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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 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.
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 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.
- GenresSportsHistoryBasketball
384 pages, Hardcover
Published February 10, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 29, 2026
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for this review.
Growing up in Northern California in the late 70's and early 80's, I didn't have cable television, not that cable was the massive beast it is today. But that meant I hardly every saw NBA basketball on TV, except for Sunday games on CBS. These games usually featured at least one of three teams: the Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers and/or the Philadelphia 76ers. The 76ers were my favorite team because of one man: Julius "Dr. J" Erving. To my younger self he was just the coolest player on the court and he could do things I couldn't imagine doing. Personally, I think he was "The Human Highlight Reel" before that moniker was given to Dominique Wilkins.
Unfortunately, the 76ers always seemed to come up short against the Lakers and/or Celtics when it mattered most: the playoffs. Thus, when they finally beat the Lakers in the 1983 Finals it was a bit of vindication for me and my fanship all those years. But they couldn't have done it without the addition of a vital piece to the team: Moses Malone.
Author Epplin has written a great and entertaining book about the lives of both Malone and Erving as they came up through the ABA and then joined the NBA. Both were excellent players and received lots of accolades...but they both came up short in the NBA Finals until they were finally teamed up. Just goes to show you that one great player often can't do it alone.
Definitely pick this book up if you're an NBA fan.
Growing up in Northern California in the late 70's and early 80's, I didn't have cable television, not that cable was the massive beast it is today. But that meant I hardly every saw NBA basketball on TV, except for Sunday games on CBS. These games usually featured at least one of three teams: the Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers and/or the Philadelphia 76ers. The 76ers were my favorite team because of one man: Julius "Dr. J" Erving. To my younger self he was just the coolest player on the court and he could do things I couldn't imagine doing. Personally, I think he was "The Human Highlight Reel" before that moniker was given to Dominique Wilkins.
Unfortunately, the 76ers always seemed to come up short against the Lakers and/or Celtics when it mattered most: the playoffs. Thus, when they finally beat the Lakers in the 1983 Finals it was a bit of vindication for me and my fanship all those years. But they couldn't have done it without the addition of a vital piece to the team: Moses Malone.
Author Epplin has written a great and entertaining book about the lives of both Malone and Erving as they came up through the ABA and then joined the NBA. Both were excellent players and received lots of accolades...but they both came up short in the NBA Finals until they were finally teamed up. Just goes to show you that one great player often can't do it alone.
Definitely pick this book up if you're an NBA fan.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
A fascinating ode to the lasting legacy of the ABA and a reclamation of the 80s as more than just Magic vs Bird for a decade. Really hoping that Epplin continues with more long form sportswriting, as he is incredibly talented and I had a great time reading this one.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this advance ARC in return for an honest review.
Moses and the Doctor is like manna from heaven for the long suffering Philadelphia 76ers Fan. Luke Epplin tells the story of the 2 aptly named basketball saviors who finally brought the NBA Championship to Philly after many years in the dessert after stupidly trading away Wilt Chamberlin. Although I met Wilt as a youngster and saw him in the '76 All Star Game, my introduction to the Sixers came around the time of the 9-73 team, cause no one, and I mean no one wanted tickets and I was getting them given to me as a young teen to fill out the deserted stands of the Spectrum.
After waxing poetic about Dr J and Moses dominating in the ill fated, yet highly entertaining ABA Epplin describes the problems they both had adapting to the more regimented NBA style. Even though the high flying antics of Dr J were not on display nightly, as they had been in the ABA, his Sixers squads were near the top of the standings year in, year out, but always falling short in the playoffs at the hands of the hated Celtics, in the Eastern Conference and dreaded LA Lakers in the NBA Finals. We Sixers fans are even reminded of the horrible "We Owe You One" billboard campaign after the Portland Trail Blazers defeated Dr J, George McGinnis and co. in the Finals of Doc's first season in Philly.
It wasn't until the workmanlike Moses Malone came to town, in one of the more lopsided trades (for once in favor of the Sixers) that the Doctor was finally able to get his due.
