For all the buckets Karl Malone made during his Hall of Fame career—more than 36,000 points in all—it’s a miss that Dirk Nowitzki might remember best. With the final seconds of a playoff game ticking away, the Mailman lined up a shot from the top of the key and hit the back iron.
“We were down, lost both games here in Utah to go down 0-2,” Nowitzki said of that best-of-five series back in 2001. “And then to come back against Stockton and Malone. I remember when Malone missed that last shot, I was running around like we won the championship.