SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller wants it made clear: Karl Malone, a.k.a. The Mailman, will continue to make the majority of his deliveries at the Delta Center.

Miller stood outside the Jazz dressing room after Utah's 112-88 victory over Seattle on Wednesday, emphasizing that brief trade talks last summer involving superstar forward Karl Malone are "dead in the water."

Back in June, Miller said Malone expressed concern the Jazz might not be competitive enough to satisfy his will to win. To appease the perennial All-Star, team officials briefly considered trading Malone to the Dallas Mavericks.

The deal never took flight, Miller said, because Dallas would only discuss trading one player for Malone. He wouldn't disclose names, but the talks reportedly centered on Juwan Howard.

"There was only one player they wanted to give up, and that player had zero attraction for us," Miller said. "Even if it did work economically, which I'm not sure it would have, there needed to be some substance there. We're not going to trade a guy like Karl for nothing."

The talks lasted only a few days, never gaining momentum. Miller recalled them as "only a little hiccup" among dozens of trade propositions that are routinely floated among teams each offseason.

"We saw this wasn't going to work, so we decided to put it to rest and get on with the summer," he said.

When word of the situation finally broke Tuesday, Miller said he immediately called Jazz vice president of basketball operations Kevin O'Connor to see if there was a new round of talks.

"It was surprising that it came up this long after," Miller said. "In this business there are very few secrets. The surprising part to me is that, if it were that big, that the secret lasted so long."