Epplin provides lots of details, and local color to tell the tale of the magical 1982-1983 Season culminating in Moses' "Fo', Fo', Fo'" proclamation that almost came to fruition. With a resurgent Doctor J and eventual regular season and Playoff MVP Moses Malone leading the way, the Sixers finally made good on their "promise" and nearly swept through the playoffs to snare that elusive NBA crown. You also get to meet the colorful supporting characters like the "Boston Strangler" Andrew Toney, the quiet yet efficient point guard Mo Cheeks, the sixth man of the year, Bobby Jones, and the rest of the championship squad. None of this probably happens without the steady hand of the "Kangaroo Kid" Billy Cunningham pulling these pieces together to form one of the greatest teams of all time.
Unfortunately it all came crashing down the next year, and the Sixers eventually trade Moses away in one of the worst trades in history ( as usual the Sixers were on the wrong end of this one ) and per Epplin the "curse of Moses" is still alive and kicking as the Sixers have never hoisted the trophy again, and we are stuck celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 2000-2001 team that just made it to the Finals this year.
Highly entertaining, and a must for any Sixer's fan or fan of the old NBA/ABA rivalry.
#NetGalley #MosesandtheDoctor #Sixers
Moses and the Doctor is like manna from heaven for the long suffering Philadelphia 76ers Fan. Luke Epplin tells the story of the 2 aptly named basketball saviors who finally brought the NBA Championship to Philly after many years in the dessert after stupidly trading away Wilt Chamberlin. Although I met Wilt as a youngster and saw him in the '76 All Star Game, my introduction to the Sixers came around the time of the 9-73 team, cause no one, and I mean no one wanted tickets and I was getting them given to me as a young teen to fill out the deserted stands of the Spectrum.
After waxing poetic about Dr J and Moses dominating in the ill fated, yet highly entertaining ABA Epplin describes the problems they both had adapting to the more regimented NBA style. Even though the high flying antics of Dr J were not on display nightly, as they had been in the ABA, his Sixers squads were near the top of the standings year in, year out, but always falling short in the playoffs at the hands of the hated Celtics, in the Eastern Conference and dreaded LA Lakers in the NBA Finals. We Sixers fans are even reminded of the horrible "We Owe You One" billboard campaign after the Portland Trail Blazers defeated Dr J, George McGinnis and co. in the Finals of Doc's first season in Philly.
It wasn't until the workmanlike Moses Malone came to town, in one of the more lopsided trades (for once in favor of the Sixers) that the Doctor was finally able to get his due.
Epplin provides lots of details, and local color to tell the tale of the magical 1982-1983 Season culminating in Moses' "Fo', Fo', Fo'" proclamation that almost came to fruition. With a resurgent Doctor J and eventual regular season and Playoff MVP Moses Malone leading the way, the Sixers finally made good on their "promise" and nearly swept through the playoffs to snare that elusive NBA crown. You also get to meet the colorful supporting characters like the "Boston Strangler" Andrew Toney, the quiet yet efficient point guard Mo Cheeks, the sixth man of the year, Bobby Jones, and the rest of the championship squad. None of this probably happens without the steady hand of the "Kangaroo Kid" Billy Cunningham pulling these pieces together to form one of the greatest teams of all time.
Unfortunately it all came crashing down the next year, and the Sixers eventually trade Moses away in one of the worst trades in history ( as usual the Sixers were on the wrong end of this one ) and per Epplin the "curse of Moses" is still alive and kicking as the Sixers have never hoisted the trophy again, and we are stuck celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 2000-2001 team that just made it to the Finals this year.
Highly entertaining, and a must for any Sixer's fan or fan of the old NBA/ABA rivalry.
#NetGalley #MosesandtheDoctor #Sixers
February 15, 2026
A generous and emotionally resonant story about persistence and aging, with a team that finally did get over the crest of the hill before imploding more or less immediately. But it got there. Epplin posits Julius Erving as the incarnation of the ABA's spirit (though Malone, who retired in 1995 [!], was the last remaining ABA player), with its racial and stylistic signals, and thus a crucial part of the NBA story of transition to the Bird/Magic years. He makes a solid case for that argument of an important intermediate stage (where, canonically, the finals were on tape-delay) before the explosion, though as a matter of sports/social history, I think it would have helped to work through what gets passed down in the 80s itself: is Bird's game somehow in the ABA lineage? Epplin pauses to highlight an appropriately cinematic moment when Erving clinches the title for the 76ers by going one-on-one, which is enormously satisfying narratively and personally.
