Utah Jazz: Korver to retire after all-night kickball game

Without a press conference or a teary-eyed ceremony, Kyle Korver all but announced his retirement this week.

Not from basketball, mind you. The Jazz sharpshooter is done with a different sport, but at least he's going out on top.

Korver recently helped break the world record for the longest kickball game as part of a fundraiser for a charity he helps in Philadelphia.

A week later, Korver joked that he was still trying to catch up on sleep he missed out on while setting the record. The kickball game began on a Friday night and ended 213 runs, 164 innings, gallons of energy drinks, five popped balls and 24 hours and 15 minutes later on Saturday night.

Korver and his younger brother, Klayton, who starred at Drake, played the entire time — all 1,455 minutes of the ultra-marathon match.

Don't count on him ever playing another minute, though.

"If I ever have kids some day and they're like, 'Dad, dad, let's go play kickball. I'll be, like, 'Let's go dancing. Let's do anything but kickball,"' Korver said, grinning. "I'm done with kickball."

The fact that he's much more talented on the basketball court than on the soccer field added to his misery.

"I think kicking the ball might be the worst thing I do in athletics," he said, laughing.

His not-so-fancy footwork got worse as the game progressed, too.

"We're kicking this ball and my foot is like breaking," he said. "I start bunting. I started kicking with my left foot. Then the ball started popping."

The teams went through three regulation kickballs in the first two hours and ended up destroying five official orbs.

The balls gave up their lives for a good cause, though. The event raised enough money to help build a recreation room and learning center for underprivileged children at the Helping Hand Rescue Mission in North Philadelphia, a center that Korver become involved with during his stint with the 76ers.

Korver's group now has to submit paper work, DVDs, witness testimonies and other documentation to prove to the Guinness World Records that their endurance endeavor is indeed worthy of global accolades. According to Guinness guidelines, each team was required to have four males and females on the field at all times. Other teammates — each roster could carry up to 20 players — had to remain there at all times as well.

"It was super competitive for the first eight hours. Then people started getting really tired," Korver said. "I had like 15 energy drinks. It was crazy."

Even though the last 75 or so innings were grueling, Korver said he enjoyed the charitable competition.

"It was fun and I'm glad we did it. We raised the money we wanted to raise," Korver said. He paused, chuckled and added, "The last 10 hours were miserable."

For the record, Korver's club won what will go down as being the lengthiest kickball championship game ever played in the history of humanity.

"We crushed 'em," he said.

And just like that, a record-setting career-in-a-day came to an end.

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