The 50 greatest players in NBA history, ranked by win shares
By Cal Durrett
Greatest NBA Player #4: Karl Malone-234.63
Few players can say that they had the longevity of Utah Jazz great Karl Malone. Malone played 19 seasons and seldom missed a game while also putting up big numbers. That allowed him to amass more than 36,000 points and rack up the fourth-most win shares in NBA history. Malone certainly contributed a lot to winning while playing with Stockton and the Jazz, but to many fans, he isn’t a top-five player.
Of course, he didn’t win a championship, and while he did have the misfortune of playing during the Jordan era, he also struggled in the postseason. During the regular season, Malone averaged a stellar 25.1 points per game over 1476 games with an equally stellar .577 true shooting percentage. In the postseason, that dropped to 24.6 points on .526 true shooting percentage.
Win shares aren’t a postseason stat, however, though his durability does perhaps inflate an already impressive resume. After all, not many would argue that he’s better than Duncan, Dirk, or Garnett, but based on this stat, he is by a wide margin. That likely makes Malone the biggest outlier on this list thus far.