<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Maurice Cheeks, to reporters after practice yesterday: "What were you going to talk about before you saw Moses come in the gym?" Daily News reporter, after giving the question some thought: Who knows what else was left to ask, but just like in 1982-83, when the 76ers won the NBA championship, thank goodness for Moses Malone. Malone, a six-time rebounding champion and three-time Most Valuable Player, was at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine yesterday offering a tutorial to the Sixers big men on the lost art of rebounding. You can question whether rebounding is truly a lost art, but there's no question that it has been lost by the Sixers. They have been beaten off the glass in 13 of 18 games. They have been crushed off the offensive glass by Indiana, Cleveland, Boston and San Antonio. Through Monday - of the 30 NBA teams - they are No. 24 in overall defense and No. 28 in rebounding. They are 8-10 going into tonight's game against the Milwaukee Bucks. By a strange quirk, through Monday night's games, that left them in first place in the Atlantic Division. "It doesn't feel like first place," president/general manager Billy King said. Malone is in town at the request of Cheeks, now the Sixers coach and in '82-83 the point guard on the title team. Malone, 50 and already inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, averaged 15.3 rebounds for the champion Sixers, 5.7 off the offensive glass. He averaged 17.6 rebounds for the Houston Rockets in '79-80; he swept 15 offensive rebounds for the Rockets in a '77 playoff game against the Washington Bullets. This is the man who, during the first training camp workout with the Sixers at Franklin & Marshall in 1982, jogged past then-owner Harold Katz and said "Don't worry, Harold, we're going to win about 70." With Malone sitting out some late games to rest a sore knee, they won 65, then won 12 of 13 in the postseason, sweeping the Los Angeles Lakers, 4-0, in the Finals. "If a guy wants to be a great rebounder, you've got to get out and fight every night, do the right thing," Malone said. "You just can't relax; [you've got to] try to get every rebound. You win ballgames by defending; you play defense and rebound, scoring is automatically going to come. If they do those two things, they're going to win a lot of ballgames. "Rebounding is one of the biggest things of all time. When you rebound, only one guy has the ball; everybody's watching that guy, and he's got to make a decision [about] who he's going to give it to. Rebounding's the most important thing in basketball. It's not all about scoring."</div> Source
That's great news. Malone should help our bigs out a great deal teaching them how to rebound better, we can't afford to have another bad rebounding night.
It is kind of sad when an old man has to come in and talk to a professional basketball team about how to rebound. But hey, maybe it is what the 76ers need.
I don't know well this will help our team, but it's worth a try. I'd give anything a try giving the way things are going for the Sixers.
