Karl's digs going, gone — for a song

He still has the car dealership in Sandy, and about a thousand Jazz franchise records, and his life-size statue that will stand outside the Delta Center is reportedly being bronzed as we speak.

But Karl Malone's house is gone. He and Kay and the kids don't have an address here anymore. Yesterday afternoon the JP King Auction Company, with Mr. Craig King at the gavel, sold the Malones' 19,000-square-foot mansion for $2.5 million plus a 10 percent commission.

Considering the house, with its own shooting range, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, 5 1/2-car garage, theater room and swimming pool with 100-foot slide, was listed for about $6 million two years ago when Malone left for the Lakers, the take seemed a relative insult. You could imagine Malone, wherever he was, demanding a contract renegotiation.

But then the name of the buyer was announced: a Mr. Dwight Manley from Newport Beach, Calif., who made his winning bid by telephone.

Hey, that's Karl's neighbor . . . and agent.

What a coincidence.

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In the nearly two decades he played and lived here, beginning with his grand entrance in the Pioneer Day parade on the 24th of July, which happens to be his birthday, Karl Malone never did anything remotely quiet or without some controversy. That now includes selling his house.

Most people get transferred, they hire a Realtor and sell to the best offer. Not Karl (although he first went that route). He turned the selling of his home into a sporting event, with spectators.

About 100 people showed up for yesterday's auction, most of them arriving early enough to tour the 2-acre estate. The house is unfurnished except for Malone's bed, all 100 square feet of it, which will be moved about the same time as Antelope Island. Entire villages in Central America aren't much bigger.

Only a handful of those wandering the house were registered buyers. The rest were a collection of media and, I'm guessing, Jazz fans, who certainly had a right to be there — since, after all, they built the house that Karl built.

None of them bought it, though.

As Carl Carter of the auction company explained, having a celebrity's name attached to a property doesn't generally translate into interested buyers. "Although it does make it easier to get guys like you interested," he told me.