The Book of Basketball (85 page)

If he had said that last February, I would have snickered. This year? I nodded.

February 2009.
I figured out LeBron’s ceiling. At least for right now. At age twenty-four, he’s a cross between ABA Doc (unstoppable in the open court, breathtaking in traffic, can galvanize teammates and crowds with one “wow” play, handles himself gracefully on and off the court) and 1992 Scottie Pippen (the freaky athletic ability on both ends, especially when he’s cutting pass lines or flying in from the weak side for a block), with a little MJ (his overcompetitiveness and “there’s no way we’re losing this game” gear), Magic (the unselfishness, which isn’t where I thought it would be back in 2003, but at least it’s there a little) and Bo (how he occasionally overpowers opponents in ways that doesn’t seem fully human) mixed in … only if that Molotov NBA superstar cocktail was mixed together
in Karl Malone’s 275-pound body. This is crazy. This is insane. This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. And to think, LeBron doesn’t even have a reliable 20-footer or any semblance of a post-up game yet. See, this is only going to get
better.
And it’s already historic.

As a Celtics fan, I shudder for the future. As an NBA fan, I am pinching myself.
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April 2009.
Not since Magic has a superstar doubled as such a galvanizing teammate. If there’s an enduring image of the ’09 season, it’s the way LeBron stamped his personality on everyone around him. They orchestrate goofy pregame intros (my favorite: the team snapshot), trade countless chest bumps, giggle on the sidelines, hang out on road trips and support each other in every way. What’s telling about LeBron’s in-traffic dunks—and he unleashes them more frequently than anyone since Dominique—is how he seeks out his bench for feedback, and even better, how they give it to him. It makes the forced camaraderie of the Lakers seem glaring. If you want to watch a team that pulls for each other and follows the lead of its best player, watch Cleveland.

And if you’re a Cavs fan trying to talk yourself into LeBron staying after 2010, your best chance is this: through twenty-four years, LeBron has proven to be an inordinately devoted guy. When you’re with him, you’re
with him.
The upcoming documentary about his high school years bangs this point home. So does the fact that he jettisoned his agents and surrounded himself with high school buddies. So does everything that happened this season. He’s as good a teammate as a player. The more I watch him, the more I wonder if such an intensely loyal guy would ever say, “Thanks for the memories, everybody,” dump his teammates, dump his hometown and start a fresh life elsewhere. Although he isn’t surrounded by the most talented players right now, collectively it’s a team in the truest sense, with a devoted set of fans who appreciate them, and maybe that’s all LeBron James will need in the end. I thought he was a goner four months ago. I think he’s staying now. Regardless, he’s our Most Valuable Player for 2009. It won’t be the last time.

19. CHARLES BARKLEY

Resume: 16 years, 12 quality, 11 All-Stars … ’93 MVP … ’90 runner-up … Top 5 (’88, ’89, ’90, ’91, ’93), Top 10 (’86, ’87, ’92, ’94, ’95), Top 15 (’96) … season leader: rebounds (1x) … 3-year peak: 26–13–4 … best player on runner-up (’93 Suns), 27–14–4 (24 G) … ’90 Playoffs: 25–16–4 (10 G) … ’94 Playoffs: 28–13–5 (10 G) … member of ’92 Dream Team … career: 22.1 PPG, 11.7 RPG (20
th
), 54% FG … Playoffs: 23.0 PPG, 12.9 RPG, 51.3 FG (123 G) … 20K-10K Club

18. KARL MALONE

Resume: 19 years, 17 quality, 14 All-Stars … MVP: ’97, ’99 … ’98 runner-up … Top 5 (’89, ’90, ’91, ’92, ’93, ’94, ’95, ’96, ’97, ’98, ’99), Top 10 (’88, ’00), Top 15 (’01) … All-Defense (3x) … 2 All-Star MVP’s … 3-year peak: 30–11–2 … career: 25–10, 52% FG, 74% FT … Playoffs: 25–10, 46% FG (193 G) … best player on 2 runner-ups (’97, ’98 Jazz) … member of ’92 Dream Team … career: FTs and FTAs (1st); points (2nd); rebounds (6th); games (4th); minutes (2nd), 25.0 PPG (10th), 10.1 RPG (12th), 52% FG … 35K-14K Club (one of two members)

Put it this way: You’d think less of me if I
didn’t
do a Dr. Jack Breakdown of Barkley and Malone, right? We can’t have that. Without further ado …

Nickname.
Charles went by “The Round Mound of Rebound,” “Sir Charles,” “Chuck Wagon” … he had nearly as many nicknames as Apollo Creed. None of them stuck. For some reason, it feels like “Chuck” (the name everyone endearingly calls him now) counts as a nickname, but that’s really just a proper name. Meanwhile, Malone had “the Mailman,” a clever alias which took on a second life in the ’97 and ’98 playoffs when shit-stirring columnists like myself started calling him “Mail Fraud.”
Edge: Malone.

