Karl Malone

1963-

American basketball player

Karl Malone, a power forward who has been playing basketball with the Utah Jazz since 1985, earned the nickname "The Mailman" early in his career for his ability to deliver the ball to the hoop reliably, under any conditions. The long-time Jazz combination of Malone, the scorer, Malone's co-captain, point guard John Stockton , the passer, and Jerry Sloan, the head coach, is one of the most fearsome in the National Basketball Association (NBA), but despite making the playoffs every year that these men have been playing together, the Jazz has never won an NBA championship.

Hard Work

Malone, the eighth of nine children in a poor but fiercely independent family from a tiny town in northern Louisiana, has never been a stranger to hard work. His mother struggled to earn enough to raise her children, but she never applied for welfare even though the family was eligible. "It was my responsibility to take care of my own children. I believe every tub should sit on its own bottom," she later told Sports Illustrated reporter Craig Neff.

In the early 1980s Malone played college basketball for Louisiana Tech, only a short drive from his family's home in Summerfield. He was not eligible to play as a freshman because his high school grade point average (GPA) of 1.97 was below the 2.0 requirement, but by his junior year of college he saw this as a blessing. After leading his high school basketball team to three consecutive Class C state titles, "I was starting to think that I was better than other people, that I was special and things would just come to me," Malone told Neff. The shock of not being allowed to play forced him to put more effort into his studies, and by his junior year he had the third-highest GPA on the Louisiana Tech team.

Later in life, this willingness to work hard would do much for Malone's NBA career. A forty-eight percent foul shooter as a rookie, he concentrated on improving this aspect of his game and now makes three in four of

his free throws. He is legendary among NBA players for his rigorous training regimen, which includes cutting hay and branding cattle with his brother over the summer, on a ranch in Arkansas that he owns. Malone's teammates are invited to come along, but only one, former Jazz player Ike Austin, ever took him up on it. Austin, a protégé of Malone's who worked his way to a Most Improved Player award in 1997, told Sport magazine's Tom McEachin about one of their summer days together on Malone's ranch. The two got up at 5:00 a.m., spent forty-five minutes on the stair machine, another two-and-a-half hours lifting weights, and a few hours working in the fields—all before lunch. Then they lifted more weights after lunch. Austin recalled that when they were done "I couldn't lift my arms. When I got back from lifting, I just fell asleep, right there at the table. Everybody was laughing, and Karl was like, man, just go to your room." Malone's hard work has paid off. Since his rookie season he has more than halved his body fat percentage, from over ten percent to an even four.

The Great Team That Couldn't Go All the Way

Malone was drafted by the Utah Jazz in 1985. There he joined Stockton, who had been drafted a year before. The two were a powerful combination. Malone, a hard-driving power forward, was often in a position to score, and Stockton was usually poised to feed him the ball at just the right moment. Malone became the team's leading scorer during his sophomore season, and when Stockton became the team's starting point guard in 1987 he wasted no time breaking the NBA's record for greatest number of assists in a single season. When assistant coach Jerry Sloan was promoted to the head coaching position in 1988, the final piece of this long-lived combination fell into place.

Despite the numerous records broken by Malone and Stockton, the Jazz have never been able to win an NBA championship, despite having made the playoffs every single year. After having been eliminated in the first or second round for many years, the Jazz made its first-ever trip to the Western Conference Finals in 1992. There they were eliminated by the Portland Trail Blazers in six games. The Jazz returned to the Western Conference Finals in 1995, only to be defeated by the Houston Rockets in five games. It took Seattle seven games to beat them in the Western Conference finals in 1996. The next year the Jazz finally made it the whole way to the NBA finals, where they played well but still lost to the Chicago Bulls. They returned to the NBA finals and faced the bulls again in 1998, but again they were defeated. Other notable post-seasons include 1988, when the Jazz forced the eventual NBA champions, the Los Angeles Lakers, to go a full seven games to eliminate them in the second round.

Chronology

Malone the Inspiration

Malone has long been something of an elder statesman in the sport of basketball, serving as an inspiration not only for the younger members of the Jazz but for players across the league. In the summer of 1997 former Denver Nuggets player Bill Hanzlik, who was head coach of the Nuggets for the 1997-98 season, bumped into Malone while he was working out in a Salt Lake City gym. Hanzlik, who had come to town with several of his rookie players to participate in a summer league, thought that it would be an excellent lesson for these young men to see how hard Malone worked, even on a Sunday morning in the off season. Hanzlik woke four players up and brought them back to the health club, where Malone was in the middle of leading a spinning class. After the class was over, Malone spent fifteen minutes talking to these rookies about the devotion and hard work that it takes to be a success in basketball and about how getting caught up in a glamorous lifestyle would only distract them from that work. "That one meeting was worth more than the whole ten days we spent in summer camp," Hanzlik recalled to Tom McEachin of Sport magazine.

"Everybody asks me now: How many more years do you think you can keep up with the young guys?" Malone was quoted as saying by McEachin in 1998. "I ain't seen a young guy catch me yet. Why … do I need to start catching up to them?" With this attitude and continued hard work, Malone looks set to continue leading the NBA and inspiring young players well past his fortieth birthday.

Career Statistics

CONTACT INFORMATION

Address: c/o Utah Jazz, 301 W. South Temple St., Salt Lake City, UT 84101.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Periodicals

Brody, Robert. "Karl Malone Takes it Personally." Men's Health (February, 1991): 72-75.

Jorgensen, Loren. "Candid Karl." Sporting News (April 20, 1998): 12-15.

"Karl Malone Scores for Kids." Hunting (March-April, 2002): 18.

"Karl Malone Wins Second MVP Award." Jet (June 21, 1999): 48.

Ladson, William. "Karl Malone: The Jazz Superstar Attempts to Get over the Hurt of Last Season." Sport (December, 1994): 86-91.

Lyons, Douglas C. "Karl Malone: The 'Mailman' Delivers." Ebony (February, 1991): 67-69.

"'The Mailman' Third NBA Player to Score 30,000 Points." Jet (February 21, 2000): 18.

McCallum, Jack. "Big Wheel." Sports Illustrated (April 27, 1992): 62-72.

McCallum, Jack. "Getting Straight: His Wife's Illness Forced Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan to Clean Up His Act. Now He's in No Rush to Leave the NBA." Sports Illustrated (February 11, 2002): 46.

McEachin, Tom. "Built from Scratch." Sport (February, 1998): 76-79.

McEachin, Tom. "The Mailman Still Delivers." Basketball Digest (January, 2001): 14.

Neff, Craig. "The Mailman Does Deliver." Sports Illustrated (January 14, 1985): 88-90.

"Utah's Karl Malone Makes NBA History as Member of All-NBA First Team for 11th Time." Jet (June 28, 1999): 46.

"Utah's Malone Sets NBA Free Throw Record." Jet (April 9, 2001): 52.

Vancil, Mark. "Banging and Running, a Routine Night's Work." Sporting News (November 8, 1993): S10-11.

Wiley, Ralph. "Does He Ever Deliver!" Sports Illustrated (November 7, 1988): 72-77.

Other

"Jazz History." NBA.com. http://www.nba.com/jazz/history/00400490.html (January 3, 2002).

"Jerry Sloan." NBA.com. http://www.nba.com/coachfile/jerry_sloan (January 3, 2002).

"Karl Malone." NBA.com. http://www.nba.com/playerfile/karl_malone (November 28, 2002).

Sketch by Julia Bauder

Awards and Accomplishments