Moses and the Doctor: Two Men, One Championship, and the Birth of Modern Basketball

The rousing story of two trailblazing superstars--Julius ＂Dr. J＂ Erving and Moses Malone--whose improbable alliance and unsung legacies shaped the wildest and most innovative era of basketball history.

In the early 1970s, playground courts across the United States were jammed with hoops buffs experimenting with showy moves and aerial shots that were changing the look and feel of a sport once stubbornly earthbound. Out of this scene emerged a pair of incomparable yet dissimilar streetball sensations, both of whom would make their name in the American Basketball Association, an upstart professional league characterized as much by flamboyance as invention. Julius Erving, better known as Dr. J, became a mythic figure whose airborne acrobatics inspired an army of high-flying acolytes. Moses Malone, a down-and-dirty banger, scrambled basketball apprenticeships forever by skipping directly from high school to the pros.

Into the 1980s, Erving and Malone switched leagues, won MVPs, shattered records, and led their respective clubs into the playoff’s championship round. But one prize eluded them: an NBA title. After suffering perennial defeat at the hands of Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers and Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics, the two eventually joined forces on the Philadelphia 76ers, blending their contrasting talents into a seamless whole. Together, Erving and Malone set out to accomplish what no other NBA team fronted by ex-ABA superstars had managed.

An enthralling social history as well as an uplifting underdog story, Moses and the Doctor intimately chronicles the hopes and heartbreaks of two basketball legends who revolutionized what was possible on the ground and in the air, and fueled one of the most thrilling and momentous championship seasons ever.

Luke Epplin is the author of Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball. His writing has appeared online in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, GQ, Slate, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Paris Review Daily. Born and raised in rural Illinois, Epplin lives outside of New York City with his wife and daughter.