basketball player; entrepreneur
Personal Information
Born Karl A. Malone on 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); married Kay Kinsey, 1991; children: Kadee, Kylee, and Karl, Jr
Education: Louisiana Tech University, 1981-85.
Addresses: Home--Newport Beach, CA.
Career
NBA basketball player, Utah Jazz, 1985-2003; Los Angeles Lakers, NBA basketball player, 2004.
Life's Work
Karl Malone made a 19-season career as professional basketball's premier power forward, scoring points on and off the court as an NBA superstar with the Utah Jazz in all but one season, which he played for the Los Angeles Lakers. 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, it seemed, had reached the pinnacle of his career when he won the 1996-97 MVP Award, averaging 27.6 points, 10.1 rebounds, and 4.5 assists. He was the oldest MVP in league history, having had a better and more complete year than Michael Jordan, according to some. Remarkably, two years later he won a second MVP after the 1998-99 season. And at age 38 he had a career high of 152 steals. He completed his career with the NBA's second highest scoring list with a career total of 36,928 points, less than 1,500 points behind basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
In childhood, Malone was an unlikely superstar. His path to Salt Lake City started in Summerfield, Louisiana, where he was born in 1963. The young Malone grew up scrawny and wild in 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.
Selected by Utah Jazz
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's 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 how wrong the other teams were when he averaged 14.9 points and 8.9 rebounds and made the NBA All-Rookie team. In 1997, he joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Elvin Hayes, and Moses Malone in the 25,000-point, 10,000-rebound club.
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.
Malone, who displayed exceptional staying power, in 1996 joined Barkley, Pettit, and Hayes as the only power forwards to post 10 or more 20-point, 10-rebound NBA seasons. Having won an Olympic gold medal as a member of the United States Dream Team at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Malone picked up a second gold medal in Atlanta at the 1996 Olympics. Three years later, when he renewed his contract for the third time in 1999, he signed for an impressive $66.5 million over four years, to join the most highly paid echelon of players in the NBA. He continued to prove his worth, becoming the NBA's second all-time scorer in 2000 when he surpassed Wilt Chamberlain's career record by collecting 31,443 points; Malone then set an all-time NBA career free throw record of 8,534 successful shots in 2001.
Prepared Himself Physically and Mentally
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, 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 StairMaster 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 was 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.
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.
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 Isaiah Thomas in December of 1991. The hit caused Isaiah 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 Isaiah 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 believed the worst about Malone usually did 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. "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.
Balanced Basketball and Family
An eligible bachelor until 1991, in that year Malone married Kay Kinsey, a former Miss Idaho USA. The couple formed a strong family that Malone relished. "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.
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.
Malone announced his retirement from professional basketball in 2005. Still physically fit, Malone admitted that he just wasn't mentally up for more of the game. "I look at basketball as 100 percent physically and 100 percent mentally. And if I can't bring you 200 percent, from me, I can't bring you anything," Malone said during his retirement press conference, according to Jet. Although he retired with the most respected playing statistics, some point out that Malone will not be considered truly "great" because he did not win the big one--an NBA championship for his team. "I wanted a championship. I'm not going to lie to you. That was my ultimate goal, but that was a team goal. That wasn't an individual goal," Malone admitted to Jet. Even without an NBA championship sports analysts predicted Malone, whose work ethic helped redefine how the game is played and how all-time greatness is measured, would be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Awards
Member NBA All-Rookie team, 1986; member NBA All-Defensive team, 1988, 1997-1998, 1999; 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 and 1996; voted NBA MVP, 1997; selected by Salt Lake Tribune as its inaugural "Utahan of the Year," 1998; Henry P. Iba Citizen Athlete Award, 1998; voted NBA MVP, 1999.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- America's Intelligence Wire, February 14, 2005.
- Buffalo News, February 20, 2005, p C8.
- Ebony, Feb 1991, p.67; Nov 1991, p. 96.
- Jet, April 13, 1992, p. 50; Jan 19, 1998, p. 46; March 7, 2005.
- 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; February 25, 2005, p. 67.
- 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; February 21, 2005, p. 17.
- 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.
On-line- Detroit News Online, www.detnews.com (April 11, 1998).
— Dietrich Gruen and Sara Pendergast
- Karl Malone 
