Malone gives short Hall of Fame jacket to boy

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(AP Photo/Elise Amendola) SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) -- The Mailman delivered again.

Karl Malone will go home with a spot in Hall of Fame. Unlike the other inductees, though, he'll go without his Hall of Fame jacket.

The sports coat with the Hall of Fame logo now belongs to a young boy in a wheelchair, who watched as Malone and the other new members of the Hall of Fame class took questions and posed for pictures Friday.

Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Karl Malone reacts as he shows his new jacket with sleeves much too short during the enshrinement news conference at the Hall of Fame Museum in Springfield, Mass. Friday, Aug. 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

"I told him when he graduates from high school he will have a jacket to wear," Malone said.

The coat didn't exactly fit to begin with. The sleeves were well short on his arms and so tight that Malone joked maybe it was supposed to be fellow inductee Scottie Pippen's.

"My 12-year-old daughter couldn't get into it," Malone said, laughing.

The former Utah Jazz star wondered what he would do with the jacket anyway.

"Put it in some closet and years from now blow the dust off of it, light up a cigar, and look at it?" he said. "This little boy will do something with it. I loved that I did it."

A Hall of Fame spokesman said he didn't know the boy's name.