# Andrew Toney

Andrew Toney (born November 23, 1957) is an American former professional basketball player for the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1980 to 1988. A two-time NBA All-Star, he won an NBA championship with the 76ers in 1983. Contemporary basketball greats Larry Bird and Sidney Moncrief put Toney on par with Michael Jordan offensively. Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe called Toney, “‘the most forgotten great player in NBA history.’”

## Early life

Toney was born on November 23, 1957, in Birmingham, Alabama. Toney attended Birmingham’s Glenn High School. On the basketball team, he averaged 31 points per game as a junior and 37 points per game as a senior. He was named Alabama's “Mr. Basketball” as a senior, and was named to All-America teams as a junior and a senior. The team was 80-14 with Toney. He also played baseball and participated in track.
He attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), and played basketball under coaches Jim Hatfield and Bobby Paschal. On the basketball team, he averaged 21 points per game as a freshman, 26.1 as a senior, and 23.6 over his college career. He led the team to a 21-9 record as a senior, going as far as the National Invitation Tournament quarterfinals. He was All-Southeastern Conference in 1980. He set nine school records, and scored 46 points in a game three times, including a game against Auburn to win the Bayou Class Championship.

## Professional career
### Philadelphia 76ers (1980–1988)

Toney was drafted by the 76ers out of Southwestern Louisiana with the eighth pick of the 1980 NBA draft. On arriving in Philadelphia, future Hall of Famer Julius Erving took Toney under his wing. As a rookie, he averaged 12.9 points per game, had a .495 field goal percentage and was seventh in rookie of the year voting.
His vaunted play against the Boston Celtics began in his rookie season. In a late 1981 regular season game he had 35 points against the Celtics. In the first game of the Eastern Conference finals between the 76ers and the Celtics, he had 26 points, and then 35 points in game two -- both of which were played in Boston. The Sixers were up 3-1 in the series, but the Celtics held Toney to only 17 points in the final two games and took the series.
He was dubbed "the Boston Strangler" by Boston sportswriters during the 76ers' and Celtics' rivalry in the early 1980s because of his ability to single-handedly dominate games against the Celtics. Most famously, in Game 7 of the 1982 Eastern Conference Finals, he scored 34 points in the 76ers victory over Boston. The game ended with the Celtics crowd shockingly chanting for the rival 76ers to "Beat L.A." The Los Angeles Lakers won the 1982 championship over the 76ers, but Toney averaged 26 points and 7.8 assists per game, with a .529 field goal percentage, .750 three-point field goal percentage, and .862 free throw percentage in that series. During the 1982 regular season, on March 7, 1982, Toney scored 46 points against the Lakers and hall of fame defensive specialist Michael Cooper.
Toney also scored 30 points in Game 2 against the Celtics in the 1982 conference finals, 39 points in Game 4 and averaged 22.1 points per game in that series. While his playoff career points per game average was 17.4 overall, against the Celtics it was 19.8. Celtic guard M. L. Carr said Toney's passing made him even more impossible to guard. After the following season when the Sixers won the 1983 championship, the Celtics traded for big defensive guard, and future hall of famer, Dennis Johnson, in significant part to try and defend Toney (and Magic Johnson).
Toney was named to two All-Star teams, in 1983 and 1984, and averaged 15.9 points per game for his career. He was so difficult to cover defensively when holding the ball on the wing, with the ability to shoot or drive, that the 76ers bench players would shout "torture chamber" at the opposing player attempting to defend Toney.
Toney was an integral part of the 1982–83 76ers championship team averaging 20 points a game, alongside teammates Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Bobby Jones and Maurice Cheeks, all hall of famers, but his career was cut short after seven seasons by chronic foot injuries (only five of which were healthy seasons). The team did not believe that he was hurting before it was revealed that he had stress fractures on both feet. This led to a few years of bitterness between Toney and 76ers management, though he and the owner at the time, Harold Katz, improved their relationship. Some distance has continued between Toney and the team into the 21st century.
Toney retired at age thirty because of the physical problems with his feet.
Toney ranked second in three-point field goal percentage in 1981-82 (.424) and sixth in 1984-85 (.371). His lifetime field goal percentage is 50.0%, remarkable for a guard often shooting from distance.

