"I was able to get some pretty good meat on him" - Malone on taking out Drexler with a monster screen in the 1997 WCF

The 1997 Western Conference Finals were a tense duel between the Utah Jazz and the Houston Rockets . Karl Malone and John Stockton went toe-to-toe against the Hall of Fame trio of Hakeem Olajuwon , Charles Barkley, and Clyde Drexler.

Malone's hefty screen

In Game 6, with 2.8 seconds left in a tied game, the Jazz could book their ticket to the NBA Finals. To win it all, Jerry Sloan drew up a play that involved Stockton coming off a Malone screen.

The strategy worked perfectly as the guard found himself open from 3-point country and nailed it. But the play wouldn't have developed properly without Karl's solid screen on Drexler.

"I was able to get pretty good meat on him," Malone said of Drexler. "It was the best pick I set in my life."

Malone completely erased Drexler in the play. Meanwhile, Barkley was too slow to switch to Stockton, who promptly nailed the game-winning 3-pointer that sent them to the 1997 NBA Finals.

However, Clyde offered his perspective on the final play of the series. While Malone claimed it was a pretty good screen, Drexler felt the Mailman's muscular arms around him. In other words, it was an illegal screen.

"I was bear-hugged, not picked," the Rockets guard claimed.

Maybe Cylde has a point. A closer review of the play reveals that Karl might have been holding on to him. But as commentators always say, referees won't call such petty fouls in the final seconds of a contest. Malone knew what he was doing.

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A dirty team?

While Drexler's criticism was discreet, Olajuwon did not mince his words about the Jazz, claiming they employed malicious tactics. In Hakeem's eyes, the Utah squad were the villains pretending to be heroes .

"This team plays dirty. They don't always follow the rules - using elbows, setting picks to injure you, and other questionable tactics," remarked 'The Dream.'

"This team (Utah) is a bunch of pretenders," Olajuwon stated. "They want to look like good guys all of the time. They want the NBA and the whole world to believe they are good guys, [Karl] Malone, [John] Stockton, all of them. But the truth is that they are bad guys, very bad guys."

Good guys or not, the Jazz outlasted the Rockets in six games. Houston's Hall of Fame trio had nothing against the dynamic Malone-Stockton combo and their supporting cast. Was Malone's screen illegal or not? It doesn't matter at this point. What matters is that it got the job done.

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