One thing Malone had in the end that was the same as what he had in the beginning, however, was a tolerance for pain. In all but a few instances, he would hide an injury before he even gave thought to missing a game.

The date is a blur in Jazz owner Miller's mind. The memory, however, is anything but.

"One night, in the first quarter against Portland, he sprained his ankle and came out of the game. I think it was midway in the first quarter. He only had four points, I believe, and two rebounds," Miller recalls. "He came into the locker room, and they had untaped him. And his ankle was swollen up to about the size of his calf. And I looked at him, and I couldn't believe it."

A short time later, Miller was in the locker room listening to Sloan's halftime speech.

"The next thing I knew, Karl was going out on the court. . . . He could hardly walk. But he got on the court, he wouldn't let anybody know that he was hurt," Miller said. "That night, he wound up with 24 points and 16 rebounds. I think the whole team was shocked that he was even out there."

Deseret Morning News graphic Malone career highlights Requires Adobe Acrobat.

The Jazz owner deems such play — and there are many others quite similar — one of Malone's legacies.

"When he answered the bell in that kind of condition, and played the way he did, I think the rest of the team felt they had to come to the party, too," Miller said. "That's what he did. He led, he inspired players by the way he played every night."

He still does, to some — perhaps fading? — degree.

"I'm still talking with my friends about what Karl and John did," said Andrei Kirilenko, the Jazz's current 25-year-old star from Russia whose first two NBA seasons were spent as a teammate of Malone's and Stockton's during their last two in Utah. "They are legends. Same as Coach Sloan. You know, everybody grew up here watching Stockton-to-Malone playing.