The counterposed figures at the center do feel effectively archetypal: Erving the crossover star ever conscious of how he was presented, consistently ready with a poised quotation (he memorably welcomed Malone to the ABA) or savvy soundbite, reaching for the kind of extra-athletic success that Jordan would monetize a million times over. (Short but sad subplot: his high-end shoe store, which fails in 18 months in stubbornly prole-identifying Philly, and of course he never made any money from all the pairs Converse sold.) The emotion as his NBA teams fall short again and again is honestly pretty wrenching. And Malone the tireless worker, monomaniacally focused on his craft to the seeming exclusion of much else and monosyllabically resistant to interviews almost, though not all, of the time (Bartleby the...rebounder, let's call him; please pay me copyright royalties on this brilliant coinage), though honestly it's hard to clarify--he remains stubbornly out of reach, with glimmers of personality that never quite cohere; hard to discern how much of the way he was presented captured him and how much was white-writer invention (an interesting subtheme would have compared how Black and white reporters perceived and presented him). The canonical "fo', fo', fo'" prediction seems to have been to some degree a rewrite of what he actually said.
Best lines about Malone's drawl and parsimony with words: "Moses," one member of an opposing ABA team reportedly says after he pays an incomprehensible visit to their locker room, "next time you come in here, you better bring an interpreter." But also, "Moses was known as a man of few words, but I'm gonna tell you, when he was around the ladies at the disco that night, he was Shakespeare," his best friend in basketball remembers of a night out in Louisville.
I enjoy Epplin's focus on these second cities' moments of glory, with crisp attention to their attendant political and social dynamics.
The counterposed figures at the center do feel effectively archetypal: Erving the crossover star ever conscious of how he was presented, consistently ready with a poised quotation (he memorably welcomed Malone to the ABA) or savvy soundbite, reaching for the kind of extra-athletic success that Jordan would monetize a million times over. (Short but sad subplot: his high-end shoe store, which fails in 18 months in stubbornly prole-identifying Philly, and of course he never made any money from all the pairs Converse sold.) The emotion as his NBA teams fall short again and again is honestly pretty wrenching. And Malone the tireless worker, monomaniacally focused on his craft to the seeming exclusion of much else and monosyllabically resistant to interviews almost, though not all, of the time (Bartleby the...rebounder, let's call him; please pay me copyright royalties on this brilliant coinage), though honestly it's hard to clarify--he remains stubbornly out of reach, with glimmers of personality that never quite cohere; hard to discern how much of the way he was presented captured him and how much was white-writer invention (an interesting subtheme would have compared how Black and white reporters perceived and presented him). The canonical "fo', fo', fo'" prediction seems to have been to some degree a rewrite of what he actually said.
Best lines about Malone's drawl and parsimony with words: "Moses," one member of an opposing ABA team reportedly says after he pays an incomprehensible visit to their locker room, "next time you come in here, you better bring an interpreter." But also, "Moses was known as a man of few words, but I'm gonna tell you, when he was around the ladies at the disco that night, he was Shakespeare," his best friend in basketball remembers of a night out in Louisville.
I enjoy Epplin's focus on these second cities' moments of glory, with crisp attention to their attendant political and social dynamics.
September 30, 2025
I got this from Netgalley, so I can read and review it before it’s published. Having just read a biography on Moses Malone and read Julius Erving’s memoir a few years ago, and also reading a memoir about Eddie Gottlieb, the man responsible for professional basketball in Philadelphia, I was intrigued.
This book is pretty detailed on specific games from both Moses and Dr. J professional playing days from both the ABA and the NBA, and how they got to be on the Philadelphia 76ers – Dr. J joined the team in 1976, and Moses in 1983. It also highlights how that 1983 team came to be from players to the head coach, Billy Cunningham. That team won the NBA Championship that season, after being defeated in prior seasons. It was kind of a last hurrah for them, as Dr. J retired in 1987 and Moses drifted to a few other teams, before retiring in 1995. Moses was the MVP for the Houston Rockets in 1982 and the MVP in 1983 for the Philadelphia 76ers – in addition, he was the Finals MVP.
