Malone, Karl 1963–

Karl Malone 1963–

Professional basketball player

Scrawny Kid Scored Big

Redefined the Position “Power Forward”

Success Rooted in Brutal Work Ethic

Overcame Pain of Fatherlessness

Reputed to be “Most Dangerous Player”

Sources

Karl Malone is professional basketball’s premier power forward, scoring points on and off the court as a 13-year NBA superstar with the Utah Jazz. Malone is the only player in the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA) to score 2,000 points or more in ten consecutive seasons. At 34, Malone may have reached the pinnacle of his career with an MVP Award winning year, averaging 27.6 points, 10.1 rebounds, 4.5 assists. He was the oldest MVP in league history, having a better and more complete year than Michael Jordan in 1996-97, according to some. That year he led Utah teammates into the championship against the favored Chicago Bulls—only to lose one more time. But he was not always such a star.

Scrawny Kid Scored Big

His path to Salt Lake City started in Summerfield, Louisiana where he was born. The young Malone grew up scrawny and wild in a another town called Mount Sinai. Only a regular “whupping” from his mom kept the little terrorist in line. “I didn’t get enough whuppings,” Malone laughingly said in Playboy “If I had gotten more, I probably would have changed sooner than I did,” he continued.

When he got his life turned around, Karl built himself up from a scrawny kid and town trouble-maker to become a standout high school basketball player. He led his high school team to three consecutive state titles. But poor grades nearly ruined his chances to play college ball, so at his mother’s urging he attended Louisiana Tech and sat out his first year to improve his grades.

Once academically eligible, Malone become a star. He led the school to two NCAA tournament invitations and, according to Playboy, earned his famous nickname from a sportswriter who drove through rough weather to watch Malone play and penned words to this effect: “Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail, nor double-teaming stopped The Mailman’ that night.”

In 1985, The Mailman dropped out of college a year early to turn pro. He is still a year shy of a degree in Elementary Education, but vowed to get his diploma some day. Passed over by a dozen other teams, the Jazz selected him as the 13th pick. Malone quickly showed

At a Glance…

Born Karl A. Malone, July 24, 1963, in Summerfield, LA; eighth of eight children to Shirley (sawmill worker) and J.P. Malone (divorced 1967, died of cancer 1977); stepson of Ed Turner (grocer, plumber), half sister, Tiffany; married Kay Kinsey, 1991; father of four; Kadee, Kylee, Karl, Jr., and Karlee. Education; Louisiana Tech University, 1981-85,

Career: NBA basketball player, Utah Jazz, 1985—.

Awards: member NBA Al l-Rookie team, 1986; member NBA All-Defensive team, 1988; named to NBA All-Star first team, 1989-94 and 1996-98, second team, 1988; recipient NBA All-Star team MVP award 1989, co-recipient, 1993; named to US Olympic Basketball Team, gold medal, 1992; voted NBA MVP, 1997; selected by The Salt Lake Tribune as its inaugural “Utahn of the Year,” 1998; Henry P. Iba Citizen Athlete Award, 1998.

Addresses: Home—Salt Lake City, UT; Office —Utah Jazz Delta Center, 301 West South Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101-1216.

how wrong the other teams were when he averaged 14.9 points and 8.9 rebounds and made the NBA All-Rookie team. Over a 13-year career, he has averaged 25-plus points and nearly 11 rebounds a game. In 1997, he joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Elvin Hayes, and Moses Malone in the 25,000-point, 10,000-rebound club.

Redefined the Position “Power Forward”

Who is the greatest power forward of all time? Images of past greatness at that position included Bob Pettit, who averaged 26 points and 16 rebounds per game and made the All-Star team in each of his 11 years in the NBA. Dave DeBusschere and Gus Johnson were prototype power forwards who won games with “dirty work”— rebound, bang bodies, set picks, block shots, fight, scratch, claw but let others do the scoring. Elvin Hayes, who averaged 24 points and 15 rebounds per game in his first 11 years in the NBA and Spencer Haywood, who also averaged 26 points and 16 boards in his first three years in the NBA showed that a big man could score, not just do the dirty work. But as their game fell off, the scoring power forward became extinct—that is, until Karl Malone, Charles Barkley and Kevin McHale came along to resurrect and redefine what coaches call the #4 position.

