Philadelphia. If we go back further, however, to when the two teams matched up in 1980, they let Kareem put up 27.4 points per game, including 40 points in the last game of the series.
The underdog of the offseason moves to make the Sixers a powerhouse in the playoffs was Andrew Toney. Although Toney was on the team before, he had an increased role in this season, and did well with it, averaging 16.5 points per game during the regular season, a huge jump up from the year prior. He averaged 22 points per game throughout the Finals series.
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