The Mailman Cometh

NB.A. draft day, 1985. Big guys have waited their whole lives for this. At the same time they were learning to put the ball on the floor, during those endless hang-time moments when they were pretending they were Bird or Magic or Dr. J, they were also working on their draft-day cools. That's right: Go up on stage, shake the commissioner's hand, check out your highlights on the video, sit down with Rick Barry, let him tell the world. "I'm a first-round draft choice," they say. "I'm about something here."

Patrick Ewing had the look. No question where or when he was going. "The New York Knickerbockers select, from Georgetown University...." Wayman Tisdale knew his place: Indiana. Benoit Benjamin sauntered to the stage; he had it covered. Xavier McDaniel, Jon Koncak, Joe Kleine, Chris Mullin--they all cruised to the podium.

Karl Malone expected to go next. He had dropped out of school a year early to take this shot at the pros, but only the most intense hoops aficionados knew who he was: "The Mailman" (because he delivers), a devotee's top ten. When the Mavericks had told Malone he'd be their first choice, he had moved to Dallas. But the Mavs passed on him.

"When they said, 'Dallas selects, from the University of Washington, Detlef Schrempf,' I'm like...." Malone looks bewildered. It's three years later and the event still hasn't fully taken hold. "I got scared, sitting there thinking, Am I going to be a big fluke?"

All his life, people had been telling Malone he wasn't any kind of good enough, and he'd had to fight not to believe it himself. Big as he was, he had always thought of himself as small: small-town troublemaker, small-college all-American; a very little guy in the grand design. He knew he could play ball. He just didn't know the world.

Number 11 passed him by. Twelve. Lucky 13. Finally.

"As the thirteenth pick of the first round ... " said commissioner David Stern, pausing every few words for feedback control and emphasis, "the Utah Jazz select ... from Louisiana Tech ... Karl Malone."

He stood up, walked to the stage, shook hands with Stern, sat down to be interviewed by Rick Barry and cried, live, on national television. He couldn't stop himself. He didn't try.

•

"Karl Malone."

Los Angeles Lakers coach Pat Riley looks pained--like, Do I have to talk about this? Malone and the Utah Jazz nearly ran his Lakers out of last year's play-offs. He sighs. "Best power forward in the game." Bar none? "Right now, I think." And improving? Riley laughs. "I hope he doesn't get any better. I don't think there's ever been anybody chiseled like Karl Malone, who can do what he does. He's going to get twenty-five and ten every night." In fact, last season, his third in the league, Malone averaged 27.7 points and 12 rebounds per game, the only man in the top five in both N.B.A. categories.

Says Riley: "He's got us."

James Worthy, the M.V.P. of last year's N.B.A. finals, has often had to deal with Malone: "Every play, every rebound, you are going to have to go harder than you would go against anybody else in the league. He's probably the most dominant player at his position. His strength is just phenomenal. Speed. Quickness. Every play you have to play him your hardest."

Karl Malone is 6'9", 256 pounds. He's a bodybuilder, he's drop-dead handsome, he looks like a god. Combine the power of Darryl Dawkins, the ferocity of Maurice Lucas, the solidity and grinding determination of N.B.A. work horse Gus Johnson, the indomitable will of Larry Bird; add to that the speed of Dominique Wilkins and the flashing enthusiasm of the young Magic Johnson and you have a close approximation of Malone. He'll beat you off the boards, beat you down the court, just beat you. The guy is a hard-court paradox, both an N.B.A. throwback and the wave of the future.

"Yeah," says New York Knicks coach Rick Pitino, "it's kind of scary. I don't like thinking about it."

•

Malone speaks with a Southern smile to his voice; it's filled with wonder. He's a storyteller, the kind of guy who will remember scenes by reliving them in front of you. He's out there having a good time and he doesn't mind for a minute if you want to tag along.

"When I was growing up," he says, laughing, "I loved to live on the edge. I loved to see how far I could push a person--to the limit--before he either exploded or went crazy. Like I was a scientist. My attitude was to push you until either your hair fell out or your eyes came out of your head."

