Top 100 NBA Players: #4

Karl Malone

(Kalb: #17, Simmons: #18, BBR: #10)

How can a player who never won a championship be ranked at #4, ahead of many of the greatest champions of all time? By being consistently among the best players in the league for a longer period than any other player in history, with the possible exception of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, that's how.

Karl Malone was never the best player in the NBA for any single season, but he spent a longer period of time as the second-best player in the league than anyone else, and he led his team to the playoffs in each of his 19 seasons, making 3 appearances in the Finals and 3 more in the Conference Finals.

Malone was awarded two MVP awards during his career, but neither one was deserved. He won the first because voters were tired of picking one superstar, and he won the other because they weren't ready to recognize a new superstar yet. The first came in 1997, when he somehow beat out Michael Jordan to win the league's top individual award, but the numbers tell a different story:

Malone - 27.4 pts, 9.9 reb, 4.5 ast, 1.4 stl, .550 FG%, .755 FT%
Jordan - 29.6 pts, 5.9 reb, 4.3 ast, 1.7 stl, .486 FG%, .833 FT%

The two players each beat the other in 3 of these categories, which puts them pretty close to each other, but the Bulls won 5 more games than the Jazz that season, picking up 69 wins in all, tying the second-best record of all time, behind only their 72-10 record from the previous season, when Jordan took 109 out of 113 first-place votes for MVP.

Two years later, Malone was awarded his second MVP, but I feel that the voters weren't ready to hand the award to second-year player Tim Duncan, who had been nearly as good offensively and much better defensively than Malone, even with both teams finishing with identical records. I broke down the statistics on this one when I introduced Tim Duncan back at #9, if you want to look at it in more detail.

All of this would seem to drag Malone down a couple of spots, but there are also several very impressive aspects of Malone's career. Consider that he is one of only 2 players ever to average over 20 points per game for 17 straight seasons, along with Kareem, and he is also #2 all time in points scored, to Kareem as well. He never led the league in any major statistical category, but he was always among the league leaders in points and rebounds.

The fact that he played 19 seasons is pretty impressive in itself, and the fact that he made the playoffs in each of those seasons is more impressive still, but when you consider that he was not just playing, but playing at an All-Star level clear up to the end, that is something that sets him apart. He is the oldest player ever to record a triple-double, doing it at age 40 during his final season, and is also the oldest player ever to score 50 points, doing it at age 36 in a playoff game. He is also the oldest player ever to start for an NBA Finals team, holding the power forward position for the Los Angeles Lakers in his final season, the only time in his career he wasn't the best player on his team.

Malone's run as the league's #2 man almost as impressive. He first cracked the league's top 5 in 1988, when he was just 24 years old, and remained there until he was 36 years old in the year 2000. He was definitely the second-best player in the league for each of Michael Jordan's final three seasons with the Bulls, and seemed poised to take over as the top player when Tim Duncan strode in and dominated the 1999 season. Then, when Duncan was hurt near the end of the 2000 season, it seemed once again that an opening had been created for Malone, but Shaq stepped in to fill the void instead, and Malone lost his final chance to be the league's alpha dog.

In addition to him playing at a high level for so many years, he also rarely missed a game. Until his final season, he never missed more than 2 games in a single season, and nearly half the games he missed up to that point were due to suspensions. He was given the nickname "the Mailman" because he always delivered, and even though he may have missed a couple of deliveries in the Finals, can you really fault him for not being able to beat Michael Jordan at his peak? Malone played at a higher level for a longer period of time than any other player in the history of the NBA, and that's why he's the #4 player of all time.

Malone may not have won the championships that Kobe has, but he spent 17 seasons as one of the league's premier players, while Kobe has only played 15 total season to this point. Malone never had the mid-career lull that Kobe did, instead making it at least to the Conference Finals 5 times in 7 seasons during his prime years. While Kobe will most likely pass Malone at some point, for now Malone's longevity has given him the edge over Bryant.