6ft 11” rookie Tim Duncan lived to see another day as 6’9”, 260 lbs Karl Malone kicked him in the face

Tim Duncan is probably the least dirty player that came out of the 90s even after receiving some severe thrashing at the hands of the veterans at the time.

As many buckets as The Mailman used to deliver throughout his tremendously long NBA career, the 6ft 9″, 260 lbs of sheer muscle delivered a lot of elbows, bruises, and stitches as well.

Although it wasn’t as wild as the 60s and 70s, the 80s and 90s had some of the dirtiest playing teams of all time.

Malone’s Jazz in the West wasn’t far behind the Bad Boy Pistons of the East. With bodies flying and lying all over the court, cleaning officials and team physicians always had too much to do especially when those two teams were on the court.

However good they were on the hardwood no superstar was spared back in the day from getting roughed up every other game. And if it were budding rookies on the receiving end, there was no escaping at all. Tim Duncan learnt it the hard way.

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Karl Malone once tried to kick the living soul out of a rookie Tim Duncan

When Duncan came into the league in 1997, he had all-time great competition from Day 1. Horace Grant, Charles Barkley and Malone were some of the top power forwards of the game at the time and none of them played very clean like most players in that era.

Having gone past their prime or being on the brink of it, all of them were seeing Duncan and Kevin Garnett having the potential to be as great as them or maybe even better. But obviously, none of them wanted to lose any battle against the youngsters.

In one such battle in the 1998 Playoffs, the 6ft 11” Duncan squared up against Malone who was thirsty for a title and didn’t see the Spurs as big a threat while facing them in the Western Conference Semi-finals.

Jazz were leading the series 3-1 as well but Timmy was putting up more dominant numbers than Karl and The Mailman wasn’t going to entertain it. He made the 22-year-old taste some soil by kicking him in the face with almost no attempt on doing anything other than that.

That’s brutal! It would have gotten a long suspension if it was today. Interestingly, it didn’t get him any suspension as it did for a game when he elbowed Spurs’ big man David Robinson in the face and sent him to hospital earlier in the season.

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Those were the days! Eh?