In such a competitive arena as the NBA, only more than 400 players can get the opportunity to show their talents and compete for championships. According to the data, throughout the NBA's more than 70 years of history, the average professional lifespan of players is 4.5 years. That said, the stars we know today who can fight in the league for eight, ten, or even fifteen years or more are definitely at the top and top of the pyramid in terms of physical and basketball talent.
And there's a guy who's been fighting in the NBA for nineteen years, and what's even more incredible is that in nineteen years, he's only missed ten games. With his strong muscles and the tacit cooperation of his partners, he broke through the NBA's most competitive 90s. He's a fourteen-time All-Star Hall of Famer and an epic whirlwind that makes a city proud, and he's Carl Malone.
Malone was born on July 24, 1963 in a small town called Summerfield in Louisiana. In a township with no traffic lights and only three hundred and fifty inhabitants, every day one sees a burly lumberjack with a young boy chopping wood in the woods.
The child's name was Kalmaron, and his biological father suddenly disappeared after giving birth to nine children with his mother.
For as long as Malone could remember, he had only eight older siblings by his side, as well as his hard-working mother and lumberjack grandfather. To support such a sprawling family of eleven, Malone's mother, Cheryl, worked in many different jobs. She drives forklifts in lumber mills, works as a butcher in slaughterhouses, hunts up the hill, fishes in rivers, and does all kinds of farm work on the farm.
Working hard and fighting against fate is perfectly normal for Malone's mother. Her image in Malone's eyes is very tall, a woman who will never be crushed, tall and mighty and somewhat fierce. Whenever the children cried and complained to him about things, she would always smoke a cigarette and stare at them viciously and shout: Don't cry. In Malone's eyes, his mother and grandfather are the people who have the deepest influence on him, although they have not told Malone any great truth, but looking at their backs, Malone understands what is hard work, and these words have become Malone's life creed. In addition to helping his family do some farm work and breeding, Ma Long, who grew up in a peasant family, his favorite thing to do in his spare time is to play basketball. Perhaps because of working in the forest and farmland for a long time, Malone's body and muscles were several times stronger and stronger than those of his peers. In high school, Marlon's Samofield High School, under his leadership, won the Louisiana Championship for three consecutive years. Just as Malone and his peers were thinking about the future and thinking about their future life path, the University of Arkansas and even UCLA and other basketball schools issued invitations to Malone. A child who grew up in a rural experience, because of basketball, his life trajectory is about to change.
Before college, the Malone family lived a standard and difficult peasant life. If it weren't for basketball, Malone might never have left his home at Samofield. That's why Malone declined an invitation from the University of Arkansas and UCLA to enter Louisiana Polytechnic simply because he wanted to be closer to home.
Playing basketball well, caring for the family, filial piety, and perseverance are all the advantages of Malone. But the only regret is that Malone is not outstanding in his homework, because the grades are not up to standard, and even if he enters the university, Malone will not be able to play in his freshman season. But after his sophomore season, Malone, who joined the varsity team, immediately showed his extraordinary talent in college, averaging 18:7 points and 9:3 rebounds per game. Malone led the school to a 29-3 record, completing the first promotion to the NCAA Championship in school history. Although they were eliminated in the round of sixteen, throughout Malone's three-year college basketball career, he was selected to the All-Team in the South.
After four years of college life, for Malone, challenging the NBA, the highest temple of basketball, is his next goal.
While the Malone as we know him is the standard modern big forward with speed, power and projection. But when the Utah Jazz drafted him for the first round of the thirteenth pick in the 1985 draft, Malone didn't have the muscles and skills to come later.
Malone's early Jazz teammates said malone was not yet developing and even had a little baby fat. The monotony of offensive means, relying on the body to grab rebounds, card positions, and finishing ability is limited to the basket, so that Malone's only moves at that time are the reason why in that year's draft, although Malone has reached a private agreement with the Dallas Mavericks who hold the eighth sign. But the Mavericks abandoned the future Hall of Fame player at the last minute and turned their attention to another German technical striker named Trev-Schlöpf.
Although he entered the NBA and was successfully selected as a rookie, Malone has improved slowly compared to when he was in college. At this time, an important figure appeared, he was not the man who formed a golden pair with Malone in the future, but Adrian Dantley, the two-time NBA scoring champion. Although Malone and Dantley have only been teammates for one season, they have forged a deep friendship. Teacher Fu Dantley, who has been wandering in the NBA for a decade, teaches the rookie how to turn around and shoot, how to face the basket attack, how to handle the ball in the low pocket, and how to score more effectively. For Malone, a muscular man, these knowledge and movements were like a new world, something he had never thought of.
