Dear Karl,

Thanks for everything, Mailman.

You gave us 19 years of NBA excitement, whether in purple and green or purple and gold.

Thank you for boosting Bulldog basketball into the national spotlight with your stellar professional career.

Whether being fed the ball from John Stockton as a Jazz man to hoping Kobe would actually pass the ball as a Laker, your 36,928 points did not go unnoticed. Even though you never brought home a championship, your legendary status will hardly be challenged.

You put the "power" in power forward, whether it was grace or pure muscle-mass.

You were often accused of throwing your weight around to grab rebounds, mainly with your elbows. But, hey, there are Michael Jordan fans out there who won't acknowledge that he pushed off of Byron Russell to make the '98 NBA Finals winning shot in Game 6 on your home-court. So, I'm not contractually obligated to believe you elbowed everybody under the sun for one of your 14,698 career rebounds.

Thank you for being down-to-earth. From autograph sessions to working your own land in Choudrant. You've never been a head case.

I remember when I was seven, my dad came home beaming one afternoon because he took my little brother to get an autograph from "the Mailman." I thought they went to the post office.

Thank you for your role in the Olympics.

After watching a joke of a national team last summer, people long for the glory days of the '92 and '96 Dream Teams where you helped lead a cast of superstars to gold medals.

Thank you for modeling a true superstar.

In the NBA today, all players talk about is how they don't make enough money to support their families, a la Latrell Sprewell, or guys who rush into the stands to beat up a fan, a la Ron Artest. You just showed up and played hard for 19 years.

Don't let Jazz fans get mad at you because you left their ailing team for a shot at a national championship. People will always complain that you could've lowered your salary to let other players come in to help win in Utah. They are also irked that you told the Lakers you'd play for the minimum, just to win a title. They also forget the only reason the Jazz ever even thought about contending for a championship was because of you and Stockton. (Some guy named Michael messed that up.)

The thing that's different about that situation is that you never sugar-coated the move. You wanted an NBA championship. You stayed a straight-shooter and stuck to your guns.

History can't be rewritten to change the fate of the 2004 Finals when the Pistons beat the Lakers. If people need someone to blame, they should look no further than Kobe's attitude as the catalyst of the Los Angeles demise. For a little poetic justice, look how the Lakers are doing now that it is solely his team.

Karl, we have a lot to thank you for, but most of all, thank you for retiring with dignity.

You said you won't make a comeback. And with all the dignity in the world on your side, I still can't say that I won't miss watching the greatest power forward of all time.

Kyle Roberts is a senior journalism major from Ruston and serves as associate sports editor for The Tech Talk.