Describe Karl Malone's skillset and playing style

[Goudelock]

I've never actually seen a Karl Malone game outside of one Dantley game and a finals game that I watched on nBA TV a long time ago. So could one of the gentelmen of this forum give me a somewhat detailed write-up on what made him so great? It seems like all I see about him is what he didn't do (no rings).

[ronnymac2]

He posted up more back in his earlier days. He had more of a power post game where he'd usually head toward the paint and just draw fouls at will while getting a good shot up. Had a solid jumper, which improved as his career went on. Just a beast in transition and on the pick-n-roll. Had magnet hands and incredible timing and footwork.

At his supposed peak in 1997, he was using the jumper more often, which lead to being more secure with the ball despite taking on a greater passing and playmaking role. With his improved outside game, he could take the path of least resistance, which has its pros and cons. I actually think he may have been at his best around 1995. He was great 1997 though.

Defensively, he was always super strong for a PF and had ultra quick hands. When post players would make a move, he had the strength to bump them and keep them close, then strip them for the deflection or steal. He made all-defensive team like 10 years apart, and from my observations was a very good defensive player in between selections as well. Excellent defensive rebounder (comparable to Patrick Ewing IIRC) and was an effective pick-n-roll defender. He wasn't an anchor, but he could not be picked on defensively.

His playoff woes get overblown. Because his handles and offensive creativity weren't elite, his TS% could be knocked down if a playoff defense focused on him, but he could still get up elite USG% against strong defenses and not turn the ball over. Scoring volume + scoring efficiency is maybe 15% of the overall value of a star offensive player. What matters is your affects on how an offense functions, and Malone's game in my opinion was resilient in the playoffs for the most part, even if his TS% dipped a bit.

[Goudelock]

He posted up more back in his earlier days. He had more of a power post game where he'd usually head toward the paint and just draw fouls at will while getting a good shot up. Had a solid jumper, which improved as his career went on. Just a beast in transition and on the pick-n-roll. Had magnet hands and incredible timing and footwork.

At his supposed peak in 1997, he was using the jumper more often, which lead to being more secure with the ball despite taking on a greater passing and playmaking role. With his improved outside game, he could take the path of least resistance, which has its pros and cons. I actually think he may have been at his best around 1995. He was great 1997 though.

Defensively, he was always super strong for a PF and had ultra quick hands. When post players would make a move, he had the strength to bump them and keep them close, then strip them for the deflection or steal. He made all-defensive team like 10 years apart, and from my observations was a very good defensive player in between selections as well. Excellent defensive rebounder (comparable to Patrick Ewing IIRC) and was an effective pick-n-roll defender. He wasn't an anchor, but he could not be picked on defensively.

His playoff woes get overblown. Because his handles and offensive creativity weren't elite, his TS% could be knocked down if a playoff defense focused on him, but he could still get up elite USG% against strong defenses and not turn the ball over. Scoring volume + scoring efficiency is maybe 15% of the overall value of a star offensive player. What matters is your affects on how an offense functions, and Malone's game in my opinion was resilient in the playoffs for the most part, even if his TS% dipped a bit.

On offense, Malone sounds like god-tier Brandon Bass, as terrible of a comparison as that probably is.

[Dr Positivity]

Early Karl Malone scores most of his points at the basket. Him and Stockton are probably the all time pick and roll partnership with Malone excelling at rolling to the rim with his all time strength at PF, his explosiveness and overall willingness to be physical and dirty. He is a beast in transition and posts up enough to be nicknamed the Mailman. Later in his career Malone replaces some of his explosiveness and post play with becoming a deadly midrange shooter and pick and pop PF. He is a very good defender (not all time great), ends up with some underrated passing seasons. For modern player comparisons Blake is probably one of the closest for early Malone, while older Malone moves towards more of a rich man's Boozer type of player. Overall I see Malone as kind of the definition of a power forward, compared to how other players are a cross between a 4 and other positions, like how Duncan plays like a center and some others like Garnett and Dirk have unique guard skills for a big. A player is more like a power forward the more he plays like Karl Malone basically.