In every show after the teenager, Malone trapped himself in the training room, just like Grandpa spent all day in the forest logging, and Malone was constantly polishing and refining his skills. While sweating profusely in the gym, Ma Long practiced a superior kung fu in martial arts cheats. Three years later, Malone's mid-range shooting and rebounding skills are already in full swing, and it is said that his body fat rate has also decreased from 14% to 5%.
Although Malone's stats have increased year by year, and the team has always been able to enter the playoffs smoothly after the regular season, it has become a regret in the hearts of fans that they have not been able to break through the second round. Fast forward to the fall of 1988, jazz head coach Frank Redden decided to abdicate and move behind the scenes, and assistant coach Jerry Sloan became the jazz head coach and officially entered the historical stage. Another big thing happened in Salt Lake City this year, that is, Stockton, who had been on the bench for three years, was finally corrected and entered the starting list. While scoring in double figures, Stockton also finished his career assists title in the '87-88 season.
Finally, the Carl Malone, Stockton and Jerry Sloan Iron Triangle, which would later become known throughout the league, merged before entering the 90s, and since then the Jazz's famous stunts Utah Block and Malone Iron Elbow have begun to become famous in the history of the NBA.
If you can devote yourself to the field every night, then any game will become very simple. This sentence Jerry Sloan had been nagging in his Utah ear for more than a decade, tough, tough, grumpy, hardworking, upright, and resolute. You can use any word like that to describe it, Andron is this unyielding personality and a hose for basketball. Coach Sloan led the Jazz to begin blazing new ground in the 1990s.
Many well-known basketball authors, when writing NBA memoirs, often say that among the superstars who dominated the 90s, Utah was one of the least talented teams, and the lack of talent they said was compared with Jordan and the superstars of the level of the four centers. As the talent representative of this group, he is not the chosen son who can be distinguished at a glance like the four major centers, nor can he fly like Jordan. A lot of people prefer to play Malone to compare with Buckley. For example, Malone had obvious technical weaknesses in the early days of the league, and Barkley's height of less than two meters became a hard injury that he could not change. But Barkley developed a hip-back spank to make up for the lack of height. Malone's way is to be diligent and diligent under the coach year after year, day after day with the right and tough way to break up with Stockton to attack.
"I had to play tough because I didn't have the flamboyant scoring skills and skills. The only advantage I have when I play is that I give it my all in every game. "It's Sloan's self-evaluation of his time as a player, and it's the basketball philosophy he brought to the Jazz. When you can't become an aerial legend, you can only work the ground. Because there is another way to legend.
In the early 90s, people often debated who was the best big forward. Whether it was Barkley or Malone, the debate stopped during the 1993 playoffs. Barkley, who led the Suns to the Finals again in seventeen years, became the most powerful striker in most people's hearts. And when the time entered the mid-to-late 90s, when the superstars who entered the age of establishment began to decline, the 33-year-old Carl Malone snatched the NBA regular season MVP as if he had eaten some kind of rejuvenation panacea. He began to be frequently selected for best defense, developing the ability to play low sideways and Stockton's fiery blocking combination, becoming the most feared duo in the league at the time. And the event that really raised the historical status of Utah again was to lead the team to the league finals for the first time in history. This achievement has even been achieved twice in a row in 1996-98. Malone is only the final champion left to make history. But in front of them is the desperate and collapsing red trapeze man - Jordan.
Nineteen years of professional play averaging 37 minutes per game, 14,968 rebounds, 13,188 free throws, and 36,928 points. When Malone achieved these achievements, people began to say that maybe Karl Malone was the best big forward.
Born into a peasant family, he eventually became one of the most recognizable players in NBA history. Karl Malone could have received cheers and applause in any public place. But whenever Malone was interviewed, all the reporters would invariably ask the same questions.
"Can you talk about Jordan?" What happened to that super steal? "Maybe the reporters didn't mean it, but whenever they talk about these topics, Malone is always forced to respond." He didn't want to look back on that past.
The year before the 1998 Finals, Malone scored more than 25,000 points and more than 10,000 rebounds in the 96-97 season. The Jazz, who finished first in the West in the regular season, played six games against the Chicago Bulls on their first Trip to the Finals.
Jordan, who flew into the sky, Pippen, who was supported by a powerful assistant, and Rodman, the defensive locker, made the Jazz powerless to break through the Bulls' copper wall. Even though Malone averaged 23.8 points per game in the Championship Series, he still couldn't beat the Bulls.
A year later, the 1998 Finals were still between the Bulls and the Jazz.
These two teams are arguably the best teams in the league in the '97-98 season, with both of them winning the league's best record of 62 wins and 20 losses in the regular season. But after reaching the Finals, the Bulls' desire for a second triple title gave them a 3-1 lead in their first four games. In the G5, which was on the line of death, Malone exploded in the whole field, slashing 39 points and bringing the suspense back to Salt Lake City.
