On this day in 1985: Karl Malone and Patrick Ewing make their NBA debuts a night apart

Forty-one years ago this month, two of the biggest names from the 1985 draft started their NBA careers a night apart. On Friday, October 25, 1985, Karl Malone came off the bench for the Utah Jazz in a loss to Houston at the Salt Palace. On Saturday, October 26, Patrick Ewing, the No. 1 pick, started at center for the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden and lost to Philadelphia.

Both men went on to score more than 24,000 points and reach the Hall of Fame. Neither debut gave much sign of it. Malone scored eight points and missed both of his free throws. Ewing scored 18 on 8-of-21 shooting, and the Knicks lost by 10.

• Karl Malone (Utah, No. 13 pick), Friday, October 25, 1985: Rockets 112, Jazz 108 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. 8 points (4-11 FG, 0-2 FT), 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 4 steals, 4 turnovers and 4 fouls in 24 minutes off the bench. Attendance: 12,431.
• Patrick Ewing (New York, No. 1 pick), Saturday, October 26, 1985: 76ers 99, Knicks 89 at Madison Square Garden. 18 points (8-21 FG, 2-4 FT), 6 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 steals and 1 assist in 44 minutes as a starter. Attendance: 19,591.

Malone: eight points, and Stockton’s 12 assists

Malone arrived from Louisiana Tech as the 13th pick, after 12 teams passed on him. His first night came against one of the best frontcourts in the league. Hakeem Olajuwon, starting his second season, had 27 points and 11 rebounds, and Ralph Sampson added 24 points and 14 rebounds. Houston led 32-22 after the first quarter and held on to win by four.

Utah’s scoring came from Adrian Dantley, who had 32 points and went 14 of 18 at the free-throw line, and from Thurl Bailey with 19. Mark Eaton made all six of his shots and blocked four. Malone played 24 minutes as a reserve and finished with eight points on 4-of-11 shooting and six rebounds. His four steals were the most by any player in the game.

The detail that matters most in hindsight is the player who came off the bench with him. John Stockton, in his second season, scored 11 points and had 12 assists in 25 minutes. It was the first of the 1,400-plus regular-season games the two would play together in Utah. Houston also used its own rookie that night, Steve Harris, the No. 19 pick from the same draft, for two minutes.

Malone needed only a few days to settle in. He scored 14 in San Antonio on October 29, and the next night, in his first career start, he had 13 points on 6-of-9 shooting in a 102-100 win over the Spurs. He started 76 of his 81 games as a rookie and averaged 14.9 points and 8.9 rebounds. The one weakness was at the line, where he made only 48.1 percent of his free throws. He finished third in Rookie of the Year voting. The Jazz went 42-40 and lost to Dallas 3-1 in the first round, while the Rockets team that beat them on opening night went on to reach the Finals.

Ewing: a debut against Moses, Erving and Barkley

Ewing came to New York with more attention than any rookie of his era. He had led Georgetown to the 1984 national title and three national championship games in four years, and the Knicks won the right to draft him in the league’s first draft lottery that May.

His first opponent was the 76ers, who still had Moses Malone and Julius Erving and now had Charles Barkley in his second season. Moses Malone scored 35 points with 13 rebounds and made 15 of 18 free throws. Erving added 20, and Barkley had six points and 14 rebounds. Philadelphia led after every quarter.

Ewing played 44 minutes, more than anyone in the game, and led the Knicks in shot attempts. He made 8 of 21 for 18 points, with six rebounds and three blocked shots. Pat Cummings was New York’s leading scorer with 28 on 12-of-20 shooting, and Rory Sparrow had 12 points and nine assists. One more 1985 rookie was on the floor: Terry Catledge, the No. 21 pick, scored 13 off the bench for Philadelphia.

The Knicks lost their first three games, but Ewing improved quickly. He had 19 points and 10 rebounds at Atlanta on October 29 and 27 points and 16 rebounds at Golden State on October 31. He played only 50 games as a rookie, all as a starter, and averaged 20.0 points, 9.0 rebounds and 2.1 blocks. He was named an All-Star and won Rookie of the Year. New York finished 23-59, last in the Atlantic Division.

The rest of the class

Malone and Ewing were not the only future Hall of Famers from that draft to debut that week. Joe Dumars, taken 18th by Detroit, played the same night as Malone and scored five points in 19 minutes off the bench in a 118-116 win over Milwaukee. Chris Mullin, the No. 7 pick, did not play his first game for Golden State until November 6, the Warriors’ seventh game, and scored 15 in a win over Seattle.

The class also included Detlef Schrempf (No. 8), Charles Oakley (No. 9), A.C. Green (No. 23) and Terry Porter (No. 24), all of whom played at least 16 seasons.

What they became

Malone played 19 seasons, the first 18 with Utah, and scored 36,928 points, still the third-most in league history. He also grabbed 14,968 rebounds, won MVP awards in 1997 and 1999 and made 14 All-Star teams. His free-throw shooting rose to 74.2 percent over his career. He and Stockton reached the Finals in 1997 and 1998 and lost to Michael Jordan’s Bulls both times. Malone’s final season, with the Lakers, ended in the 2004 Finals against a Detroit team built by Dumars, then the Pistons’ president of basketball operations.

Ewing spent 15 of his 17 seasons with the Knicks and remains the franchise’s career leader in points with 23,665. He finished with 24,815 points, 11,607 rebounds and 2,894 blocked shots and made 11 All-Star teams. His closest chance at a title came in 1994, when the Knicks lost the Finals in seven games to Olajuwon’s Rockets.

The two played together on the 1992 Olympic team. Ewing was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008 and Malone in 2010. Neither won an NBA championship, and both lost their first game.