Durability.
Barkley missed 121 games from ’91 to ’99 and only played six 79-plus game seasons. Malone had ten 82-game seasons and seven 90-plus
game seasons (including playoffs) and missed 10 games total in his eighteen Utah seasons. Guess which guy was the workout fanatic and which guy consumed fried foods, drank tons of beer and bled gravy.
Edge: Malone.

Bad luck.
Barkley made the Eastern Finals as a rookie before Toney’s feet crumbled, Doc started fading and Moses’ rear end expanded. Still, Philly didn’t have to completely panic—they screwed Chuck by trading the number one pick in the ’86 draft for Roy Hinson and $750,000 (why not just take Brad Daugherty?), then dealing Moses for Jeff Ruland and Clifford Robinson in one of the five worst trades of the eighties that didn’t involve Ted Stepien. That meant poor Chuck had to carry a series of uninspiring Philly teams before cannibalizing them and forcing the Phoenix trade. Barkley had good teammates for the remainder of his career, but he was thirty by that time and his cholesterol level was already at 522. As for Malone, his buddy Stockton took care of him for nearly two full decades and gave him a wingman for roughly 700,000 high screens. Something tells me Barkley would love to go back in time to 1984 and switch places with him.
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Edge: Barkley.

Draft-day outfit.
Barkley wore a double-breasted maroonish purple sportscoat with a matching tie that made him look like an eighties movie usher or a security guard at a casino that’s going out of business. Malone wore a silver-blue sports coat with a blue shirt, cream-colored pants and a pink tie that only went down to his navel. I’ll put it this way: Barkley’s outfit was funny, but Malone’s outfit makes me laugh out loud even twenty-four years later. No contest.
Edge: Malone.
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Ability to finish in transition.
Everyone was afraid to take a charge from Malone, a brilliant finisher who was built like a defensive end and always
led with his right knee (with the message being “This is going right into your nuts if you stand in front of me”). But you know what? He couldn’t top Barkley in those early Philly years, when Chuck was a frightening blend of power and finesse and even
he
couldn’t figure out how to harness it. He ate up Bird’s best teams because they lacked athletes who could handle him in transition, especially when he grabbed a rebound and took off on one of those rollicking full-court forays that usually ended up with him throwing a two-handed tomahawk in DJ’s mug as the Spectrum erupted. That’s his legacy, at least for me. Wake me up when we see someone under six-foot-five do a better impression of a runaway train. Nobody ever caused more players to cower for their lives than Barkley; if they kept stats for something this dumb, I’d bet anything that nobody tried to take a charge from Chuck from 1984 through 1991. It never happened. The guy was a force of nature.
Edge: Barkley.

Most distinct strength.
Moses was the best offensive rebounder of my lifetime; Barkley was second.
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From ’87 through ’90, Chuck averaged nearly
five
offensive rebounds a game. He grabbed 510 offensive rebounds in 123 playoff games. He holds the NBA record for most offensive rebounds in a half (13) and quarter (11). Did I mention that the guy was six-foot-four-and-a-half? When will we ever see anything like that again? As for Mal-one, he mastered the screener’s role in the high screen better than anyone ever. How much of that success hinged on the familiarity of playing with Stockton? A shitload. But that became one of the deadlier plays in NBA history … you know, as long as it wasn’t happening with 2 minutes left in a huge game.
Edge: Malone.

Defining game.
For Barkley, it has to be the 56-point ass-kicking against G-State in the ’94 Playoffs right after C-Webb’s shoe commercial came out and included a clip of Webber dunking on Barkley. That’s one of my ten favorite “Hardwood Classics” games and an all-around evisceration
of epic proportions. For Malone, unfortunately, it’s Game 1 of the ’97 Finals—right after he had been handed the MVP Award, when he choked on two go-ahead free throws in the last 20 seconds and Jordan drained the game-winner. We never took the Mailman seriously as an MVP again. At least I didn’t.
Edge: Barkley.

