Malone the last of an era in NBA

He's still working out three to four hours a day even though, as he confessed to his former boss, he doesn't know why. With no more jump shots to shoot, no more fast breaks to break, no more dunks to throw down, no more elbows to throw, the old pro is still lifting weights and running windsprints.

Old habits die hard for Karl Malone, who will retire today at 41 with Olympic medals, All-Star berths, records and acclaim as the Greatest Power Forward Ever, but, alas, no championship.

A fanatical work ethic and talent are rarely found in the same player, but that was Malone. He made himself into one of the greatest NBA players in history with a boot-camp-like training regimen. But no longer will he be able to unleash the results of that labor on beleaguered NBA opponents, who are no doubt breathing a sigh of relief through their bloodied lips.

After a mid-life fling with the soap-opera known as the Lakers — a team that couldn't be more unlike the businesslike, composed Jazz — all in pursuit of the only thing missing from his Hall of Fame resume, Malone is coming home to say goodbye. Which is only fitting. Malone never looked right in Laker yellow.

Malone should have known better. He was old school, a one-team, one-coach player with old-fashioned work ethic. For Malone, anything could be accomplished with hard work and playing the game the right way, which would include unselfishness and team play — hardly the stuff of the Lakers. As fate and fortune would have it, Malone found men of like mind in John Stockton and Jerry Sloan. The stars must have been aligned right when those three were united — Sloan, the farmer from Illinois who was prematurely cast off by his old Bulls; Stockton, a small, white guard from a school called Gonzaga; and Malone, an insecure black man from Louisiana. They turned the laughing stock of the league into a juggernaut and saved the small-market franchise.

When he found himself playing alongside the next generation, Malone found a different game and rebelled. Malone set a pick for Kobe Bryant in the 1998 All-Star Game and Bryant waved him out — Bryant wanted to go one on one. Malone vowed never to return after that. He called the next generation "knuckleheads."

And then at the end of his career, he joined the knuckleheads. To get his ring, he joined the Lakers and Bryant, a player so selfish that he noted of this year's Laker team, "(The players) are here giving me 110 percent."

Me?

Malone had no business on such a team and, not surprisingly, he wound up in a he-said, she-said dispute with Bryant that drove him from the team. It was bound to happen.