[Winsome Gerbil]

Pick and roll master in the halfcourt. As he got older that was increasingly pick and pop, and his little midrange pop jumper got more and more lethal. Relatively few straight posts compared to the P&R, but if you were afraid of contact had half hooks and a turnaround. Set tremendous, and occasionally dirty, picks. Largely groundbound, not a dunker in the halfcourt, nor a big offensive rebounder. One of the great running PFs too. Not quick, not a high flyer like Kemp, but huge and fast in a straight line, and dirty again. Famous for sprinting out and leading with his knee on his fastbreak finishes. If you dared try to take a charge on him he'd plant a 260lb knee in your chin and freight train you straight into the stands, so a lot of guys wussed out and wouldn't even try to make the play. Got a lot of big one handed power dunks on that break. Passing got better and better as his career went along, but wasn't a brilliant creater so much as a smart guy who knew the system inside and out and knew when guys were going to cut or pop for open jumpers and hit them in rhythm.

On defense he was immoveable. Wide base and power, all strength and elbows. Again not long and not a shotblocker, but would come flying over for one here and there. When guys tried to post him he had quick strong hands and a vicious downward spike/swipe with excellent timing when they turned. Picked up a lot of steals that way. Also of course was again famously physical and even dirty if you had pissed him off. Top defensive rebounder, and when he boxed you out you were boxed. If you were going to beat him you would do better with space, but if you tried to go by him you had to be ready for a big beefy forearm to the side of the head.

[tsherkin]

He posted up more back in his earlier days. He had more of a power post game where he'd usually head toward the paint and just draw fouls at will while getting a good shot up. Had a solid jumper, which improved as his career went on. Just a beast in transition and on the pick-n-roll. Had magnet hands and incredible timing and footwork.

Simplistic but bull-strong face-up game, don't forget. He was actually a pretty limited backdown guy, but like Dantley, he could face-up in the post and drive. So strong, you could bump and smash him and he'd just go up and dunk or lay it in anyway.

Excellent defensive rebounder (comparable to Patrick Ewing IIRC)

Career 23.5% DRB guy, 9 straight years at 24%+, 10 years in 11, too. He wasn't Dwight, but he was a very strong defensive rebounder, absolutely. In his 20s, he was an acceptable offensive rebounder as well. Nothing remarkable, but solid enough for a PF. Ewing was a better defensive rebounder from 28 onward, and that includes about 7 seasons of 2800+ minutes at Malone's peak DRB% or better.

His playoff woes get overblown.

No they don't. They were a major problem outside of 1992.

88-01, he was a 27.0 ppg scorer over 38.0 mpg on 52.6% FG over 18.6 FGA/g, 75.5% FT on 9.7 FTA/g (.520 FTr), 115 ORTG and 58.9% TS.

In the playoffs over that same stretch:

41.6 mpg, 27.0 ppg on 46.6% FG (21.0 FGA/g), 74.7% FT (9.9 FTA/g), 108 ORTG, 53.2% TS, .470 FTr.

That's a very significant drop in effectiveness as a scoring threat because he was far less effective at actually hitting shots. This is sort of similar to what happened to David Robinson. He had ten postseasons under 54% TS and 3 of them under 50%, with another at 50.5%. He routinely looked far, FAR worse in the playoffs than he did during the regular season.

he could still get up elite USG% against strong defenses and not turn the ball over.

This is less important. SOMEONE has to shoot, and if you can pop a jumper or get a pass from a guard, you can get off a shot... and if you can put up a shot, you don't get a turnover. Demar Derozan is able to produce a similar level of usage; it's nothing to write home about.

Scoring volume + scoring efficiency is maybe 15% of the overall value of a star offensive player. What matters is your affects on how an offense functions, and Malone's game in my opinion was resilient in the playoffs for the most part, even if his TS% dipped a bit.

I strongly debate your assignment of percentage value to scoring. The guy was the offensive focal point for the team, it's main single source of scoring and he was far worse during the postseason. That's a problem. "Resilient" is not an appropriate word for his playoff performances, which were anything but. When his jumper was on, he was good. When it wasn't, he was a major problem. He had regular issues performing at a league average level in terms of efficiency and was far worse than his regular season level: that's not at all in keeping with the meaning of that word.