Defining record.
Either “15 field goals in one playoff half” or “most points scored within 90 minutes of finishing off 100 chicken wings at the Ground Round” for Barkley. I can’t decide. For Malone, it’s definitely his “most 2,000-point seasons (twelve)” record, which LeBron will be breaking in 2017.
Edge: Malone.

Defining tough-guy story.
Malone avenged Isiah’s 44-point killing of Stockton with a vicious elbow that busted open Isiah’s eyebrow and would have earned a thirty-five-game suspension had it happened today.
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Barkley didn’t just start a fight with Shaq (not a misprint), he fought the ’90 Pistons in a brawl that spilled into the first two row of the stands in Detroit and became the spiritual godfather of the Artest melee (with Chuck even taking a swing at a fan). If you got into a brawl, you wanted either guy on your side … but Chuck had a higher upside.
Edge: Barkley.

Unintentional comedy.
For whatever reason, both guys were wildly fun to imitate. My old boss Kimmel could spend fifteen solid minutes talking like Malone; all you do is deepen your voice, refer to yourself in the third person, talk in abrupt sentences in the present tense, add a slight southern accent and use a lot of double negatives.
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For Barkley, just make him sound like Muhammad Ali circa 1973 after about four drinks, then have him repeat himself over and over again and start sentences with prepositions like “First of all …” and “Number one …” Frankly, I can’t decide. So
I left it up to Kimmel. His take? “Karl Malone love making up jokes. Karl Malone always say, ‘laughter is the best Mexican.’” Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Edge: Malone.

Defensive prowess.
Malone got better as the years passed and started making All-Defense teams
after
the midway point of his career, even reinventing himself as a grizzled defense/picks/rebounding guy for the ’04 Lakers: he did a fabulous job defending Tim Duncan in Round 2, holding him to just 17.5 points and 38 percent shooting in the last four games (all Laker wins). Then he injured a knee in the Minnesota series and crushed L.A.’s hopes for a title. Too bad. As for the shorter Barkley, his low-post defense ranged from consistently bad to legitimately atrocious, although he tallied a decent share of steals, blocks and momentum-swinging fast-break blocks. Barkley’s kryptonite was any tall power forward with a polished low-post game (the McHale/Duncan types). That’s when he moved into “crap, I’m just going to have to outscore you” mode.
Big edge: Malone.

Acuity for handling male pattern baldness.
Barkley shrewdly shaved his head; Malone kept going and going and going with the Ed Harris look, finally shaving his head during the late nineties (but not before doing some Rogaine ads first).
Edge: Barkley.

Peak year.
We’re using that MVP season for Malone even though I’ve been pissing on it throughout the book: 64 wins, 27.4 points, 9.9 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 55% shooting and first-team All-D is nothing to sneeze at (even in a diluted league). For Barkley, we’re going with that secretly incredible ’90 season when he tossed up a 25–12–4 on an uninspiring Philly team and dragged them to a division title,
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shooting an ungodly 60 percent from the field even though he stupidly hoisted up 92 threes (making 20 of them). Do you realize that Barkley made 686 of 1,085 two-pointers that year? That’s 64 percent! During one of the most competitive seasons in the history of the league! And he wasn’t even six-foot-five!
Edge: Barkley.

Crunch-time abilities.
They both had fatal flaws: Malone routinely and famously shrank from the moment; Barkley thought he was better than he was. Always better off playing Tony Almeida than Jack Bauer, Chuck measured himself by Jordan and wanted to dominate close games just like MJ did … and that’s what usually ended up killing his teams in the end. Even if those 56-point Golden State explosions rarely happened, Chuck carried himself in crunch time like he had dozens of them bursting out of his pockets. Watch some of those playoff contests from ’93 to ’95: had Chuck shared the ball in crunch time instead of firing up dumb threes, trying to run fast breaks and doing the “I’m getting the ball, backing in and stopping our offense for 6 seconds while I decide what to do” routine, the Suns would have captured the title at least once. But he couldn’t do it. He always wanted to be The Man even though he wasn’t totally that player. And that’s why he doesn’t have a ring. I actually think you’d have a better chance of winning a hypothetical ring with Malone than Barkley—like Garnett, Malone always secretly knew his place. Barkley didn’t.
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Edge: even.