Comedian Bill Burr appeared on the latest episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, and as you’d imagine, he had no filter, as always. At one point, Burr asked co-host Shaquille O’Neal an interesting question.
“That ever happen to you playing a game?” Burr asked. “You just went to some city you don’t give a f*** about. The people are just average-looking. You know you’re not going to get any good-looking groupies.”
O’Neal immediately named Utah and then brought up Milwaukee and Indiana. That led Burr to ask him if he had ever asked Karl Malone what he sees in Utah. O’Neal said he did it all the time, and Butt hilariously wondered if that was why Malone joined the Los Angeles Lakers.
“No, he likes that s***,” O’Neal said. “Karl used to call himself the first Black redneck, ’cause he liked that s*** I wasn’t used to, like hunting and fishing and all that s***.”
Malone, a country boy raised on a farm in Summerfield, Louisiana, felt right at home there. The Utah Jazz had selected him with the 13th pick in the 1985 NBA Draft, and he’d spend 18 seasons with the franchise.
Malone won two MVPs during his time with the Jazz and led the franchise to the NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998. Unfortunately for them, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls stood in their way. The Bulls beat the Jazz in six games in both of their Finals matchups to deny Malone that ring he had been chasing for so long. You’d think he wouldn’t have left in 2003 if he had won in 1997 or 1998.
With the Jazz entering rebuild mode and no championship to his name, Malone joined O’Neal and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers ahead of the 2003-04 season. It seemed almost inevitable they’d win it all, but they didn’t.
The Lakers made it to the 2004 NBA Finals, where the Detroit Pistons stunningly upset them in five games. That series would be the last time we saw Malone playing in the NBA. He became a free agent after the season and eventually retired in February 2005.
Malone finished his NBA career with averages of 25.0 points, 10.1 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.4 steals, and 0.8 blocks per game. He has gone down as one of the greatest players never to win a championship.
Retirement didn’t diminish Malone’s love for Utah. He dismissed all the racism allegations and made it clear he’d defend the state to the death. Malone called Utah home and claimed he had never heard a racial slur in all his time there. He isn’t the only one to have said that. Former Jazz star Deron Williams never witnessed anything of that sort, either. Quite a few who played for the team appear to have loved their time there.
