Karl Malone doesn’t think that Michael Jordan deserves to be on the NBA’s all-time starting five, despite the Bulls’ legend being the near unanimous pick for most people’s greatest player of all-time.
Karl Malone leaves Michael Jordan off his all-time starting five
When it comes to naming the all-time greats as a starting five, the Mailman mysteriously feels that Michael Jordan doesn’t make the cut.
Dennis Wierzbicki-US PRESSWIRE
The Mailman joined "The Dan Patrick Show" on Tuesday to talk all things NBA when the topic of who to start an all-time greatest team with came up. Malone, who notably played in Jordan's shadow for the majority of his career, curiously named Oscar Robertson, John Stockton, LeBron James, Scottie Pippen and Bill Russell as his go-to squad while leaving No. 23 off of it.
The strangest part of his argument is that he named another member of the famous Chicago Bulls' teams from the '80s and '90s not named Michael Jordan. He went on to say that his reasoning for naming Pippen as opposed to Jordan was that the former was putting up team-highs in nearly every category before Jordan arrived.
It’s flawed logic at best, because Jordan led the team in those same statistics when both were the best two players in red and black for a number of years.
But more than that, there has to be some animosity on the part of Malone for Jordan being almost single-handedly responsible for leaving his career devoid of an NBA title. The Bulls defeated Malone’s Jazz in consecutive NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998.
That has to sting to this day, and as evidenced by his ludicrous slight, it clearly does.
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