He once described the key to his rebounding prowess — he is fifth all time in rebounds and has more offensive rebounds than anyone else since they were kept as a separate category in 1973-74 — by saying “Mostly I goes to the rack.”
He had another classic retort to Dawson when Dawson first joined the Rockets as an assistant coach in 1980, a year after Malone won his first MVP award.
“I said, ‘Moses, we need to work on your passing,'” Dawson said. “He put no wrist or finger snap into it. It was all arms. He threw the worst passes I’d ever seen.
“He said, ‘CD, they ain’t paying me to pass.'”
It became a running joke between the two. They’d see each other at the golf course and Malone would ask, “You still want me to work on my passing?”
Cheeks wouldn’t share his pancakes with Malone one time at a hotel breakfast before a game in Milwaukee and Malone never let him forget about it.
It wasn’t Malone being vindictive. It was more of a bond they had created, part of Malone’s penchant for forming lasting friendships.
“He was about as loved as anybody I ever coached,” Dawson said.
Cheeks called Malone “jovial,” with a laugh that he still hears ringing in his head.
Tony Wyllie got to know Malone when Wyllie was a student at Texas Southern University in Houston and later the vice president of communications with the Houston Texans. Malone was at Wyllie’s wedding in 2005, and they had just spoken last week when Malone called Wyllie, now the senior VP of communications for the Washington Redskins, to inquire about getting tickets for their game at Dallas. They were close enough that Wyllie could tease Malone that Shaquille O’Neal would have gotten the better of him if they matched up in their primes. Malone had an answer for that as well.
“He said, ‘Shoot, Tony, I would foul him out,'” Wyllie said. “He alluded to he would’ve outworked Shaq. In his day, he used to go up against Bob Lanier and Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar]. Every team had a center, he had to work both ends of the floor. At the end of the day, he had to get a massage from his wife, because playing against the big men would take a toll on him.”