Off the court means more to Mailman

DRAPER — The memories were flowing and Karl Malone was speaking from his heart, his gut and any other part of his soul that made him a perennial NBA all-interview selection.

Quickly the years turned back.

Seemed like yesterday the Mailman was cracking heads on the court and entertaining the media off. Now, here it is, time for the Hall of Fame. Malone, who was in Salt Lake this week, will be inducted Aug. 13 in Springfield, Mass., joining Jerry Sloan and John Stockton, who were elected last year.

I asked how he wanted his career to be remembered.

"By the kind of person I was," he said. "At the end of the day, what was Karl Malone like? Not the athlete. You can debate that and do whatever you want to do. As a human being, in life, did he give more or did he take more? The basketball stuff, that ain't for me to decide ... but as a person, that's something I can control. What did I do for people."

On and off the court, Malone has done much. He made countless hospital visits, donated shirts and shoes to charities and started several of his own. When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, he not only sent his logging company into Mississippi for cleanup work, but went himself, sometimes even operating heavy equipment.

Before his mother passed away in 2003, she told him, "I have the feeling that one of these days you'll have an opportunity to influence someone's life and you don't even know it."

"Couple years later," said Malone, "Katrina came up."

Malone said an 18-year-old man approached him at Lagoon this week, and Malone noticed a scar on the youth's neck. The young man went on to say that as a child he needed a tracheotomy while at Primary Children's Medical Center, and Malone had visited him. The boy privately vowed if he ever again saw Malone, he wouldn't miss the chance to thank him.

That chance came Thursday.

"My kids were there," continued Malone. Then his voice caught as tears pooled in his eyes. "I don't always do right. I do more wrong probably than right; I know I do. But for that brief moment, for that kid to come up and say that, that's when I smile."

Malone paused.

"The Hall of Fame, you can dissect that and you can flip all that around, but what kind of person are we?"

Here's the kind of basketball person he was: He left as the second-leading scorer in history. He is also arguably the Jazz's greatest player, though he says in his mind it was Stockton.

Either way, it was no contest who was the most colorful. Malone entertained and occasionally incited. In hindsight, his occasional public uprisings were harmless, usually over hurt feelings regarding contracts, or the lack of effort by certain teammates.