LOS ANGELES — Earlier this summer, when Karl Malone was making his decision to leave the Utah Jazz and join the Los Angeles Lakers, he talked it over with his mother, Shirley Jackson Malone.
"She said, 'You know what? Do what you want to do,' " Malone recalled late Tuesday night in his corner locker in the Lakers' dressing room following their season-opening game, in which Malone missed a triple-double by one assist.
Malone's corner is big enough to accommodate a large media gathering, which descended on him following the game. On one side, a teammate's locker had been moved to allow more room, and on the other side was former Jazz teammate Bryon Russell. It was a nice touch, Malone said, for the Lakers to have moved Russell next to him, and it hadn't been that way until the regular season started.
"It's weird," a reflective Malone said, "because opening night this year kind of took on a new meaning. This is what my mom wanted me to do.
"This summer when I talked to her about it, I said, 'You going to be there opening night?' She said, 'I wouldn't miss it for the world.'
"So, to me, she was there. I pictured her being here tonight," said Malone. His mother passed away Aug. 13, a devastating time in his 40 years of life.
Because of the experience of losing his mother, it was a matured Malone who played in purple and gold for the first time in the regular season. Opening night with the Lakers, and all the problems the Lakers have experienced recently with Kobe Bryant's legal troubles and Bryant's public feud with teammate Shaquille O'Neal, just weren't a big deal.
"I can't explain it, but nothing else really matters when I look at the big picture. We have our little things going, and I say to myself, 'It's time I pick up the phone and dial my mom's number,' " Malone said.
His mother is there for him, but she's not there. "How many times did I look up there today, knowing she's probably sitting there right beside my wife — and she wasn't there. And I had to do it on the fly," he said about adjusting during the opening minutes of the game in the Staples Center. Los Angeles beat Dallas 109-93, Malone scoring 15 and getting team-highs of 10 rebounds and nine assists.
"It was good to be out there playing, because this is what she wanted, and I know she wanted to win, so we gave her her first one as a Laker," Malone said.
With the newness of playing that first Laker regular-season game in front of fans who used to hate him, without his mom and with mostly new teammates, Malone had jitters.
"Well, Shaq kept messing with me," Malone said. "I'm used to (Laker fans) booing. I see the same guy that booed me last year saying, 'I love you Karl.' It startled me for a minute.
"Shaq kept looking at me saying, 'Hey, man, you on our team now. Get out of the Twilight Zone.' It took me awhile."
O'Neal offered to give Malone a physical cue to clear his head. He said, " 'You want me to slap you to get you back?' I said, 'No, you slap hard. That's all right.' "
Malone was strongest in the second half, with all the emotions out of the way, making nine points, seven assists and six rebounds.
With the Lakers ahead by 17, Malone was the first of the big three (O'Neal, Malone and Gary Payton) that coach Phil Jackson brought to the bench, and Malone got a standing ovation from those who once hated him.
"To walk off the floor and get an ovation, that was kind of weird," he said. "I'm smiling because, whew, it's a relief to get this first one out of the way."
Los Angeles media members seem fascinated by things Utahns have known for years. They were surprised that Malone did his interviews sitting with ice packs on his knees and his feet in a tub of ice water — precautionary measures he's always taken, upon advice from Adrian Dantley back in 1985.
Some reporters marveled that Malone passed and got assists, and that he could sprint upcourt with the best the Mavericks had to offer.
"That's how I've made my living. I'm just now starting to get used to running down the middle of the floor (on a fast break). Coach Sloan (Utah's Jerry) always makes you run wide," Malone said, chuckling. "They stopped me, I don't know how many times in training camp, and said, 'Look, run down the middle of the floor.' I said, 'That's too easy.' "
And he has Payton ready to play the give-and-take John Stockton role with him.
"To start with a John Stockton and to finish with a Gary Payton, that ain't too shabby," Malone said. "You won't believe the stuff I saw Stockton do, cutting to the basket, and (Payton) said, 'I'm going to do the same thing, so don't stop doing what you've been doing all these years.' "
Malone was happy that Payton respects Stockton enough to want to keep that sort of thing going. The two simply clicked on basketball plays almost immediately. "That's the kind of relationship me and Stock had for all those years. It's amazing that me and (Payton) was able to build it so quickly. We just started playing. That's how me and Stock did it. We just started playing and made it happen."
Malone enjoyed it, too, that Russell had a nice debut in his hometown. He's from San Bernardino and went to Long Beach State. "I'm close to this guy. It's kind of neat to see him get in the game, be one of the first guys subbed in the game," said Malone.
As for living the L.A. life, the small-town guy from Louisiana who made a name for himself in little ol' Salt Lake City has found the adjustments fairly easy.
He brought along a former Delta Center security guard as a personal assistant and driving partner so he can use the carpool lanes and keep his commute to practices about 35 minutes instead of hours and also keep the drive to Staples in a reasonable range. In Salt Lake, his commute was about "four or five minutes," he said.
The Malone family is settled into a home in ritzy Newport Beach, where Kobe Bryant and Dennis Rodman live. All the Malone kids go to the same public school that's near the home. Malone raises his voice with a hint of worry that even his 5-year-old has discovered the pleasure of shopping at the upscale malls in Orange County. After all, Malone is making about $18 million less than last year, and his $6 million home overlooking Salt Lake City hasn't sold yet. "We're not in a hurry. We're not giving it away," he said.
Malone still has a lot of ties to Utah, where he matured from a gangly kid to the most feared power forward in the NBA and reiterated what he'd said when he first signed with the Lakers — that he will keep his association with the Beehive State. That could include a return to living there, at least part-time.
"We've always said we're going to keep a house in Utah," Malone said. "All of our options are totally wide open as a family, and that's how we look at it and how we're going to play it until I retire. We're going to always keep a place there, yeah, absolutely.
"Utah been too good for me to 100 percent leave," he added. "We'll be back and forth. We're doing a lot of different things. We've got businesses there and in Boise and Bountiful, and we're about to do a project in Woods Cross, so I'll be there."
Malone holds properties in Bountiful and Woods Cross and is in the home-constructing business, using floor plans he and wife Kay like.
Though he likes the SoCal lifestyle so far, Malone has found it different from the one he enjoyed in Salt Lake. "You can't just go out whenever you want to, because everything is magnified," he said. "It was like that there, too, a little bit," but Utahns mostly let him have his space in public. "Yeah, they did, but here they don't. I'm guess I'm fresh meat here."
E-mail: lham@desnews.com