Moses and Dr. J defined that era of the game. Prior to them, the duo was Wilt and Bill Russell. After, it was Magic and Larry. Then, it was Michael, Magic, Isiah, and Larry. Now, it’s Steph and LeBron.
This book is pretty detailed on specific games from both Moses and Dr. J professional playing days from both the ABA and the NBA, and how they got to be on the Philadelphia 76ers – Dr. J joined the team in 1976, and Moses in 1983. It also highlights how that 1983 team came to be from players to the head coach, Billy Cunningham. That team won the NBA Championship that season, after being defeated in prior seasons. It was kind of a last hurrah for them, as Dr. J retired in 1987 and Moses drifted to a few other teams, before retiring in 1995. Moses was the MVP for the Houston Rockets in 1982 and the MVP in 1983 for the Philadelphia 76ers – in addition, he was the Finals MVP.
Moses and Dr. J defined that era of the game. Prior to them, the duo was Wilt and Bill Russell. After, it was Magic and Larry. Then, it was Michael, Magic, Isiah, and Larry. Now, it’s Steph and LeBron.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Moses and the Doctor covers the parallels of the careers of Moses Malone and Julius “Dr. J” Erving as they played in both the ABA and NBA, eventually coming together to both play on the 1983 championship winning Philadelphia 76ers, and the tumultuous roads that both took to arrive at the pinnacle.
This was an interesting read that covered the early careers of both, highlighting information that I previously did not know. It includes tons of interesting stories and interviews. The writing style was easy to read and flowed really well. I highly recommend this book to any sports fans interested in learning about the ABA or either of these larger than life superstars.
Special thanks to Grandma Central Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.
February 10, 2026
I’ve read a lot about this era of basketball, including the ABA, and I still found myself learning something new. The research is strong, but the story is what really works. It moves fast and never feels heavy. What stood out most is how much care this book gives to Dr. J and Moses Malone, two players who often get overlooked in all time NBA conversations. Dr. J’s best years were in the ABA, and Moses was never flashy enough to get the credit he deserved. Together, they changed everything, and this book makes that clear.
The build up to the 1983 season is especially powerful. You see how close the Sixers came year after year and why Moses was the missing piece. That championship feels earned, not lucky. The book captures why that team still matters and why that era deserves more respect. If you care about the old NBA or the ABA, this one is worth your time.
The build up to the 1983 season is especially powerful. You see how close the Sixers came year after year and why Moses was the missing piece. That championship feels earned, not lucky. The book captures why that team still matters and why that era deserves more respect. If you care about the old NBA or the ABA, this one is worth your time.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Growing up in Indiana, basketball was always around, so reading about Moses Malone and Dr. J hit a nostalgic spot for me. I was just a young kid when Dr. J retired, so I did see him play, just not with the understanding I have now. Moses, though, I remember watching all the way through high school. This book touched on a lot of things I didn’t know at the time and made me appreciate both of them in a new way.
It’s a great look at the era, the personalities, and how much the game was changing. Overall, it's good storytelling about two players who helped shape the basketball I grew up loving.
I’m really glad I was selected on NetGalley for an early ARC. It reminded me why Indiana kids grow up loving this game, the history behind it, and how all these players stories matter.
It’s a great look at the era, the personalities, and how much the game was changing. Overall, it's good storytelling about two players who helped shape the basketball I grew up loving.
I’m really glad I was selected on NetGalley for an early ARC. It reminded me why Indiana kids grow up loving this game, the history behind it, and how all these players stories matter.
November 18, 2025
I've read a lot about this era of the NBA -- including the ABA and memoirs/biographies of Moses and Doc, respectively -- and I still found tons of new insights. As a result, the research blew me away. Then the narrative, it's so good. On par with Breaks of the Game. I also feel like the subjects don't get enough love in the NBA legends discussions. Doc's peak was hidden in the ABA; and Moses wasn't flashy enough of an MVP. Now they get their due, and it's so masterfully done.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews