Today the Mailman, Karl Malone, turns 50. To celebrate, we thought it only fitting to provide you 10 of his best quotes over an NBA career that stretched from 1985 to 2004. Malone has scored more points than anyone in NBA history not named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but his scoring accomplishments and unchallenged Hall of Fame pedigree wouldn’t have happened without a lot of hard work.
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10. “I like to think I have some finesse to my game, but inside the paint is where men are made. If you can’t play there, you should be home with your mama.” – New York Times.
Malone was, and is, the archetypal power forward. In a league that’s increasingly becoming more geared towards the stretch 4, Malone knew how to do the gritty work inside, like Zach Randolph and the Grit & Grind crew in Memphis. But he also developed a nice touch from the mid-range in order to draw defenders to the perimeter so he could attack the basket. Despite his improved outside shot, the block was where he was most comfortable.
In the above clip, Malone does battle against Kareem, Magic Johnson and the leaders of the Western Conference in 1988, the Las Angeles Lakers. But the good ol’ boy from the Bayou did not back down.
9. “Just hit the guy next to you. Forget the technique. Hit the guy across from you. Don’t let somebody come in your space.” – advice to Karl Malone Jr. via ESPN.
Karl’s son, Karl Malone Jr. was a football player competing in the New Orleans Under Armour combine in 2011. This is the advice he gave his son, and it’s the type of play that Malone relished while banging bodies in the paint during his NBA career.
Malone Jr. announced he’d attend LSU in March last year where he’ll play football, rather than hoops. But the same dedication and toughness his father exhibited during his nearly two decade run in the NBA has been instilled in his son, and he’s not afraid to mix it up, as evidenced by Karl Senior’s advice.
7. “The pebble has been snatched from my hand, and it’s time for me to leave, like Kung Fu. I must move on … continue to live in Utah, unless I get hit by a beer truck or something.” – Los Angeles Times in 1999 during the NBA strike.
Malone was his whimsical best during the NBA player’s strike before the 1998-99 NBA season started. The year before he’d lost to Michael Jordan‘s Bulls in the Finals for the second year in-a-row, and now Malone was worried he was being robbed of another chance to win a title after Jordan retired following the 1998 season. But during that strike-shortened 1998-99 campaign, his scoring averaged dipped to 23.9 points per game, and he was disastrous in the Jazz’s final loss against Portland in the Western Conference Semifinals where they were eliminated 4-2.
But Malone had a monster 33-point Game 2 in Utah’s first round series against the Sacramento Kings earlier in the postseason. It was a bittersweet performance since they eventually lost the game. The game—despite ending in a loss—showed many, and perhaps Karl himself, that he still had a lot left in the tank even though he’d already been in the league for a decade and a half. The next season, he averaged 25.5 points per game while shooting over 50 percent. The mailman is always on his route.
6. “In that defining moment, when [Jazz team management] shoulda stood up for Jerry Sloan…they chose Deron Williams. And Coach Sloan, being the coach I know and love, said, ‘you know what? We should part the ways’…And once Coach Sloan says something, it’s history.” – The Gordon Monson Show on 97.5 in January of 2012.
Malone is referring to his old coach’s decision to up and quit in his record 23rd season as coach of the Utah Jazz. At the time, Jerry Sloan was the longest tenured coach in the NBA, having spent those 23 years with just the Jazz franchise.
But after butting heads with star Deron Williams during the 2011-12 season, Sloan decided to leave rather than be held hostage by the likes of D-Will. Sloan and Malone forged a special working relatinship together during their time in Utah. Obviously, Karl did not sugarcoat things when he responded to the Sloan retirement directly after the Williams kerfuffle.
5. “I think Coach Sloan is corny sometimes, ‘You can get better and better no matter how long you play this game.’ And sometimes we think it’s corny, but it’s a true statement. If you’re willing to make that commitment in the summer time — when the camera’s off, when you’re in that gym by yourself with no one around — that’s when you get better.” – Inside Hoops interview with Karl in March, 2001.
Malone’s love for Sloan didn’t being with him sticking up for Sloan after the Williams fiasco. Malone owes a lot of his hard work and tenacity to Sloan, who was always a no-nonsense coach with Utah and in his own playing days. Here, former player and current Timberwolves coach, Rick Adelman, talks about playing against Sloan and it’s almost like he’s talking about playing against Malone. Just like it’s hard to mention Malone without also mentioning his plucky point guard on the Jazz, Hall of Famer John Stockton, you can’t really celebrate Malone without bringing Sloan into the equation, too.
4. “All records are not made to be broken.” – Desert News, 2005.
Karl uttered that line while talking about his career after retiring in 2005. He had scored 36,928 points over his 19-year career. That was shy a couple thousand of Kareem’s NBA record of 38,387, which is why Karl said the line. But despite his personal accolades, Malone’s two seasons reaching the NBA Finals were his favorite.
There’s something really awe-inspiring about Malone hanging it up when he was still a capable enough basketball player that the Lakers’ chances for success in their blighted 2003-04 season, hinged on the play of Malone. While another Hall of Fame addition that off-season, Gary Payton , struggled to pick up Phil Jackson‘s Triangle offense, Malone was leading the charge on defense and happily sacrificing shots to Shaq and Kobe for a chance to get that elusive first title. Sure, the Pistons beat the Lakers in five games that summer, but it’s a testament to Malone he was able to walk away after giving it one last shot.
You know, like the triple-double he recorded at the age of 40 that season:
3. “Dan Patrick and I always joke around with each other. He had a man-crush on Michael Jordan, so I told him I had one on Lebron James and I’m happily married. Sayin this to say this guys, anytime you start a starting five, you gonna leave somebody off. If the powers to be out there think I left Michael Jordan off my starting five they got to be smoking some stuff and it’s not legal yet.” – Originally the Dan Patrick Show, but this response to the comments came by way of ESPN.
Malone was in the headlines as recently as this past June, after he gave his all-time starting five to Dan Patrick during his radio show. Malone neglected to include the GOAT, Michael Jordan, electing to name his Bulls teammate, Scottie Pippen, instead. Malone’s starting five had his old teammate, Stockton, at point, Oscar Robertson at shooting guard, LeBron James at power forward, Wilt Chamberlain at center, and the aforementioned Pippen at the small forward spot.
Malone later qualified his remarks after being accused of having a grudge against Jordan after MJ’s Bulls beat Malone’s Jazz in the two seasons they made the NBA Finals during his career (’97 & ’98).
Calm down little grasshoppers, if you people don't think MJ is in my top 5 you have to hear the whole interview.
— Karl Malone (@TheDeliverer_32) June 5, 2013
Dan Patrick had a man crush on MJ from the time we started the interview. I was just messing with him.
— Karl Malone (@TheDeliverer_32) June 5, 2013
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So rest easy basketball fans, Malone isn’t so crazy as to leave Jordan off his all-time team, he just wanted to have some fun with Dan Patrick and troll the rest of the basketball watching Twittersphere. Mission successful.
2. “When we told them we were doing this for free, they looked at us like we were crazy or something,” Malone said. “How is a landowner who just lost everything going to pay $15,000 or $20,000 to have a lot cleared? I mean, there were two or three houses on top of one another in some places.
“There was a lot of red tape, and I ain’t got time for that. … FEMA didn’t approve, but we did it for the people.” – USA Today.
After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in the summer of 2005, Malone didn’t stand idly on the sidelines complaining about how poorly our FEMA forces responded. He took a crew and 18 vehicles from his Arkansas logging company (Malone loves trucks) to Pascagoula, Mississippi.
Once there, Malone and his crew cleared 114 lots of debris in two weeks of work. If this isn’t one of the best examples of what makes Karl Malone great, than we don’t know what does. Rather than complain or just do nothing—like most did in his situation—Malone actually acted on his better impulses to help. While others were complaining about how badly George W. Bush had messed up post-Katrina, Malone was busy clearing wreckage from people’s lawns so they could at least begin to rebuild their lives.
1. “Try to live life the way you want to be remembered. Try to leave life better than you found it. And, what good is success if you’re not willing to share it?”
“Couple things I said I wasn’t gonna do — I wasn’t gonna talk long and I wasn’t gonna cry. Charles I lost a bet.” – Hall of Fame induction speech in 2010.
Karl was elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010, and his speech was filled with enough inspirational aphorisms to fill up five of these lists by themselves. While it might sound corny, like his old coach Jerry Sloan, Karl really lived by the maxim that hard work pays off.
If a career that spanned almost two decades, countless victories, 14 All-Star Game appearances, two All-Star Game MVPs, two MVP awards (against Jordan, no less), and lots of quotable fodder for the media, Malone saved his most endearing words for his Hall of Fame induction speech. We can’t say it any better than Karl. Happy 50th big fella, hopefully you have many more.
Bonus Quote:
“(Charles Barkley) kept his vaseline right inside his navel and he would use it in a game.” – TNT’s Inside the NBA in February 2013 during All Star Weekend.
There’s really not much more we can add about this one. Just watch the video if you have a minute because it’s priceless, we just didn’t have a spot for it.
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