Karl Malone, Kyrie Irving, and Abuse in Sports

Introduction

While All-Star Weekend was a decent showing from the NBA, the thing that troubled me the most about the weekend was the honoring of and presence of former NBA Star Karl Malone. Most people know Karl Malone for being one of, if not the greatest player to never win a ring, but a majority of people do not know about his troubling off the court conduct. Today, we are going to dive into what exactly he did, the harmful handling of said conduct within sports, and the hypocrisy from the NBA.

Karl Malone’s Troubling Past

Out of any professional NBA player, you could make the argument that Karl Malone was one of the most consistent, dominant, and skilled players to play the game. Although he did not get a ring in Utah thanks to Michael Jordan, he would go down as the greatest Jazz player in NBA history, and also would manage to become 2nd (at the time he was playing) on the NBA All-Time Scoring List. In his final season, Malone did join a superteam in Los Angeles consisting of Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, and Gary Payton, but that team failed due to beef between him and Kobe Bryant. I want you to remember the last part of that sentence, because later on it helps explain my overall issue with Karl Malone. Dominance in the league aside, today we are going to discuss Malone’s abhorrent off the court behavior. I will not get into the explicit details of his acts due to the sensitive and triggering nature of them, but I will do my best to give you a clear picture of what he exactly did. Two years before Karl Malone was drafted (early 1983), Karl Malone assaulted a minor (he was 19 and she was 12 to be exact), and this young girl ended up getting pregnant and having a child. The girl’s parents were aware of the situation, and decided not to go public with this horrible event because they believed that Karl would pay for child support, but that took years for Karl to actually do, since he fought the family in court to not pay for child support. This was also after a maternity test that proved Karl was the father, but Karl was still fairly distant with the family. Obviously this makes sense seeing that Karl’s career could be over if the news went public, but the least he could do is support the child, his biological child, financially and later on in life make some sort of attempt to be a father. The tragic part is, when Malone’s son, former NFL player Demetress Bell, reached out to Karl when he was 17 years old, Malone said something on the lines of “at this point, it’s too late for me to be a father to you.” To be fair, Malone and Bell are apparently on good terms now, but still, the mere fact that he said that was distasteful to say the least. My issue now however is not just with Karl Malone, but with the NBA in general. This past Sunday, Karl Malone was honored at the NBA Legends Brunch with the “Legend of the Year” Award. The NBA’s complete avoidance and silence regarding Malone being an assaulter (at best case Malone committed statutory rape) is troubling to say the least, and is especially questionable seeing how the NBA recently has dealt with “contreversial” players.

Enter Kyrie Irving

Kyrie Irving has been one of the most polarizing players in recent NBA history. He is public enemy #1 to the Boston Celtics fandom due to not upholding his promise to resign next summer, he hurt LeBron James’s feelings in how he departed from Cleveland (this is not satirical or an attempt to mock LeBron for the record), left Brooklyn right under the nose of Kevin Durant, and was one of the few superstars in the league to sit out multiple months due to not taking the COVID-19 Vaccine that was mandatory to play in Brooklyn. More recently however, Kyrie was in the headlines for posting a link on his instagram story to a film that contained hate speech towards Jewish people. I myself have not looked deep into what that exact speech was, but from what I could find, the documentary did contain a few very harmful (and most likely fake) quotes from Hitler where he was discrediting the religions and ethnic identity of the Jewish people he was killing during the Holocaust. For context, this documentary’s main point was to explain that African and African Americans are the “true Hebrews” and that Jewish people and people of that descent are lying about their origins. That conversation is a completely different topic for a completely different day, but the point is, Kyrie Irving pissed a lot of people off when he shared that documentary publicly on Instagram. He furthermore ruffled feathers with statements such as “how can I be Anti-Semetic when I know where I come from” and arguments with members of the press, which would lead to Joe Tsai and the Brooklyn Nets suspending Kyrie Irving for multiple games without pay, and forcing him to complete a checklist of things he needed to do in order to be allowed to play in Brooklyn again. Kyrie was dragged through the mud for harmful comments towards an ethnic group who was subjected to the Holocaust not even 100 years ago, so it makes sense why Kyrie was held to the fire. I bring this up because when you look at his actions vs Karl Malone’s, they pale in comparison. Kyrie Irving was excluded from the NBA Top 75 All-Time last year primarily due to his stance on the vaccine, but Karl Malone was on the list despite his actions before his NBA career started. I mentioned “before his NBA career” because you can easily make the argument that “The NBA has nothing to do with what he did before his career” which is true, but this is also a man that has had issues within the NBA. Remember that beef I mentioned between Karl Malone and Kobe Bryant? Well the reason was because Karl made two highly inappropriate passes at Vanessa Bryant during his stay on the Lakers (both on the same day). Karl’s first pass was asking Vanessa Bryant for a hug while Kobe was not present, stating that Kobe would not get mad, and continued to press Vanessa for said hug until she removed herself from the situation. The second pass was later during the day, where Karl Malone showed up in the locker room area with a cowboy hat on. Vanessa jokingly asked “what are you hunting cowboy?” Malone responded “I’m hunting little Mexican girls.” Vanessa was of course appalled, and told Kobe, and that is what started the beef between Kobe Bryant and Karl Malone. That Lakers team would go on to get smoked by the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 Finals, and Malone would then go on to retire shortly after that year. Yes, Karl’s assault of a minor was when he was not an NBA player, but his potentially ethnically targeted misconduct involving Vanessa Bryant was during his last dance-esque run for his first NBA ring. This incident made headlines during that season, but it was not something that followed him after his retirement. That is reasonable seeing he almost disappeared from the public eye, but him disappearing from the public eye is not an excuse for the NBA and the media to forget about his abhorrent actions. While Kyrie Irving by no means has a clean record, there is no reason why the NBA can drag Kyrie through the mud without problem, but never address Karl Malone having a child with a 12 year old girl. During the Legends Brunch this past Sunday, Malone was painted as a man having great work ethic and character, but his actions as an adult say otherwise. Unfortunately, Malone is not the only man to get a pass for his sins off the court, and it just shows yet another example of the pattern sports has with handling abuse.