His game is very much the same way. He is always testing opponents, bouncing them around under the boards, blowing by them on the break. But instead of an abused hatred, his victims generally leave with a warm respect.

Malone didn't just breeze into the league and take over. In fact, he didn't know much about where he was going. The Jazz had arranged for him to be interviewed by coach Frank Layden on a live telephone hookup piped in to a hungry crowd of Salt Lake City fans at the Salt Palace. Malone, aiming to please, said he was looking forward to playing in the "town of Utah." "Son," said Layden, "it's a state."

Malone arrived at the Utah Jazz training camp with the usual rookie agenda: Get that car, that house, that money. He did all of that. However, in what may well be a first in the history of ballplayers and their bonuses, he also paid off his college loan and bought his sister a car. His honor was at stake and he had to satisfy it. Then he thought about basketball.

"I said, 'Kid in a candy store, you got that now. OK, now what do you really want? Do you want to be an OK basketball player? Or do you want to be a great one?' I wanted to be a great one.

"At the rookie orientation, they said, 'Rookies, one of the best things you can do is get with a veteran, let hint showyou the ropes.' Everybody was scared as hell of Adrian Dantley. The first day of camp, he was looking at me and I was looking at him. We didn't have a confrontation, but maybe I fouled him a little hard."

Still, even the notably dour Dantley couldn't resist this country kid. Malone got his attention and the veteran taught him the game.

"He would pick out a referee," Malone recalls, "say, Earl Strom. He'd say, 'He'll let you play as long as you want to, but don't start yakking at him; he'll either call a foul on you or throw you out the game.' Jake O'Donnell: 'This guy is running everything. Be an ass, he'll be one.' Hey, athletes have egos, referees do, too."

Dantley also gave him the book on the forwards and the centers he would be matched up against. "He'd say, 'You have to run the floor harder, because a lot of power forwards don't run well. So you have to get out and run, look for the guard, kick it to him.'"

But Malone wasn't what you'd call a serious student of the game. He was out there living a dream. No demands, no responsibilities, nothing to worry about. Nobody expected the Jazz to win anything, and they didn't. He was in the perfect situation: pure potential, with all the time in the world to live up to it.

"I would be the first to admit that I didn't take anything serious my rookie year," Malone says. "I was just happy to be playing." For all his fun and games, he averaged 14.9 points and 8.9 rebounds and made the N.B.A. All-Rookie team.

Before his second season, a new world opened up for him. The Jazz traded Dantley to the Pistons for Kelly Tripucka.

"Dantley was poison," says coach Layden, who retired as the Jazz coach earlier this season. "We had to get him away from Karl. He was telling Karl he shouldn't go all out all the time, stuff like that. That's the reason for the trade."

Remembering Dantley's exit, Malone sounds like a kid. He's a little lost, right back there as it's happening. "I'm saying to myself, 'What in the hell are the Jazz doing? Who do they think is gonna score? Who's gonna lead this team now?'

"Coach Layden called me and said, 'Uh, Karl, we got rid of Adrian.'

"'Yeah?'

"'You know what that means?'

"'Nope.'

"'You've got to play that much harder.'

"I said, 'I am playing hard!'

"'You have to want that other rebound, you have to want to score that last point. You have to pick your game up a level.'"

Malone didn't think of himself as any kind of savior. Small-town, small-college guy, at first he didn't respond to the large load placed on him. When he suggested to coach Layden that there were other players on the Jazz who might lend a hand, Layden snapped, "Karl, can you do it or not? If not, we'll get somebody else to do it." That threat became Malone's challenge.

What he did was begin pushing it, as he did when he was a kid.

The N.B.A. has at least two sets of rules: an unwritten code for the superstars and the rulebook for the rest of the players. Malone decided to muscle his way past the rulebook.

