For Lakers, No Mailing It In

Malone Embodied L.A.'s Turnaround Against the Spurs

LOS ANGELES, May 16 -- Lost in Lakermania, amid the madness of winning four straight games against the defending champions, another milestone from the Mailman: one hundred eighty-three playoff games for Karl Malone -- and counting.

Malone is not particularly proud of the record, because it expounds on his frustrating, 19-year journey through the NBA playoffs. He topped his partner in time on Saturday night, eclipsing John Stockton's record of playing 182 postseason games without winning a championship.

"I hope he's okay with it, but I don't think I'll call Stock to tell him," Malone said, half-smiling.

An hour had passed since Malone had put his 40-year-old bones on Tim Duncan, holding the most complete big man in pro basketball to 7-of-18 shooting in the deciding sixth game. Malone used his forearms, his rump and his grit the past week. He used everything he had left to ensure another 20-something did not raise the Lawrence O'Brien Trophy before Malone could at least daydream again.

When Duncan put the ball on the floor from Game 3 on in the series, Malone's massive right arm came down like a steel pallet dropped in a wrecking yard. Sometimes, he knocked the ball away. Sometimes he raked Duncan's forearms. Either way, San Antonio hurt.

"I wanted to keep Tim from averaging 30 points," he said. "That was my goal, along with making him work for everything he got.

"I went into the series not even thinking about scoring," the second-leading scorer in league history added.

The spectacle of watching the Lakers nearly collapse beneath their own drama last week was almost as riveting as watching them pick themselves up and beat a great team that had not lost since March. How Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal and their teammates flipped the switch and managed to advance to the Western Conference finals still has this town in disbelief. In a way, the Lakers discovered they loved the prospect of competing for another championship more than they loathed each other.

One big, very un-Brady family -- feuding for months until they decided to have each other's backs when it mattered.

Malone embodied their turnaround. When the Lakers were down 0-2 and were in a deep rut, he was the one who said he was stubborn enough to believe they could pull themselves out. "I just thought -- and I said this to everyone -- the stuff we went through all year, this is nothing," Malone said. "And when I say something, I mean it."

He convinced O'Neal to dedicate himself defensively, to actually guard that vaunted pick-and-roll that Tony Parker and Duncan were using to pick-and-roll the Lakers toward the offseason. O'Neal got motivated and started sliding his feet on the perimeter. Duncan and Parker could no longer work their two-man magic in a half-court offense.

Malone found some kind of poetic symmetry to this, because that was the play that defined his career -- one player helping another, setting a screen to free him up, to make life better for his team.

When Utah met Chicago in the 1997 and 1998 finals, it was essentially Pick-and-Roll State against Triangle U. Stockton and Malone would run the game's oldest play against the three-sided motion offense perfected by Phil Jackson's assistant, Tex Winter.

The story of the 1998 All-Star Game in New York was Bryant waving off Malone in the middle of the game when Malone tried to set a pick for him. Malone took it as a major slight, this 19-year-old uppity kid, letting the perennial all-star know he didn't need his help.