In 1996, Malone joined Barkley, Pettit and Hayes as the only power forwards to post 10 or more 20-point, 10-rebound NBA seasons. Next season Malone is sure to surpass all the career numbers established by his predecessors. Yet some point out that Malone will not be considered truly “great” as long as he has yet to win the big one—an NBA championship for his team. However, many more sports analysts concurred that it was Malone’s work ethic which is redefining how the game is played and how all-time greatness is measured.

Success Rooted in Brutal Work Ethic

Malone has been compared to a “raging bull” and a “runaway truck.” But that unfairly overlooks the physical preparation and mental discipline that Malone brought to each game. For years now, he has punished and polished his 6-foot-9, 256-pound frame into a well-sculpted mass of muscle that tapers to a 31-inch waist with less than 5 percent body fat. His deeply private, year-round training sessions include arduous running drills, high-intensity weight lifting, and brutal StairMasters workouts. His off-season regimen also includes bailing hay on his 50-acre ranch in the steamy heat of an Arkansas summer, just down the road from where he grew up as a kid.

Never good enough to get by on talent alone, Malone is considered the “strongest and best-conditioned basketball player on the planet” according to The Sporting News. He missed just one game in the last eight seasons. Until receiving a one-game suspension in April of 1998, Malone had started 543 consecutive games, the longest consecutive starts streak in the NBA. The secret, Malone said, was mental. “If you find something to give you motivation—whether it’s negative or positive—ride it. Mine happened to be negative, when people said I wouldn’t be a good basketball player,” he told Sport.

“My workouts are important to me,” Malone told a Sporting News reporter. “I don’t do it for fun, and I don’t do it for glory. I do it because it’s necessary. I feel my strength and endurance give me an advantage, and I want to keep that advantage,” he added.

Overcame Pain of Fatherlessness

The eighth of eight children to Shirley and J.P. Malone, Karl was raised mostly by his mom. Shirley worked at three jobs, after his dad abandoned the family when Karl was four. He died of bone cancer in 1977. His mother remarried and had another child, his sister Tiffany. Shirley has always been Malone’s confidante, his “fishing and hunting buddy,” and his moral example. Malone credited his mom with instilling in him “bedrock religion” including the value of hard work and forgiving his father for abandoning him.

Karl talks to Shirley before every game. Always and lovingly, he told Playboy, that his mother tells him how many points to get, how many rebounds, how many assists. He’ll tell her, “OK, you got “em!” Then he’d go out and get even more.

Reputed to be “Most Dangerous Player”

One blemish on the Mailman’s superstar status and fan appeal was that one flagrant foul—some would say intentionally vicious sledge-hammer elbow—on Isiah Thomas in December of 1991. The hit caused Isiah to get 40 stitches near his eye and Malone a $10,000 fine and one-game suspension. Malone claimed it was an accident and did not mean to hurt Thomas. Right after the incident, he and Isiah talked it out (no apology given, but a denial that it was deliberate).

In April of 1998, Malone was suspended yet again for a flagrant elbow. The injured victim was David Robinson of the San Antonio Spurs. He was fined $5,000 and suspended for one game. It ended his starts streak of 543. Malone apologized to Robinson after the game.

Still, the media perpetuated the image of Malone as a villain on the baseline. After a game in which Malone sent Atlanta Hawk Sidney Moncrief sprawling, according to Sports Illustrated, fellow Hawk Dominique Wilkins stung the Mailman with a rebuke, to this effect: “You’re a cheap-shot artist. You’re not a man. You always go out there to hurt somebody smaller than you.” Not everyone buys the Mailman-as-Villain image. Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson differed in Sports Illustrated, “There’s no way I consider him a dirty player. He’s physical, throws his body around and does play the enforcer role on that team. But that’s not the same thing as being dirty. The main thing a coach asks from his players is to be competitive every minute. And Karl Malone is.” According to an informal poll cited by Sports Illustrated, “50% of NBA players consider Malone physical but entirely within the rules, 40% say that he tests the upper limit of physicality too frequently, and 10% believe that he’s outright dirty.”

