Kareem Abdul-Jabbar figures his National Basketball Association career scoring record will be broken someday. He doesn't think Karl Malone will be the one to do it.
Missing half this season with an injury was a setback for Malone's chances of breaking the mark of 38,387 points, Abdul- Jabbar said in an interview at the NBA Store in New York.
"At this time of his life, it's tougher at this end of it than it was at the beginning to overcome injury and come back and be into the flow of the game," said Abdul-Jabbar, who spent his 20-year career with the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers, Malone's current team. "That's going uphill."
The 40-year-old Malone has 36,928 points in his career, 1,459 behind the Hall-of-Fame center who won six NBA championships, five with the Lakers. Malone, who has said he might retire after the season, would have to average 18 points a night without missing a game next season to eclipse Abdul-Jabbar.
"He's up and down," Abdul-Jabbar said of Malone's scoring. "He has one good game and a number of single-digit games. It's hard to keep the momentum going."
Abdul-Jabbar wouldn't predict who might break his record if Malone doesn't.
Malone averaged a career-low 13.2 points this season, his first with the Lakers after 18 seasons with the Utah Jazz. In Utah, Malone was the focus of the team's offense. With the Lakers, he's at best the third option behind All-Stars Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.
Malone would "have to be featured in the offense so that he could get the required number of shots" to break the record, Abdul-Jabbar said. "It's tough on the team. It can't be just have him score X-amount of points. They're supposed to be out there winning games."
Malone, the NBA's MVP in 1997 and 1999, took a massive pay cut to play for the Lakers, who are playing the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals.
He will get about $1.5 million this season, some $17.5 million less than his final-year salary in Utah, where he reached two finals before losing to the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls in 1997 and 1998.
Malone, who is widely considered one of the best-conditioned athletes in sports, played in 42 of 82 games this season because of a knee injury. It marked the first time in his career that he missed more than two regular-season games.
While acknowledging that the scoring record is "a nice thing to have," Abdul-Jabbar said he hopes Malone plays another season and takes aim at the mark.
"I don't know if it's safe, but Karl has a ways to go," Abdul-Jabbar said. "He certainly deserves a shot at it, and I hope he's healthy enough to give it his best effort."