Moses Malone
June 15, 1986, 40 years ago: For fans of the Philadelphia 76ers, this is a day which lives in infamy.
The Sixers had made the Playoffs in each of the last 10 seasons. In 7 of them, they had reached the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. In 4 of them, they had reached the NBA Finals. And in 1983, they had won the NBA Championship.
In 1986, they lost in the First Round. By this point, they were an aging team. Julius Erving was 36 years old, and was soon to announce that the next season would be his last. Bob McAdoo and Bobby Jones were both 34, and the season that had ended just a week before would prove to be the last in the NBA for each of them.
Still, there was reason to hope that their run of success could continue. Moses Malone was 31. Maurice Cheeks was 29. Andrew Toney was 28. There was young talent on the roster, including 23-year-old Charles Barkley. And they had obtained the Number 1 pick in the NBA Draft in a trade with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Except that, 2 days before the Draft, 76ers owner Harold Katz traded that top pick, to the Cleveland Cavaliers, for Roy Hinson. The Cavs ended up using the pick on Brad Daugherty. To make matters worse, on the same day, Katz traded Malone and Terry Catledge to the Washington Bullets for Jeff Ruland and Clifford Robinson.
There was nothing wrong with wanting healthy versions of Roy Hinson, Jeff Ruland and Clifford Robinson. But Ruland only played 5 games for the Sixers before getting hurt, and retired, although he made a comeback 5 years later. And Hinson and Robinson did little in Philadelphia.
In contrast, Malone was still an All-Star as late as 1989, and still playing as late as 1995; while Daugherty made 5 All-Star Teams, and, arguably, should be in the Basketball Hall of Fame along with Malone.
The 76ers have never been the same, making only 1 NBA Finals, in 2001 with Allen Iverson. Otherwise, with Barkley, Iverson, Joel Embiid and James Harden, and under 3 different ownership regimes, the Philadelphia 76ers have been one of the most underachieving teams in North American sports.
From the NBA Finals of 1984 to that of 2025, the count of NBA Championships is as follows: Los Angeles Lakers 9, Chicago Bulls 6, San Antonio Spurs 5, Golden State Warriors 4, Boston Celtics 4, Detroit Pistons 3, Miami Heat 3, Houston Rockets 2, Dallas Mavericks 1, Cleveland Cavaliers 1, Toronto Raptors 1, Milwaukee Bucks 1, Denver Nuggets 1, Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder 1. The other 16 teams, including the Philadelphia 76ers, none. And of those 16 teams, 6 didn't even exist in 1983.
From 1983, when the Philadelphia 76ers won the NBA Championship, until 2008, when the Phillies won their next World Series, no Philadelphia professional sports team won a World Championship. Could this be the Curse of Harold Katz? No, it's usually called the Curse of Billy Penn: The suggestion was that the construction of One Liberty Place in 1987, making it taller than the statue of William Penn atop City Hall, caused Penn's spirit to put a curse on the city's teams.
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