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If Karl Malone at his peak were dropped into today's NBA, where would he rank?

Assume Malone was dropped into the league during training camp and now has had most of the season to acclimate.

AT peak, he's roughly Giannis level with shakier playoff numbers so let's say 5th. His ironman abilities would stick out a LOT more today.

At average prime, he's in that next group of stars but not MVPs.

penbeast0 wrote:AT peak, he's roughly Giannis level with shakier playoff numbers so let's say 5th. His ironman abilities would stick out a LOT more today.

Worse on defense because of the gap in help D, worse at individual creation. Hella available and durable. 97 RS Malone was a pretty nasty combination of passing from a roll man, pop threat and post threat, though. With better spacing, and if you want to get fancy, maybe a 34% 3ball, he'd be pretty nasty during the RS. Considerably less reliable in the playoffs. Massive drop-off, and not just in the 97 Finals. RS 88-98, he was a 27.6 / 10.9 / 3.5 guy on 53.1 / 27.9 / 74.6 (9.9 FTA/g) guy, at 59.1% TS (.519 FTr).

PS, he was a 27.4 / 11.5 / 3.0 guy on 46.8 / 10.3 / 73.8 (10.2 FTA/g), at 53.4% TS (still .483 FTr).

It's that David Robinson-like drop from 53.4% to 47.2% inside the arc which really destabilizes his value. Still quite capable of drawing fouls, still passing pretty well, still only a 10.0% TOV guy despite 31.6% USG. Still a solid rebounder. But just couldn't make shots. He relied more and more on his turnaround and his middie and that just wasn't super reliable against better defenses in the playoffs, which was a big issue.

Anyway, all that to say, couldn't put him top-3. But certainly top-5 in that prime decade form. Mailman was pretty excellent, he just needed any kind of real perimeter scoring help and he would have had a title or two. Kind of like Robinson, actually. We think of Stockton a lot, but he basically refused to shoot and his best running mates after that were like Jeff Malone, Thurl Bailey or Jeff Hornacek. He never had a Penny/Kobe/Wade like Shaq did, and while he wasn't as good a defender as Duncan, he never had a Parker/Manu combo like Duncan was enjoying 2005-2014 (let alone Kawhi). Utah squeezed every last drop of value out of him and the Stockton/Malone PnR, but they didn't have the scoring juice to get over the hump.

Younger Malone was a nasty power-post player, too. Brutally strong.

he'd be banned from the NBA

giordunk wrote:he'd be banned from the NBA

Like Trump would be in prison? I don't think you can make that inference.

Mailman would be in the 7-13 range, roughly where peak Kobe would be today.

I think he’d rank similarly to Giannis. Giannis has shown higher peaks in the playoffs, but Malone is *much* more reliably durable, so you’d probably prefer having peak Malone on your team than Giannis, even though Giannis is capable of being better.

lessthanjake wrote:I think he’d rank similarly to Giannis. Giannis has shown higher peaks in the playoffs, but Malone is *much* more reliably durable, so you’d probably prefer having peak Malone on your team than Giannis, even though Giannis is capable of being better.

Not sure everyone agrees, even without player differentiation. If player A gives you +10% chance of a championship than player B but Player B is 10% more likely to be healthy during the playoffs, I would guess a lot, possibly most, people prefer player A. Whether they are maximizing outcomes or not is another question.

Probably around 3rd

penbeast0 wrote:

lessthanjake wrote:I think he’d rank similarly to Giannis. Giannis has shown higher peaks in the playoffs, but Malone is *much* more reliably durable, so you’d probably prefer having peak Malone on your team than Giannis, even though Giannis is capable of being better.

Not sure everyone agrees, even without player differentiation. If player A gives you +10% chance of a championship than player B but Player B is 10% more likely to be healthy during the playoffs, I would guess a lot, possibly most, people prefer player A. Whether they are maximizing outcomes or not is another question.

Yeah, that’s definitely true. At a certain point, someone is enough better than another guy that you’d rather take him even if he’s generally less healthy. With Giannis and Malone though, I tend to think that this equation ends up weighing in Malone’s favor. Malone had plenty of playoff struggles, but Giannis has struggled a good bit in the playoffs at times too. And the injury difference is really significant, with Malone being a noted iron man and Giannis having missed all or some of the playoffs in 4 of the last 5 years. The question basically comes down to whether you want Giannis because he may give you a 2021 Finals performance at some point, or do you want the guy who might not give you that performance but will always be available. To me, that weighs in favor of Malone.

I can see going the other way—particularly if one believes that Malone simply will never play well enough in the playoffs to win you a title, while Giannis actually might. I just don’t really think that’s the case, though. It’s true that Malone never won a title, but he went to the Finals twice and had pretty close series both times against one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history. And that late 90’s Jazz team had the highest three-year playoff opponent-relative net rating of any team in history that didn’t win a title in that three-year span. So basically, I think Malone was capable of leading a team to perform very well in the playoffs, and it just didn’t result in a title because he was facing a particularly difficult Finals opponent both times.

I would rank him no lower than 13.