"I might hit a guy harder coming across the lane, for no reason. Stick the elbow out and bump him to let him know that I'm there. He'd say, 'Why'd you do that?" 'Oh, just for the hell of it.'"

He became a scientist of the N.B.A.

"I felt the referees out more and more. Now I know, when the ball is shot, if they're gonna let me push the guy in the back to get the rebound. I know if I'm gonna be able to grab a guy by his jersey when the referee is not looking and then get out on the break quick. I know I'm gonna be able to step on a guy's feet when he's trying to jump; I know the referee is not looking at players' feet. The guy hasn't jumped, but they don't know why. Or if I was getting ready to shoot, I would act like I was shooting, but I would really be trying to hit my man in the face with my elbow. Not dirty, but just seeing what I could get away with."

Once he learned that there were no limits, he became dangerous. His second year, he averaged 21.7 points and 10.4 rebounds a game.

At the end of the season, coach Layden called him in again. He said, "That was a great job. Now, over the summer, I want you to work on running the floor more. I want you to work on your outside shot. I want you to work on coming inside more. I want you to work on your free throws."

Malone laughed. "Is that it?" he asked.

That summer and fall, lie set a new standard for pre-season conditioning. Fit to begin with, the guy became cut, muscular, developed. "He was the prototype forward," says the Jazz's all-star guard John Stockton. "Like they were saying about Lawrence Taylor at linebacker; he was the shape of things to cone. His ability to score inside and outside is pretty well noted, hut there's also his ability to (continued on page 90)karl malone(continued from page 82) run the floor. On the fast break, I have watched a hundred times where he gets a rebound, outlets it to me and then beats me down to the other end of the court to get an open lay-up. Over the course of the game, he'll wear you down."

The fans voted Malone starting forward on the West squad at the N.B.A. All-Star Game. People used to discuss him with curiosity; now they talk about him with awe. Knicks coach Pitino says, "If you look at the power forwards in the past--the bangers--they never ran like Malone can run. If you can get him in early foul trouble, you won't see the same Malone. But if you don't, you'll have a long night."

Malone has redefined the power-forward position. There doesn't seem to be anyone who can play with him. "The way I playnow," he says, "and the confidence I get with each game ... one guy will not stop me." So what does it take? "Two or three guys, like they did all last year. That's a build-up to my ego when they do that; I have their respect. But when they do that, somebody's open on my team. I hate double teaming sometimes--because, hey, man, I want to score, too."

Malone does love to score. "When I'm down in the hole and I see one guy on me, I lick my chops. I get excited. Sometimes I get too excited. When I look up and see just one guy, I get happy!"

•

Malone was a happy kid--wild but happy--growing up in the northwest corner of Louisiana in a little town called Mount Sinai: "Population two hundred fifty, three hundred counting the chickens, hogs and everything else." His father abandoned the family when Malone was very young and his mother, Shirley, raised her eight children by working three jobs. She married Ed Turner when Malone was young. Years later, Malone's father contracted cancer. He asked his ex-wife to take care of him, and she did.

Malone grew up wild. "Me and my brother Terry were going through that stage that my momma called 'mannish,'" he says. He's having a good time recalling those days. "We were the neighborhood busters."

If anything went wrong anywhere near the Malones' place, everybody knew who had done it. Who was that shooting out the neighbors' windows with a BB gun? Must have been those Malone boys. Your cows on the move, your dogs in a howl? Karl Malone was out there chasing them. Hear your hogs hollering? It was Karl and Terry out there riding them as if they were horses.

"If we didn't get a whupping," says Malone, laughing, "we just couldn't sleep at night. From when I was twelve till I was seventeen, if we went a day and a half without getting a whupping, something was wrong with us. I never did drugs or drank, but I was just mannish as hell. My mom used to tell me, 'Boy, I brought you into this world, I can take you out.' You don't believe me? Ask my mom!"

"I was working at the sawmill," says Shirley Turner. "A gin belt--what the lumber runs down on--tore up. I had a little ol' knife and just cut me a good strap out of it and brought it home. 'Mr. Know-It-All,' that was the name of it."