Malone was useful, and he had some good playoff runs. It's also worth mentioning that even in some bad years, he had one good series and then a really terrible series, so it's not like he was stank all the time. Typically, he was hovering around or just below league average efficiency on high usage. That's... on a crap team, that's not the WORST thing in the world, it's just a cap on your ultimate efficacy. Playing alongside shooters and John Stockton, it's an indictment of your ability to score when the super-easy points are taken away against stronger defenses.

Malone was a super-skilled opportunity scorer. He moved very well without the ball, he was always ready for a pass and he was bull-strong. In the RS, on balance, he created well over the course of 82 games, and he was an iron man of epic proportions given minutes and games played. He had huge lift value to the Jazz in the RS. There is, however, a reason that they only exited the second round 5 times in the 18 seasons he played there, despite having the same core stars and plenty of opportunities... and noting that four of those opportunities happened from 93-94 onward, with Jeff Hornacek added to the team. The other time was in 92, when Malone showed up for the postseason like a boss. Might've been a Finals appearance if Stockton hadn't choked in G6 against the Blazers, who knows?

But on balance, Malone was not resilient or reliable in the playoffs. The Jazz went to him for scoring possessions often, and he produced at a level well below superstar level because of his various skill set limitations. Over reliance on the fadeaway as he got older, no 3pt range, limited isolation scoring tools, fairly simplistic back-down game... Malone's strengths were getting the pass on the roll, taking the J on the pop and beating everyone down the court in transition. Beyond that, he was an extremely simple player in terms of basic drives and strength moves. It worked a lot of the time in the RS because he could feast on average and weaker defenses, and when his J was on, you couldn't do much to stop him. But come time to face teams with a defensive plan, his upper bound was stopped with some consistency. Offensively, he had value beyond that because he knew how to play within Sloan's system and passed the ball well (especially as he got older), but the Jazz were a very clearly unipolar offense the majority of the time. Stale, predictable and reliant upon a guy who didn't scale well into the playoffs, they struggled as the level of competition increased, and with some consistency.

It's pretty telling that they didn't start having real success until they added more offensive firepower in Hornacek, and how immediately and consistently that changed the team's fortunes.

[Quotatious]

Ronnymac's and Winsome Gerbil's descriptions are pretty good. And 1 will suffice there.

I would like to add that people tend to focus on Malone's weaknesses, and what he didn't do well (which is not a lot, he was a pretty complete player in general), because he was relatively underwhelming in the playoffs, didn't win a title, and generally wasn't a likeable person or player due to some of his shameful off-court deeds and dirty plays on the court ("40 stitch lesson" on Isiah, and his elbow-throwing), instead of focusing on his strengths, but objectively, I think everybody should admit that he's one of the absolute greats in the history of the game - second leading scorer of all-time (and a very efficient scorer, at that), one of only three players to accumulate 25000 points, 10000 rebounds and 5000 assists (Kareem and KG are the other guys), incredible longevity and durability at all-star/superstar level, made All-NBA 1st team eleven years in a row, finished top 10 in MVP voting fourteen years in a row (including two MVPs and nine top 5 finishes in MVP voting), and on the top of that, he was the best player on twelve 50+ wins teams (actually eleven, but 1998-99 Jazz were on pace for 61 wins in the shortened 50-game season). I know that some people would say Stockton was more important to the Jazz, but IMO it was clearly Malone, he deservedly got more credit for their success in MVP voting every year. That's just a staggering resume of sustained elite level individual production combined with considerable team success (and even in the playoffs, the Jazz were very successful, even without a title).

I never liked Karl Malone, always rooted against him, he's one of my least favorite players, nobody was happier than me when the Jazz lost twice to the Bulls in the finals, but let's give credit where it's due - the guy was a phenomenal player. To be honest, I don't think I could have him out of the top 10 all-time if I was asked to make a list like that right now (and yes, I know he wasn't as good in the playoffs as he was in RS, but still, his overall resume is top 10 IMO, as blasphemous as that may sound to some people).