Before the finals, Malone said in an interview that this year we only have one goal, and that is to take back what we lost in the next year. However, Malone would never have imagined that the championship trophy he wanted to lift would actually shatter in his hands at the last moment of G6.
In the final 30 seconds of the game, the Jazz led by one point at 86-85 and were in the offensive round. When Stockton passed the ball to his old partner Malone as usual, a pair of hands with red flashes waited from the shadows to complete the steal. Malone stumbled and fell, and by the time he turned back to get up to save it, the ball was already in Jordan's hand.
With just over ten seconds left in the end, a one-point difference in the score, these factors are enough to be the conditions for a great moment. And the most crucial person, Jordan got rid of the shot and hit the counter.. Once again, the Flyer conquered the arena with his powerful heart at a crucial moment.
The Jazz attacked with just 5.2 seconds to go on the offensive after a timeout, and Stockton received the ball and faced Harper's tight defense and still found a three-point shot. But the moment the ball came out of the basket, everyone knew the game was over.
Jordan and the Chicago Bulls once again beat the Jazz 4-2, completing their two-time triple-header feat in eight years. Jordan proudly raised six fingers and shouted loudly. The city's owners, on the other hand, had to leave lonely and let their opponents celebrate the victory at their home.
Fast forward to the present of the twenty-first century, when a journalist aired jordan's documentary "The Last Dance" and, a month later, came to Malone's house. In the dimly lit room, malone, who was already fifty-seven, looked expressionlessly at the visiting reporter.
The old postman, who was nearly a year old, already knew why the reporter had chosen this time to interview and the questions he was about to ask.
After the camera lights came on, the reporter asked the question that Malone had heard countless times.
"Karl, what comes to mind when I say the name Michael Jordan?"
Malone craned his neck and shrugged his shoulders, a look of puzzlement and bitterness piled up on his stiff face, and then said:
"It's Michael Jordan, what else do I have to say?" Thank you, please go ahead. ”
The reporter asked: "Tell us about Jordan's steal in the G6 in '98." ”
Malone's eyes widened, and he said as gently as possible, "Why?" Why not. ”
When the reporter did not know how to answer the call, Malone continued to speak.
"Put it this way, we are all men, and I accept the responsibility and consequences of losing the game. But I'm not playing jordan, I'm playing with the Chicago Bulls. I have a lot of respect for Michael, and everyone says he's a tough character, and he really is. But it sounds like I'm also a man, and I'm also a tough character who doesn't mess with. That's who I am, I'm Carl Malone. ”
After the end of the championship race in '98, The Road's Career in Salt Lake City was temporarily terminated after joining the Lakers in 2003.
But the combination of Malone, Bryant, Payton and O'Neal lost to the Pistons in the Finals. On three championship trips, Malone failed to lift the cup as he wished. At the same time, his body also fought to the limit.
After finishing the Lakers trip, Malone left the NBA and officially left the basketball arena.
In April 2010, following Malone's announcement of his retirement in February 2005, the outside world once again set its sights on him. This time, he was on the stage of the Nye-Smith Basketball Hall of Fame.
As a tough guy, Malone rarely shed tears in front of the camera, but when he thanked his family, teammates, teams, fans and opponents in his Hall of Fame speech, Malone's voice began to choke.
It wasn't until he started talking about his mother that the tall man could no longer restrain his emotions and burst into tears.
Malone said this touching sentence in a trembling voice in the highest hall of the basketball world as his last statement.
"It's been seven years since my mother passed away today, and I would never have stood here without him. Every day, every second of my life, my mom is not only my mom, she's my dad. She is the hero in my heart. ”
From the 85-86 season to the 03-04 season, the 19-year career has only missed ten games. Even without a championship, this man's NBA career is legendary enough, great enough. When he returned to Salt Lake City in 2005 and announced his retirement as a Jazz player, he said: "After I leave here, I will never regret to say that I should train harder or run harder." Because I had given everything I had, I hadn't won a championship ring. But I never regret it. ”
Sometimes, when you have exhausted the last of your strength and still can't change anything, you will be calm. When you turn around, you won't complain about God, you won't complain about your opponents, you won't complain about yourself, and you won't succumb to fate. Because you've interpreted another definition of success and legend.
There were no traces of wings in the sky, but I had flown by. (Tagore)
And now, after the fighting, it's time to go home, back to Louisiana.
He imitated the appearance of his mother in his memory, put on a western cowboy hat, walked into his farm, and walked into the familiar forest behind him with plants and animals.
He is the great big forward of the basketball world, the memory of a generation's youth, and even more himself.