"You know," Malone says, laughing, "I didn't get enough whuppings. If I had gotten more, I probably would have changed sooner than I did."

Basketball came easily to Malone. His high school team won the state championship three years in a row. But as the leader of the guys in the back row, he was laughing, chewing gum, blowing bubbles, cheeking down on the whoopie cushion. He kept on pushing it.

"I wanted to know what kind of grades it would take before they would stop letting me play basketball."

He found out. In order to be eligible to play college ball, a student must have a 2.0 grade-point average. Bright as Malone was, he'd never studied; he had a 1.99. Many major colleges could have fixed that, but Malone's mom wanted him to go to Louisiana Tech, just 40 miles down the road, and Tech fixed nothing.

"I was confused," he says. "They told me, 'Karl Malone, you're a basketball player, but you can't play for a year.' It's like you're an inventor and you can't invent for a year."

Apparently, not everybody in Mount Sinai forgave Malone for his years of being the town tormentor. "They'd say, 'I told you he wasn't going to do good, I told you he was going to be a drug addict, I told you he wasn't going to have no money.' That's what drives me: I don't want to prove those people right. I want to make them look like asses for the rest of my life.

"I had let my family down, I had let Karl Malone down. So I was at the point where I said, 'Karl, are you going to be aloser the rest of your life or are you going to do something positive with yourself? You can either go to college or sit at home and be what everybody expects you to be, which is nothing.'"

Malone decided to go to college, and he made his sacrifices. He got a bank loan to pay his tuition. His freshman basketball team won the intramural program, but he never went to a varsity game. He went to class, and by his sophomore year, his grades were good enough to make him eligible to play.

Louisiana Tech went 19-9, 26-7 and 29-3 in the three years Malone played varsity ball. In his first year, Tech was unknown. In his second year, the team received an N.C.A.A. bid and beat Fresno State in the first round before losing to Houston. In his third year, it was nationally ranked and beat Pittsburgh and Ohio State before falling to Oklahoma in the regional semifinals.

National magazines started coming around. He picked up his nickname from a sportswriter who fought his way through rough weather to watch Malone's brilliant performance in the conference championship. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hailnor double teaming stopped "The Mailman" that night.

•

Malone is a major celebrity in Utah. People take him to heart. Mormons in white patent-leather shoes line up for autographs after Jazz games, and he will stand there and sign them until every mom, dad and kid has been accommodated.

"I feed off the fans," he says. "When I'm playing, whatever I do is entertainment. If I give somebody a high five and point at him, that's for the fans. If they spend seventy-five or a hundred dollars to sit on the floor, I better do something to them--knock the popcorn out of their hands or knock over their beer; I better let them know I'm trying."

Malone takes basketball personally. He talks to his mother before every game, sometimes from his room, sometimes from the phone at courtside. "I tell him how many points I want," she says, "how many rebounds, how many assists. He'll say, 'OK, you got 'em!' And he always gets more than I ask him for."

With a promise to Mom on the line, he puts true feeling into his playing, the kind of shining inspiration that jumps out spontaneously in power moves and high fives. His triumphant gestures begin as happy outbursts and become beloved symbols, almost like religious rites.

"I try to put in a little something extra each year," he says. Last year, he took to shaking two fingers each time he scored. He also developed a powerful right-arm pump. He comes screaming down the court on the break, jams the ball throughthe hoop, then drops to one knee and (continued on page 168)Karl malone(continued from page 90) pumps--in, out--as if he were ripping someone's heart out with one hand.

•

Eating barbecue in a fast-food place in Dallas called Cactus Jack's, Malone leaves his customized Mercedes--with the Ferrari side panels and Mailman plates--in the parking lot, unlocked. There's a mobile phone resting on the dashboard that's just waiting to take a quick walk. But Malone is unconcerned: He carries himself as if betrayal never happened, as if the apple didn't get eaten.

