Was Karl Malone the most well-conditioned NBA player ever?

[Im Still Ballin]

It's hard to find someone who got more out of his body than Karl Malone. The only players who got comparable mileage were greats like Kareem, Parish, Dikembe, and LeBron.

Robert Parish used to do lots of stretching through martial arts training.



He has credited that energy to his off-court hobbies, including Tae Kwon Do, a martial arts discipline. “I did a lot of stretching and meditation and I think that’s the reason I played so long,” he told the Boston Herald. “The stretching and meditation did a lot to keep the body loose and relaxed. I had longevity, durability and dependability.” In fact, during all his years of play, Parish never once suffered a serious injury.


Malone's training regime was detailed in this article:


http://www.coachmarian.de/Spezials/Workouts/MaloneWorkoutSecrets.htm

http://www.coachmarian.de/Spezials/Workouts/Malone.jpg

All That Jazz
"NBA Star, Karl Malone,
Shares his Training Secrets"
By Erik Karl Fulkerson & Stan Granch
Photos Courtesy of NBA

4.8%... That’s the current body fat percent-age of the NBA’s twice elected MVP Karl Malone who stands 6’9" and weighs in at 256 lbs. "Karl Malone was not a Michael Jordan when he came into this league, he made himself a great player through hard work," says Utah Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan.

Indeed, as a rookie and 13th round draft pick by the Jazz he listed at 250 lbs with 10.5% body fat. Not bad, but both Karl and his coach agree, his commitment and dedication to fitness and weight training over the last 11 years has left him nothing less than awesomely chiseled and is the reason behind the now legendary improvement of his game.

http://www.coachmarian.de/Spezials/Workouts/karlgroup.jpg

In January of last year he became the third player in history to amass 30,000 career points joining Kareem A b d u l -Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain. And he just keeps on getting better and better. Karl had a rookie free throw percentage of 48. Compare that to the consistent 79% he maintains today. Malone currently ranks 4th in the NBA in Points Per Game (25.8); 6th in Field-Goal percentage (50.9); and 11th in Rebounding (9.6). Karl has been selected for the all-star team twelve consecutive times and recently was named one of the Fifty Greatest Players in NBA history.

http://www.coachmarian.de/Spezials/Workouts/run.jpg

Early in his NBA career he determined that success on the basketball court would be directly related to how hard he worked off it, and he became dedicated to weight training and fitness. Karl goes on to say "I was going to be good at whatever I did because I was going to put the time in, and the effort in, and I was going to make the sacrifices to be good." Malone says, "I think by lifting weights, you get power. I also think that you get focus, direction, discipline, and patience."

He likes to work in places where its hot, and no air conditioning is allowed during his workouts, he wants to sweat. "If I’m not sweating I don’t think I got a good workout," he said. Karl prefers free weights because he feels they give a better cut.

http://www.coachmarian.de/Spezials/Workouts/bungee.jpg

[Round Mound]

Probably

[Kawhi_Why_Not]

Physically well conditioned, yes.

Mentally conditioned, no. He knocks up 13 year olds and lost the ball to jordan in the final seconds of the 1998 finals. Also was a dead beat for most of his life.

[Pointguard]

After watching nearly every Golden State player fall apart after making five championship rounds my respect for Lebron increased tremendously. If you talk about from game to game, Malone's nemesis Rodman even had Jordan's respect.

[HylianNightmare]

It's between him and dirk

[coastalmarker99]

Of all his memories of Wilt Chamberlain, the one that stood out for Larry Brown happened long after Chamberlain's professional career was over.

On a summer day in the early 1980s at the Men's Gym on the UCLA campus, Chamberlain showed up to take part in one of the high-octane pickup games that the arena constantly attracted.

Brown was the coach of the Bruins back then, and Chamberlain often drove to UCLA from his home in Bel Air, Calif.


"Magic Johnson used to run the games," Brown recalled Tuesday after hearing that Chamberlain, his friend, had died at the age of 63, "and he called a couple of chintzy fouls and a goaltending on Wilt.


"So Wilt said: 'There will be no more layups in this gym,' and he blocked every shot after that.

That's the truth, I saw it. He didn't let one (of Johnson's) shots get to the rim."

Chamberlain would have been in his mid-40s at the time, a decade removed from one of the greatest careers any basketball player ever produced.

But the advancing years meant little to Chamberlain in terms of physical conditioning.

Into his 50s and his 60s, Chamberlain remained an incredible specimen -- a mountain of a man who was as coordinated and talented athletically as he was imposing physically.

The Cleveland Cavaliers called him in the early '80s and asked him if he'd still be interested in playing.

Five or six years later, when Chamberlain was 50, the New Jersey Nets had the same idea.


Neither of those potential comebacks ever came to pass, but the very idea of signing a player so old shows just how well Chamberlain kept himself in shape -- and how shocked people were when they heard he had died at only 63 years old.

[coastalmarker99]

An extremely conditioned and durable player, Chamberlain played every game in nine seasons and led the NBA in minutes per game nine times while averaging at least 44.5 minutes per contest in each of his first 12 seasons.


He’s the lone player to play more than 3,700 minutes in a season, which he did five times with his most PT coming in the 1961-62 season with 3,882 minutes (48.5 minutes per game).


Remarkably, he played all but two minutes that season with seven games going into overtime, including one triple OT contest.



Even more impressive was the fact that Wilt at age 33 tore his patella tendon in the 9th game of the 1969-1970 season.

And yet he still managed to make it back in time for the 1970 postseason in which he averaged 47.3 minutes per game over the course of 18 playoff games while playing on one good leg.

[baudkarma]

Hell, I don't know. Any time I read an article like this I wonder how much of it is true. Karl grants an interview and tells the reporter some stuff which may or may not be 100% true. Reporter writes a story and maybe embellishes it a little to make it more interesting. At the end of the day, who knows what parts are true, what parts are exaggerated, and what parts are complete fabrications.

[Axe]

He had intriguing potential but he wasn't competent enough to win a title. 2004 could have resulted into his first though if not for kobe being uncooperative during that time.