NBA Basketball Hall of Fame player and Louisiana native, Karl Malone, walks on the field after the College Football Playoff National Championship game between the LSU Tigers and the Clemson Tigers at the Mercedes Benz Superdome on January 13, 2020 in New Orleans, Louisiana. | Source: Alika Jenner / Getty
A social media campaign of sorts centered on the 2023 NBA All-Star dunk contest is underway after the professional basketball league named one of the sport’s all-time great players to be a judge this weekend.
The NBA proudly announced on Tuesday that retired NBA legend Karl Malone would be one of the judges for this coming weekend’s dunk contest in Salt Lake City, where he starred for the Utah Jazz for 18 seasons.
But instead of fans celebrating the moment, a growing number of social media responses to the NBA’s tweet show that they haven’t forgotten about the Hall of Fame basketball player’s history of impregnating a 13-year-old girl and suffering no legal or professional consequences. A number of tweets expressing outrage that the NBA would involve Malone, referenced the “child rape” and called him a “pedophile.”
Malone has also been accused of being a horrible father who separately harassed Kobe Bryant’s wife, according to reports.
The Daily Beast reminded readers in 2021 about Malone’s personal history with women.
While Malone was a 20-year-old student and basketball star at Louisiana Tech University, he impregnated 13-year-old Gloria Bell. She gave birth to a son, Demetress Bell, a future NFL Lineman. Bell’s family could have pressed statutory rape charges but they didn’t because, according to Gloria, Malone was “a neighborhood kid.”
Malone also sired twins, Cheryl and Daryl Ford, when he and his partner, Bonita Ford, were 17. He opted to not engage with any of these children for most of his life. He settled paternity suits out of court in a manner whereby he was not made to publicly acknowledge he was the kids’ biological father, and remained disengaged from his children’s lives until the arrival of grandchildren inspired him to work toward building relationships with his now middle-aged children.
Seventeen years earlier, ESPN reported that Bryant was “upset” that Malone made “several inappropriate comments” to the Lakers legend’s wife, Vanessa.
“Karl and his son were at the game sitting in the front row,” (Rob Pelinka, Kobe’s Agent) said. “Vanessa was on the cell phone talking to Karl’s wife, Kay, and Vanessa said that her son looked bored. Kay told her to call Karl to have her son join her in her seats. Kay gave Vanessa Karl’s cell number and she called him. When she called, Karl’s response was, ‘Why don’t you come over here and sit next to me and give me a big hug?’ Vanessa said, ‘Why? For what?’ And Karl replied, ‘If you do that it will be on the cover of every magazine in the country.’”
“Vanessa didn’t know what to say because this was the first time she had ever spoken to Malone without Kobe or Kay being around. Karl continued. ‘Do you like me?’ Malone asked her, to which Vanessa said, ‘As my friend, Kay’s husband,’” Pelinka said.
“From there Malone asked Vanessa if she could keep a secret, and that he would like to tell her something. At which point Vanessa told him she was a married woman and he was a married man who was old enough to be her father. To which Malone replied, ‘Oh, like your daddy?’ At that point she told me she ended the conversation,” Pelinka said.
It was decided in that context that NBA fans on social media expressed their anger with Malone playing any role in this weekend’s All-Star festivities, let alone judging the dunk contest.
“Ig if you are good enough at sport then people will respect your status & ignore a CHILD RAPE victim! This is so gross,” one person tweeted before urging the NBA to “Stop celebrating terrible people and do better.”
“Heard he’s gonna give every dunk a score of 13! google karl malone 13 for more info,” another person tweeted.
“Karl Malone is an admitted rapist and pedophile,” another tweet added. “This is disgusting.”
As if that wasn’t enough criticism, there are still some people who remember how Malone refused to play against the Lakers after Magic Johnson was diagnosed with HIV in 1991.
“Look at this, scabs and cuts all over me. I get these every night, every game. They can’t tell you that you’re not at risk, and you can’t tell me there’s one guy in the NBA who hasn’t thought about it,” Malone famously said at the time.
Johnson said he was particularly hurt by Malone’s reaction despite the limited amount of information about the virus at the time.
“The same people that used to give you the dab and love, hug, they weren’t there. Especially, Karl Malone, he came out publicly with it,” Johnson said last year. “I just played with you on the Dream team and practiced with you every single day, and now you don’t want to play against me. You could have just said that to me.”
Malone retired after the 2003-04 season as a member of the Lakers, but his basketball legacy is firmly rooted in Utah. He remains in third place on the All-time NBA scoring list, fifth in rebounds, first in free throws made and sixth in games played, according to NBA statistics.
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