Karl Malone Kicks Tim Duncan In The Face as he lived to see another day
Tim Duncan is probably the least dirty player to come out of the ’90s, even after taking a severe beating at the hands of veterans at the time.
As many buckets as The Mailman used to deliver throughout his tremendously long NBA career, the 6ft 9″, 260lb of pure muscle delivered plenty of elbows, bruises and stitches too.
Although it wasn’t as wild as the ’60s and ’70s, the ’80s and ’90s had some of the dirtiest gaming crews of all time.
Malone’s Jazz in the West were not far behind the Bad Boy Pistons in the East. With bodies flying and strewn all over the pitch, the team’s cleanup officials and medics always had plenty to do, especially when those two teams were on the pitch.
No matter how good they were on the court, no superstar in the past was spared from being mistreated in every other game. And if it came to budding rookies on the receiving end, there was no escape at all. Tim Duncan learned that the hard way.
Karl Malone once tried to kick the living soul of a rookie Tim Duncan
When Duncan entered the league in 1997, he had all-time great competition from Day 1. Horace Grant, Charles Barkley and Malone were some of the best power forwards in the game at the time and none of them played as clean as most players.
in that era
Whether past their prime or on the verge of it, everyone saw that Duncan and Kevin Garnett had the potential to be as good as them or even better. But obviously, none of them wanted to lose any battle against the juniors.
In one such battle in the 1998 playoffs, the 6-foot-11 Duncan took on Malone, who was thirsty for a title and didn’t see the Spurs as much of a threat as he faced them in the Conference Semifinals. West.
Jazz also led the series 3-1, but Timmy was putting up more dominant numbers than Karl and The Mailman wasn’t going to entertain him.
He made the 22-year-old taste a bit of dirt by kicking him in the face with almost no attempt to do anything other than that.
It’s brutal! He would have received a long suspension if it was today. Interestingly, he didn’t get any suspension like he did in one game when he elbowed Spurs big man David Robinson in the face and sent him to the hospital earlier in the season.