### Accolades

Pat Williams, vice president of basketball operations for the Orlando Magic, shared an anecdote with Tony Rizzo while being interviewed on The Really Big Show on ESPN850 WKNR in Cleveland on February 11, 2010, while promoting his latest book about the late Chuck Daly. Williams said that when he was a general manager back in the days of their great rivalry with the Lakers and Sixers (c. 1980–1983), he asked Danny Ainge, the Celtics guard, what player he worried about the most come playoff time. "Not Magic or Dr. J, it's Andrew Toney that keeps me awake at night!" said Ainge. Williams went on to say that were it not for injuries Toney would have been a Hall of Famer. Charles Barkley stated that Toney was the best player he ever played with. Hall of fame player and Toney's former coach Billy Cunningham, like Williams, believed Toney would have been in the hall of fame but for his injuries, and that he and backcourt mate Cheeks had just started to grow into their potential together.
Hall of fame Celtics opponent, and member of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team, Larry Bird, praised Toney as one of two shooting guards of whom he was most afraid. The other was Michael Jordan. Hall of fame guard Sidney Moncrief, who won the very first Defensive Player of the Year Award in 1983, and who had to defend Toney, said "Toney was un-guardable .... he could do everything. ... I studied him, and it’s nothing you could do that could stop him from scoring, beyond double-teaming him and getting the ball out of his hands...." He also found Toney very smart, with a counter for whatever the defender tried. Moncrief "always put [Toney] right there with Michael [Jordan]." After the 1983 championships, Hall of Fame Laker coach Pat Riley said “'Toney is probably the toughest clutch shooter in the league today .... He is just impervious to pressure.'”
In one NBA ranking of the greatest backcourt duos in league history, Toney and Maurice Cheeks were ranked eleventh out of seventy pairs.
In 1992, Toney was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. In 2013, he was inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. In 2016, Toney was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

## NBA career statistics
### Regular season

| Year | Team | GP | GS | MPG | FG% | 3P% | FT% | RPG | APG | SPG | BPG | PPG |
| 1980–81 | Philadelphia | 75 | — | 23.6 | .495 | .310 | .712 | 1.9 | 3.6 | .8 | .1 | 12.9 |
| 1981–82 | Philadelphia | 77 | 1 | 24.8 | .522 | .424 | .742 | 1.7 | 3.7 | .8 | .2 | 16.5 |
| 1982–83† | Philadelphia | 81 | 81 | 30.5 | .501 | .289 | .788 | 2.8 | 4.5 | 1.0 | .2 | 19.7 |
| 1983–84 | Philadelphia | 78 | 72 | 32.8 | .527 | .316 | .839 | 2.5 | 4.8 | .9 | .3 | 20.4 |
| 1984–85 | Philadelphia | 70 | 65 | 32.0 | .492 | .371 | .862 | 2.5 | 5.2 | .9 | .3 | 17.8 |
| 1985–86 | Philadelphia | 6 | 0 | 14.0 | .306 | .000 | .375 | .8 | 2.0 | .3 | .0 | 4.2 |
| 1986–87 | Philadelphia | 52 | 12 | 20.3 | .451 | .328 | .796 | 1.6 | 3.6 | .3 | .2 | 10.6 |
| 1987–88 | Philadelphia | 29 | 15 | 18.0 | .421 | .333 | .806 | 1.6 | 3.7 | .4 | .2 | 7.3 |
| Career | Career | 468 | 246 | 26.9 | .500 | .342 | .797 | 2.2 | 4.2 | .8 | .2 | 15.9 |
| All-Star | All-Star | 2 | 0 | 20.0 | .625 | .000 | 1.000 | .5 | 5.0 | 2.0 | .0 | 10.5 |

### Playoffs

| Year | Team | GP | GS | MPG | FG% | 3P% | FT% | RPG | APG | SPG | BPG | PPG |
| 1981 | Philadelphia | 16 | — | 22.3 | .428 | .111 | .815 | 2.3 | 3.4 | .7 | .4 | 13.8 |
| 1982 | Philadelphia | 21 | — | 33.7 | .507 | .333 | .796 | 2.4 | 4.9 | .9 | .1 | 21.8 |
| 1983† | Philadelphia | 12 | — | 29.8 | .470 | .000 | .754 | 2.3 | 4.6 | .9 | .1 | 18.8 |
| 1984 | Philadelphia | 5 | — | 36.0 | .519 | .000 | .767 | 2.2 | 3.8 | .8 | .2 | 20.6 |
| 1985 | Philadelphia | 13 | 13 | 34.0 | .477 | .429 | .770 | 2.5 | 5.1 | .9 | .4 | 16.8 |
| 1987 | Philadelphia | 5 | 0 | 20.8 | .382 | .000 | 1.000 | 1.8 | 5.4 | .4 | .4 | 5.6 |
| Career | Career | 72 | 13 | 29.8 | .478 | .235 | .786 | 2.3 | 4.5 | .8 | .3 | 17.4 |

## Personal life

Toney's son Channing played NCAA Division I basketball at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and played a few matches professionally in Poland with Asseco Prokom Gdynia. He also won the second-tier Finnish Division I championship with Bisons Loimaa.
Toney lives outside of Atlanta, and worked as an elementary school teacher, and then took on positions as instructional coach for the Gwinnett County Schools' Community-Based Mentoring Program, and with Project Reconnect.