If not for the front-office wizardry of the team then called the Washington Bullets, none of this would have happened.

No raising of No. 32 to the Delta Center rafters. No unveiling of a statue on the Delta Center plaza. Maybe no Delta Center, period. Probably no John Stockton statue, either.

Of all the multiple-choice legacies of the Mailman - whether you mostly will remember the contract complaints, the playoff disappointments, his perpetual feeling of being unloved or his MVP awards, the incredible growth of a small-market franchise and the statewide pride it inspired - two history lessons involving Malone will stick with me.

Funny things happen in the NBA draft.

Even when it all works out beautifully, these things take time.

It is instructive in a season when the Jazz could have taken a point guard other than Deron Williams to remember they could have done worse. A lot worse. Washington did, and so did a bunch of other teams in 1985.

The Jazz could have drafted Chris Paul, a point guard from Wake Forest, last summer. But nothing could have affected this franchise like Washington's drafting a forward from Wake Forest.

Ultimately, the Bullets' pick of Kenny Green right ahead of the Jazz brought the Mailman to Utah. And this place would never be the same.

Say what you want about Malone, but he's the most compelling, intriguing athlete who ever played here or probably ever will. And he arrived only because of a series of misjudgments.

The weekend before that 1985 draft, the Jazz started hearing Malone was slipping. They had their own clever plan in the works - needing a defensive stopper, they would take guard Terry Porter - but they were certainly willing to adjust if Malone fell to them.

"We had made that decision over the weekend," said Scott Layden, who directed the team's scouting in those days and is back as an assistant coach. "We received too much credit. In actuality, if we were so astute, we should have traded everything to move up."

Yet the 13th pick was good enough for them to grab Malone and change history. Amazing, how these things work. Suppose they had taken Porter, who - unlike Green - enjoyed a long, successful NBA career. Who knows what might have become of Stockton, with Porter and without Malone.

Even with Stockton and Malone growing up together, it all took a while. Impatient with the Kirilenko-Boozer-Williams timetable for development? Well, the Jazz won exactly one playoff series in the first five seasons of Stockton-to-Malone. At 32-35, today's Jazz are only one game behind the pace of Malone's rookie season.

That historical data is either comforting, or not. Because while he was relatively out of shape, lacked intensity and had little feel for the game - "He started out with some baggage, like all of us," said coach Jerry Sloan, then an assistant - when he reported, Malone just kept getting better. Not everybody does.

"Hard work," Sloan said. "It's pretty simple. It's a lost art, I guess, in a lot of ways."

No kidding. "You don't see the level of commitment to himself and the game in many of today's players," said former teammate Mark Eaton.

Maybe that's the overriding legacy of the Mailman. At some point, it's up to the players to determine the course of the franchise. The drafting, the coaching and the trading can accomplish only so much.

Fire anybody you want, but it's still a players' game. And Eaton credits Malone with establishing a tone that distinguished the Jazz of the '90s.

"As new guys came in, the culture of the team was already set," Eaton said. "There was this expectation the day you walked into camp: 'This is how this team plays.' You either went with it, or you didn't stick around long."

It's the sort of identity for which the Jazz of this century are searching. As of tonight, more clues will be in the rafters and on the plaza. The latest Jazzmen could learn something from Malone's story. So, for the sake of perspective, could the rest of us.

Kurt Kragthorpe can be reached at kkragthorpe@sltrib.com. To write a letter about this or any sports topic, send an e-mail to sportseditor@sltrib.com.