Top 100 NBA Players - #25

Julius Erving

(Kalb: #15, Simmons: #16, BBR: #12)

When Julius Erving finally made his NBA debut in 1976, he was already an established superstar, having spent five seasons in the ABA and winning the final 3 MVP awards that league gave out. If I was doing a ranking of the top professional basketball players of all time, and not just NBA players, Erving would definitely jump up much closer to the top 10, but when you consider only the NBA portion of his career, it's still quite impressive.

Erving started out his time in the NBA as the second-best player in the entire league, with only Kareem playing at a higher level than the 76ers' new star. Each led his team to the top seed in his conference entering the playoffs, but Erving went a step beyond Kareem there, advancing to the NBA Finals in his "rookie" season, where they lost to Bill Walton and the Trail Blazers in Walton's only healthy season.

The next season Philadelphia once again took the top seed in the East, but they lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to the eventual champion Washington Bullets. Two years later, it was Philadelphia pulling off the conference final upset, taking down Larry Bird and the Celtics 4 games to 1, setting up a huge Finals showdown with the Los Angeles Lakers, who were led by another young star named Magic Johnson, who eventually led them to the championship and left Erving ringless still.

In 1981, Erving won his first and only NBA MVP award, although I feel that it should have gone to Moses Malone, an opinion I outlined in my previous player profile. Malone ended up taking the Rockets all the way to the Finals, where they lost to Boston, while Erving lost to those same Celtics one round earlier. Even at age 30, there was no denying that Dr. J was still one of the league's premier players.

In 1982, Erving led the 76ers to the Finals for the third time in his NBA career, but they once again were no match for Magic Johnson and the Lakers. One of the reasons that Erving is not rated higher is that he was never quite good enough to lead a team all the way to the championship without more help, and that help came the next season in the form of Moses Malone.

With Malone as a teammate rather than an opponent, Erving and the 76ers returned to the NBA Finals, this time sweeping the Lakers and posting a total record of 12-1 during their dominant playoff run. Erving was finally an NBA Champion, but he wasn't the star of the show anymore. That was Moses, who won both the regular season and Finals MVP awards in the only championship season for either player.

Erving hung on for a few more seasons, but he was obviously on the downside of his career, and he was never one of the top 10 players again. In 11 NBA seasons, Erving never missed the playoffs, and he led his team to the NBA Finals 3 times and the conference finals twice before he was replaced by Malone. With Malone leading the way, he won a championship, and saw the conference finals one more time, but at that point he had also been surpassed by a young Charles Barkley. Overall, he was one of the league's most dynamic and exciting stars, and he saw quite a bit of success despite the fact that he never led a title run himself.

Erving and Malone's careers followed very similar trajectories, except for the fact that Malone hung on a lot longer than Erving, as he was more willing to accept a reserve role. Both started their careers in the ABA, then came over to the NBA when that league folded, although Erving came over as a superstar, and Malone as a bit of an unknown. They both had failed trips to the Finals before teaming up in 1983 to win their only championship, but Erving gets the edge because he led Philly to 3 NBA Finals before Malone arrived, while Malone had only made it there once with the Rockets.