After 12 seasons and a legacy as one of the game's most reliable frontcourt producers and foremost NBA humanitarians, Shareef Abdur-Rahim announced his retirement on Monday.

Unable to rehabilitate an arthritic right knee that had undergone two arthroscopic surgeries last year and limited him to eight games last season, the career of the 31-year-old Kings forward and one-time Olympian has ended far sooner than he'd planned.

"For me, there will always be a part that's stuck in a state of nostalgia, always hoping I could be young and playing and running up and down the court," Abdur-Rahim said by phone. "(But) it was progressively getting worse, and I couldn't do the things you have to do to play in the NBA. Mentally, I could still do it and still see myself doing it, but physically I couldn't do it anymore."

Abdur-Rahim, who is widely known as one of the most charitable players in the league, said he hopes his legacy extends beyond basketball.

"I just hope that whatever team I was on, whatever city I was in, whatever organization I was with, that my contributions were about more than just playing basketball," he said. "If all I did in those situations I was in was play basketball, then I'd say I did a poor job."

He won't be leaving the Kings, though, as basketball president Geoff Petrie said he plans on adding him to the team's staff either as an assistant coach or in a different capacity.

"It's our intention to find a place for him within the organization, based on the person and the player that he was," Petrie said. "We've talked to him about joining the coaching staff, and we'll probably try and get something like that done here pretty quickly."

He was still in his playing prime in August 2005, when the Kings' free-agent signing of Abdur-Rahim had all the appearances of a steal. The Cal product who was taken third overall by Vancouver in the 1996 draft was widely known as one of the game's most consistent scorers and rebounders. And while he also had the longest playoff-less streak of any player in the league before his only postseason appearance in 2006, Abdur-Rahim had been surrounded by sub-par supporting casts in each of his first nine seasons in Vancouver, Atlanta and Portland.

The Kings signed him to a five-year, $29 million deal after New Jersey reneged on a sign-and-trade with Portland to acquire Abdur-Rahim. The Nets, citing evidence from MRIs taken on Abdur-Rahim's knees, were scared off by scar tissue and said at the time that they feared arthritis in the long term.

"To that point in time, he really hadn't missed any games because of his knee," Petrie said. "At some point, those things become just a matter of opinion and somewhat of a guesstimate, I guess. You can take a cross section of any number of players, and based on X-rays ... the sense is that they'll have short careers and they wind up playing 15 years. And then there are the ones who are right, obviously. But it's a judgment call, and we made one."

The physical decline began in earnest on June 26, 2007, when he had the first of two arthroscopic surgeries on his right knee. Six months later, he had the procedure again. This summer, the reality facing him became clear when standard workouts would leave him hobbling for days.

"Instead of getting better, it got worse," he said.

While the Kings wish Abdur-Rahim's decline hadn't come with two seasons left on his contract, there is a silver lining in the situation. There is a strong possibility that they will have Abdur-Rahim's salary ($6.6 million) come off the salary cap for the 2009-10 season. According to the league's collective bargaining agreement, the Kings would have to apply for his salary to be covered by insurance because his career was cut short by injury.

If the league-appointed doctor confirms his condition as the reason for retirement, the Kings' current payroll for the 2009-10 season would decrease from approximately $54 million to $47 million.

The league's salary cap for the coming season is $58.6 million. Petrie said it was his intention to apply for the relief.

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