Fascinating. Thanks for the education. Moses Malone had turned 30 during a productive 85-86 season and although he had several good seasons following the trade I can understand Philadelphia thinking that he was approaching the back nine of his career and wanting to get a return on a soon to be declining asset while it still had value. As you pointed out unfortunately for Philadelphia the return they got was abysmal. The 76ers packaged Malone, Terry Catledge, a 1986 1st round pick and a 1988 1st round pick for Cliff Robinson (not to be confused with Clifford Robinson) a middling power forward who had previously bounced between 4 teams in 7 seasons and Jeff Ruland an often injured center with two prior all star appearances who played 5 games for the 76ers the next season and then retired.Philly had the No. 1 pick that year and was the second best team in the East that year, behind the Celtics. They had a still frisky Moses Malone and a young Charles Barkley, who was clearly going to be a star. They didn’t want to take Daugherty, because they didn’t think he would fit with Moses, but they didn’t want Bias either, because they didn’t think he’d fit with Barkley. And they didn’t want the Celtics to get Daugherty to replace Parish. So they flipped the pick to Cleveland, who they knew would take Daugherty, for F Roy Hinson. It gave them on paper a pretty good front line, for about an hour, when they traded Moses to Washington for Jeff Ruland, which made absolutely no sense. So instead of rolling through the late 80s with Moses, Barkley and Brad Daugherty they had Roy Hinson, Jeff Ruland (who literally never played for Philly, he was already broken down) and Sir Charles.
The guy Philly traded to the Clippers in 1979 to end up with the 1st pick in 1986 was Jellybean Joe Bryant, journeyman forward and Kobe’s dad. Clips management back then was as bad as Cleveland’s.
Cleveland never should have had Roy Hinson in the first place. When the Gunds bought the team from Ted Stepien, a condition of the sale was that the team could “buy back“ some of the draft picks Stepien had traded away, starting with the 1983 draft. They gave Cleveland the pick before the Celtics, and they took Hinson, which infuriated Red. He had his eye on Hinson the whole time, and instead they ended up with Greg Kite.
I can’t remember if Moses Malone forced the trade. Otherwise it is hard to make sense of passing on Daugherty and then trading Malone several weeks later.