Re: Karl Malone

[Mike Dynon <mdynon@ix.netcom.com>]

From: 
        The Sporting News <sports-mail@sportsmail.sportingnews.com>
     To: 
        "Dave D'Alessandro Mailing List"
<sportingnews-dalessandro-list-ns@sportsmail.sportingnews.com>

             Malone's lack of character
             is being exposed
             NOVEMBER 15, 1998 

              by DAVE D'ALESSANDRO  The Sporting News

A guy we know with entirely too much time on his hands
spent a day recently monitoring Karl Malone's daily
yakfest on LA radio. Mindful that he was an earwitness to
broadcasting history -- and realizing that this stuff would
probably make Yogi Berra cringe -- our friend came up
with this Best of Mailman collection: 

On Jesse Ventura: "What an awesome thing it was for
'The Body' to win governor of Minnesota. That just goes to show you that
wrasslin' is a truly great profession." 

On whether he is interested in running for office: "I used to say no,
but they can't dig no more skeletons out of my closet, so what the
hell." 

On another garrulous power forward: "Say what you will about Charles
Barkley, when he tells you something, he either do it or he don't do
it." 

On his kids being the children of a famous athlete: "I hope they never
know who they are." 

On the lockout: "Either we having a season or we're not, and that's my
statement to the fans . . . That's Karl Malone's take and that's my
take." 

His way of ending a stale conversation: "We don't want to beat a dead
horse to death." 

Naturally, listeners with any sense would beg for him to beat them to
death after a few hours of this, unless they were already successful in
surgically removing their own ears with a meat axe or whatever else was
handy. For his part, Radio Mailman concluded that since he was
performing such a splendid public service, he deserved a paycheck from a
Salt Lake City station for simulcasting his show; the station,
recognizing it for the lunatic gibberish that it was, reminded him they
only put it on in Salt Lake as a favor to him in the first place, and
then thanked him for giving them a reason to toss it into the trash heap
of broadcast history. 

This was last Monday. A day later, he went on a self-serving harangue
about how the Salt Lake station's decision was typical of folks in Utah,
where he maintains he has been exploited throughout his 13 years there.
Finally, on Wednesday, he finally mustered the courage to say what was
really on his mind:

"I'm tired of the posturing and jabbering back and forth," he said,
though what was going back and forth wasn't exactly clear. "I will go
out on a limb and say, when the lockout is over with, I will make a
demand to be traded." 

Of course, people all over Salt Lake are pulling abdominal muscles
laughing at this, mostly because they have come to accept Karl as
someone who is usually influenced most by the last person he talked to,
and they know that this disgruntled postal worker can be talked out of
anything as soon as Dwight Manley leaves the room for a bathroom break. 

Manley, as you know, is Malone's new svengali, an agent who has
convinced Malone that he can no longer trust his own instincts if he
were to ever sit across a table from Utah owner Larry Miller again.
Maybe he's right, because most encounters with Miller result in Mailman
getting all weepy, as he has often regarded Miller as a father. 

But Manley's gotten him to sever the ties that bind, while filling his
head with the same derisive poison that he feeds his other clients. He's
convinced Malone that he's never received the respect that he deserves
(idle question: Why do we hear that rubbish so often nowadays from
people making $6 million per year?) despite the fact that every Utahn
places Mailman about 10 pedestals above John Stockton, the Mormon
prophet, Donny, Marie, or anyone else within 1,000 miles of the place.
Put simply, Manley has helped turn a brilliant performer and an
exemplary citizen into a self-centered yutz. 

Can this really be only about money? Can it really be a lingering
bitterness over Greg Ostertag's contract? If so, Malone is worse than we
thought: Now he's a hypocrite. It was only last spring that he told
everyone how he "loves" the underachieving, overpaid center "like a
brother." If that were the case, he'd be happy the kid got what he could
get. And damn grateful that his brother raised Miller's wage scale ever
higher, setting the bar for his own free agent bonanza next summer. 

Instead, Malone has decided to show us he's not the unique specimen
everyone had regarded him as. The people in Salt Lake were naïve enough
to think he was somehow different -- immature in many ways, sure -- but
always a man of supreme character and loyalty, with an avowed commitment
to team and community and all that rot. So much for that. 

Salt Lake City, an absolutely joyous place to watch a game, is only the
most recent in an endless series of NBA cities to make this mistake, and
it will become more jaded for the experience. We mourn its loss of
innocence. But at least its radio programming figures to improve.