Sports Politics and Abuse

Throughout the years, we have heard multiple stories of athletes, mainly male, getting into situations they should not have. We have heard of Michael Vick being a part of a dog fighting league, Ray Rice assaulting his wife, and other instances of some form of abuse taking place. I bring up those 2 cases in specific, because those are the two cases where the pattern of negligence towards abuse was broken. Michael Vick was, and still is, scorned by the media for his actions towards animals, and Ray Rice’s career was over soon after that video was dropped. The key thing in both of these cases is that the NFL was forced to take actions due to a visual representation being available. We have heard other cases such as Adrian Peterson abusing his own son, but Adrian continued to play in the NFL, and was met with little to no scrutiny during the rest of his career. Deshaun Watson had over 26 sexual misconduct allegations from women (most of which he settled to be fair), and was met with little no vitriol by fans when he began to play again. I even remember LeBron James tweeting his excitement to see Watson play again (which makes sense seeing LeBron is from Cleveland), which was a little surprising to see since at that time Watson was still being hit with allegations. Peterson (who was charged) and Watson both were able to go back to the life that Vick and Rice were not able to, primarily because of Watson and Peterson having no real video evidence against them. It is one thing to hear somebody account an abusive or traumatic experience, but it is another thing to see it first hand. I am obviously not comparing the actions of any of these men, but I could easily make the argument that based on patterns of the past, Michael Vick and Ray Rice would have been fine if no video evidence was released. Before I circle back to Karl Malone, I would quickly like to bring up Colin Kaepernick and John Stockton. Politically speaking, these two are on the opposite sides of the spectrum, with Kaepernick being a very outspoken figure during his NFL career in regards to social injustice, and John Stockton in recent years becoming a harcore right winger and borderline conspiracy theorist. The reason I bring these two men up is because both of them have been ostracized by their employers (the NFL and the NBA) due to going against company politics. Kaepernick was someone who kneeled before the anthem in order to protest systemic injustice (an idea he got from a retired war veteran), and the NFL was of course not pleased because this went against their own policies of honoring America and its veterans. I will say that those values for the NFL were more implicit, but you can deduce that those were somewhat of the core of those values due to their overall reaction to Kaepernick’s harmless protest. John Stockton on the other hand was virtually obsolete from All-Star Weekend in Utah of all places, and the only time he was seen was during the All-Star Game, where he sat next to Karl Malone. Malone as aforementioned was honored at the Legends Brunch, took a picture with LeBron and Kareem to celebrate Lebron’s new scoring record, and got the judge the Dunk Contest Saturday night. My point in bringing all that up is, these companies, and sports in general, have a pattern of overlooking abuse from their competing athletes, but have no issue singling out athletes who go against the values of the company. I dare say that Enes Freedom, a former NBA player, is another good example of this due to him calling out the NBA for supporting China, but we also have to remember, Enes was just a bad basketball player by NBA standards. Sure, his consistent call-outs of LeBron and the NBA made him somewhat of an issue for the NBA, but he was also on his way out of the door.

Conclusion

The NBA, NFL, and sports in general needs to change how they handle players being involved in abusive incidents around all leagues. Of course, due process needs to be used in all legal situations regarding any and all players involved in said incidents, but these leagues should not turn a blind eye once said situations have ended. As I mentioned, Adrian Peterson was charged with child abuse, but went on to play in the league for a few more years before he retired. While Karl Malone was never charged, it is on record that he slept with a 12 year old (now whether or not he knew the girl’s age is yet to be made clear), and got her pregnant with his son that he has not claimed until recently. I am more than anywhere that nobody is perfect. I am also aware that athletes have an insane amount of access to things like alcohol and women, and with that access comes mistakes. Even one of my favorite athletes of all time, Kobe Bryant, was accused of rape in 2003, but he eventually settled that case, and there was not enough evidence to prove he actually committed said crime. The thing is, Karl Malone committed an act that is one of the worst things you could ever do as a person. His lack of conversation about the incident is troubling, and the NBA’s complete refusal to address it is even more troubling. Morally speaking, I think it is quite telling if you have no problem honoring a man who virtually ruined the adolescent experience for a young girl. There is no reason why players with unpopular political opinions within the league should be held to a higher standard than grown men who have been accused of, or have committed criminal acts. With that said though, that is going to do it for me today. This article was different from my normal sports analyst content, but I felt that this was something that needed to be spoken on. I hope I was able to inform the best I could about this situation, and I will see you in the next one.