karl-malone Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Who is Mr. Franchise for each NBA team in the 21st century?
Michael Jordan will always be synonymous with the Chicago Bulls. Same thing for Magic Johnson with the Los Angeles Lakers and Larry Bird with the Boston Celtics. But since the turn of the 21st Century, some teams have gone a decade without a face of the franchise (think the Detroit Pistons and Orlan...

The real problem with the Josh Giddey statutory rape allegations
When you continue to embrace a man who reportedly impregnated a 13-year-old when he was in college, and honor that same man regularly by inviting him to marquee league events (like the 2023 All-Star Game) alongside Kareem Abdul Jabbar and LeBron James, it makes it really hard to discipline a current...

These are the worst NBA player custom sneakers
An NBA player’s signature shoe is the ultimate signifier of their brand. These kicks reflect and refract the personality and power of those who wear them. Since Michael Jordan signed with Nike in 1984, the shoe skyrocketed from casual mediocrity into a phenomenon all its own. Almost every major bask...

Carmelo Anthony and the top retired NBA players never to win a ring
With Carmelo Anthony’s retirement announcement this week, we thought it’d be fun to look at some of the greatest retired NBA players to never win a ring. It’s a discussion that’s often had, and now Anthony is officially a club member. Besides never winning the ultimate prize, one other thing each of...

Every athlete accused of mistreating women is as expendable as punter Matt Araiza
I don’t want to offer a silver lining in the Matt Araiza case, because a woman was still allegedly gang raped, and the Punt God’s reported innocence doesn’t lessen the victim’s trauma. However, in the year that it took to conclude the legal matter, did anyone miss Araiza? As much as his leg cannon c...

When David beats Goliath in the playoffs
The Miami Heat became the NBA’s sixth No. 8 seed to topple their conference’s top seed in the playoffs after beating Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks....

DeMar DeRozan’s daughter drop-kicked basketball analytics
Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill said in Goodfellas that your killers “come with smiles.” The Toronto Raptors’ killer was a nine-year-old girl who surely arrived at Scotiabank Arena with a smile on her face, because her father allowed her to miss school. Once the game began though, Diar DeRozan was more rele...

IDIOT OF THE MONTH: A journey through the swamp that was Super Bowl February
Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, our world-renowned celebration of stupidity in and around the world of collegiate and professional sports. Now with 50 percent more slideshow to placate the bosses! The Industrial Revolution was a mistake!...

The NBA has a ratings problem — Exhibit A: The All-Star Game
There was a time during the midst of 2020 in which Adam Silver and the NBA owned the world. The combination of an amazing All-Star Game in Chicago with a new dramatic ending, the sad and tragic death of Kobe Bryant, and the league’s decision to shut things down — becoming the first warning that this...

‘Ambassador’ Karl Malone, bumbling Knicks, and more forgettable moments from All-Star Saturday Night
All-Star Saturday has always had cookout vibes, and McClung earned another invite for next year. But someone had to bring the unseasoned cole slaw. Karl Malone’s presence as an ambassador and a judge who got entirely too many nods from the NBA and the broadcast made things way too awkward. Malone — ...

The NBA asked us to watch basketball that made load management a priority
At least the NBA, unlike some of its sporting league counterparts, keeps its CBA negotiations mostly under wraps. They’re going on right now, as both owners and players have the option of opting out of the current agreement by March 31, which would end the deal on June 30. One of the things to leak ...

Donovan Mitchell finally said the quiet part out loud about being Black in Utah
Timing is everything. And on Dec. 19, 2022, it all came together....

Disastrous season for the Phoenix Mercury ended with Las Vegas dropping a piano on their heads
Mercury has been in retrograde all season long. At least that’s been the theme of the 2022 WNBA season. Shortly after getting bombarded by an WNBA record 23 3-pointers in a 37-point loss to the Las Vegas Aces, the Phoenix Mercury had to be breathing a sigh of relief. That record-breaking performance...

Corey Perry is the curse we’d all hoped he’d be
We, as fans, almost never get one over on the villains in our various sports. Of course, they’re out there, we’re up here, so the natural dynamic of the whole relationship is that we’re losers. That’s understood....

The death of the superteam (for now)
The Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors Finals was one of the more engaging championship fights of recent memory. The Celtics were on a Cinderella tear on their way to facing a retooled, post-Kevin Durant Warriors. Both teams had organically built the backbone of their roster through adept draf...

Message to Jazz: Trade Donovan Mitchell to the Knicks... and other fire-sale moves
Before the Utah Jazz even began their first-round playoff series against the Dallas Mavericks, there were significant questions about their chemistry, viability as a winner, and ceiling. It was no secret that their two superstars, Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, don’t care for one another. The ten...

Kevin Durant says Dirk Nowitzki is the best shooting big of all time, but it's actually Kevin Durant
I’m not surprised that Kevin Durant has a great deal of respect for Dirk Nowitzki’s game. Prior to Dirk becoming one of the best players in the league, all the basketball players who were bigger than most of the other basketball players were scoffed at for not playing with their back to the basket. ...

LeBron James passes Karl Malone in quest to becoming NBA’s scoring GOAT
LeBron James moved one step closer to the ultimate goal of becoming the NBA’s all-time leading scorer on Saturday night when he passed Karl Malone for second on the list. James posted point number 36,929 of his career in a 127-119 loss to the Wizards in Washington. He scored the basket on a layup in...

Pop goes the winner
When this season began, Ray Allen was the NBA’s all-time leader in three-pointers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had the record for combined regular season and playoff points, and Don Nelson was the winningest coach in league history....

If you thought John Stockton’s COVID opinions were wild this summer, wait till you see what he has to say now
Internet brain rot has claimed another public figure. John Stockton is so firm in his anti-vax and anti-mask stance that the college program he is the most famous face of, Gonzaga — a place he grew up blocks away from, where his father played football, a place from which he was No. 16 overall pick i...