Those who do not like Malone usually do not know him away from the game. “People think I’m the meanest guy in the world when I’m on the court, and maybe I am,” Malone told Sport magazine recently. “But off the court I’m a nice guy. When I go home, I’m just Karl, I’m just Daddy,” he continued. And not just to his own kids. In the summer of 1995, he befriended 13-year-old cancer victim Danny Ewing. The friendship went both ways, and Karl learned there’s more to life than basketball.

A most eligible bachelor until in 1991, Malone married Kay Kinsey, a former Miss Idaho USA. But the married Malone is still considered a sex symbol who must fend off advances from the opposite sex. He is very much a kid at heart. “Everybody is a kid to some degree. My father passed away when I was young, and I could never be the kid I wanted to be. Now I have kids [Kadee and Kylee] and I want to be a kid with them. My wife is like the husband and the father. I’m the son my wife and I don’t have right now” he commented in Sport That son, Karl Jr., came along in 1996.

Malone’s life on and off the basketball court remains simple, disciplined, and atypical of superstar colleagues. “I love things that athletes aren’t supposed to like,” he told Sporting News. Like National Geographic over basketball film sessions … or pick-up trucks instead of a Mercedes Benz … or cowboy boots over flashy jewelry. You will not see Malone playing golf; he would rather be trucking or fishing. Meeting and fishing with baseball pitching great Nolan Ryan was his “biggest sports thrill.”

Karl shared many child-like passions in common with his wife Kay. Both are nuts about pro wrestling, tractor pulls and trucking. While better known for delivering big buckets and handling beefy opponents, Malone is also a beefmaster cattle breeder on 52-acre ranch in El Dorado, Arkansas, where a prized purebred animal can be sold for as much as $200,000. “Eight years from now when they say, ‘Where is he now?’ this is where I’ll be,” Malone once told Ebony.

When Malone was a little boy, he never mentioned the possibility of playing pro basketball, but always dreamed of owning a big truck. In March of 1993, Karl turned his dream into a business: his own trucking company—a six-rig fleet called Malone Enterprises! However two years later, he shut down his trucking business due to industry competition and Malone’s limited involvement with the business.

“Basketball is my job,” Malone said in Sports Illustrated, “but this is my love.…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the feeling of being the most powerful thing on the road, yet under control, too.” Malone still drives his favorite 18-wheel tractor-trailer, an $190,000 rig that is painted with a rambling, breath-taking panorama of the Old West, with a familiar-looking cowboy riding the range. A runaway truck under control. A Cowboy taming the Old West. Those paradoxical metaphors pretty well describes what Malone is like on and off the basketball court.

Sources

Periodicals

Ebony, Feb 1991, p. 67; Nov 1991, p. 96.

Jet, April 13, 1992, p. 50; Jan 19, 1998, p. 46.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, July 8, 1996, p. 7080233.

Playboy, April 1989, p. 80.

Sport, May 1992, p. 48; Dec 1994, p. 86; March 1996, p. 20; Feb 1998, p. 76.

The Sporting News, Nov 8, 1993, p. 10; Feb 21, 1994, p. 38; April 21, 1997, p. 38.

Sports Illustrated, Jan 14, 1985, p. 88; Nov 7, 1988, p. 72; March 25, 1991, p. 68; April 27, 1992, p. 62; March 17, 1997, p. 101.

Sports Illustrated for Kids, July 1994, p. 14; Dec 1995, p. 25; Nov 1997, p. 40.

Wisconsin State Journal, April 11, 1998, sec D, p. 2, col 1.

Other

Detroit News Online, April 11, 1998.

—Dietrich Gruen