[Goudelock]

Thank you for all of the great responses. You guys are the best.

[drza]

ElGee has a new impact stat that he's started pubbing, WOWYR, that is essentially a regressed version of WOWY that allows for evaluation of players 1) without play-by-play data and 2) even if they haven't missed significant time. He's already published a post for how the players of the 50s - 70s measure in that stat, and I'm dying to see how the 80s and 90s stack up. And Karl Malone is one of the main players that I want to see.

Because I just don't have a great feel for how much Malone's style and production impacted his team's results. Guys in this thread have already done a great job describing his style, and Q did a good job summarizing his awesome counting box score stats. But my impression from most of Malone's career was that he was excellent, but not really the best, at all times. He had that run in the late 90s when he got better as an iso scorer and team offense facilitator when he scaled up his value in my mind, but I'd really love to see something quantitative about his impact level.

The on/off +/- scores I've seen from him in the mid-90s are great (3rd in '94, 15th in 95, I believe top-10 in 96) with values ranging from +13.4 in '96 up to 17.6 in '94. So that all looks good. And the RAPM scores from 98 - 2000 were also strong, a 3-year average good enough to rank in the mid-20s among all players between 1998 and 2012 in Doc MJ's spreadsheet. But again, I had no doubt that he was one of the best players in the league. I'm more curious as to whether he ever actually topped out the league, and/or how his impact might compare with the historical elite.

Said another way, I'm curious if his overall value in a given season more like prime Howard, Kobe or Duncan. That's 3 different impact levels, and seeing where he slots in will help me solidify where I have him in an all-time sense. We know about his incredible longevity. We also hear a lot about his playoff woes (be they real or overblown, I leave up to you). But being able to more accurately & quantitatively estimate his impact level will be huge, for me.

[KobesScarf]

Arguably the GOAT hands
Arguably the GOAT strength
Arguably the GOAT speed

+ a very skilled post scorer, post defender, and passer

[90sgoat]

Karl Malone had a great touch, elite touch for a big man and as good as many smaller players, and when you combine that with being the strongest player in the league, the fastest of your position, then you get a unique player. Imagine David West basically, but much stronger, faster, better touch with a better face up game. David West and Malone has a similar game, except Malone had signficantly more moves.

Watch on YouTube

Look at that sweet wet jumper, Lebron wishes he could do that. Look at the simplistic and effective drives to the basket from the post, Lebron too wishes he could do that.

Malone was just massively strong and big and could move and run with the best of them, able to run the fastbreak at great speed too.

Watch on YouTube

[Gibson22]

He was really good at playing basketball, far better than me or the best hoopers you personally know, and even than almost every professional player, but not better than michael jordan, who was extremely good at bball.

[JLei]

Left block post up. Catch, turn over left shoulder, barrel into middle of the lane, get fouled/ make layup/ short hook. If miss push people out of way for offensive rebound. This was most of his half court offense. (Watch any full game offensive highlight packages on youtube, you will see)
They front... reverse to right block, seal catch and finish.
Right block post ups mostly ended up with jumpers which he was very good at.

If he had a killer drop step instead of going middle every single damn time he would have averaged 35+ppg IMO. Hilarious how unstoppable he was even though everyone knew he was going middle and through 2-3 guys. Really good post passer when they try to shrink the middle though. Really good at hitting cutters but if he had a baseline drop step mannnnn.

Truck over everyone in fast breaks. Amazing at running the floor for a big. Might be the best ever at it.

If you are used to modern basketball. You'd be surprised at how little pick and roll Stockton and Malone actually ran. Malone was amazing a short rolling into space/ elbow area and then either taking an open jumper/ trucking into the middle of the lane for an easy 2.

Those 4 on 3 things that Draymond Green gets, Malone was very capable of doing the playmaking thing as well but mostly just trucked over people and got layups.

The game has changed a lot more than people think. Even the team that was known for pick and rolls didn't really run it anywhere as much as you think they did. So many post ups its crazy.

[90sgoat]

Good point JLei, Jazz was known for pick and roll, but it was still much less than the average modern team who run it every play.