"See that car outside?" he asks the steady stream of kids and adults who ask for his autograph. "Go inside, reach in the glove compartment. There are some pictures in there." Malone asks each fan his name, dedicates the picture and signs "Best wishes, Karl Malone, #32, Utah Jazz."

He extends this hospitality to women, as well. They love to rub up against him. Celebrated ladies have been known to call him up late at night and ask him to come holler at them--he has been known to oblige. When he walks down the street, he routinely gets coy glances--and unabashed stares--that most normal guys wait their entire lives for. At home, his answering machine is full of female voices. He returns calls--"Pauline, it's Karl. What up?"--and then sits back and listens as they tell him.

He was engaged during college ("I used to carry a pair of her panties around with me. I'm serious! I was possessed by this girl!") but broke it off during training camp his rookie year.

"You'd have to be an absolute nut to get married your first or second year in the league," he explains. "Unless you banged her up in high school and y'all got a set of twins. I was in L.A. at Magic Johnson's charity game and we had an after-game party. Some women used some lines on me that I wrote down!"

One particularly fine and wealthy young guest sidled up to him, told him what her father did for a living (soul of discretion, all he will say is that it was truly L.A.-impressive) and said, "I've been wanting you for a long time. How would you like to quit playing basketball and just come be with me?"

"If I was right out of the country," Malone says, "I might've fallen for that. Back home, you wait for that all your life."

As Malone has made the rounds the past few years, however, even that part of the game has grown old. He has met one too many travel agents, girls who will take him anywhere. "It's hard to meet a girl who likes you for you," he says. "I talk about it with my mom all the time. If I meet a girl, she's gonna have to pass the Shirley Malone test, have her morals in place, have her own career.

"I'm not a monk; I love it. But you have to draw the line or you're just gonna sex yourself out until you can't perform. When I'm forty-five or fifty, this thing right here is still gonna be in perfect working order."

•

Malone is making several million dollars a year now. He just started his own construction company. Its first job was to build a new home for his mother. He has done the right thing. When he had problems with his first agents, he paid them off and fired them, rather than duke it out in court. "I put agents and drug dealers in the same boat," he says.

"He's a goodhearted person," says his mom. "He's just now beginning to realize he world is made up of different kinds of people. It hurts him to find out a person's not good. He's just a big of baby."

He's determined to keep moving forward. After the Jazz nearly sank the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals, coach Layden called him in again. As Malone recalls it, "'Karl,' he told me, 'we go where you go. The responsibility is on your shoulders. When it's nut-cuttin' time, we'll be looking for you. Are you ready?' I said, 'I want the responsibility.'" This is his year.

As Malone sees it, the N.B.A. is undergoing a real power shift this season and he intends to be part of it. "It's new guys on the block now: Utah, Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta. You know who's going to take some waxing? The expansion teams. They'll wish they didn't come in.

"Throw L.A. and Boston in anywhere you want," he says, "but they will not dominate anymore. When Father Time comes knocking, you can't stop him."

As well as a shift in teams, there's also a new class of players about to reach the superstar level--he names Charles Barkley, Akeem Olajuwon, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, Clyde Drexle--and Malone wants to stand with them. That's why he works out so hard in the summer, why he plays so hard in his games. "I don't want people to say, 'Well, he was goodfor a couple of years and then he coasted.' You got to earn respect on the court.

"A lot of guys in the league, they have a hell of a year and don't do nothing in the summer. They think their game can pick up from where it was. 'I finished the league second or third in rebounding, fourth or fifth in scoring, I can take this cruise.' It don't work like that. I have rolled out of bed a lot of summer mornings and asked myself, 'Why the hell am I doing this?' But, hey, I'm not as good as I want to be. This is a pivotal year for me. It could decide whether I'm goingto be in that class or if I don't belong there."

Malone belongs, all right. He just won't believe it until his mom tells him so.

"He drops to one knee and pumps--in, out--as if he were ripping someone's heart out with one hand."