Malone Feeling Too Good to Retire Now

It had been months since Karl Malone felt so optimistic about playing basketball again.

He had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee Tuesday, and when he awoke, his orthopedist, Ralph Venuto, told him the injury would not end his career.

“It will be your choice,” Venuto told him. “Karl, you’ll play 40 minutes a night if you want to.”

Malone left Venuto’s care on two crutches but by Thursday morning was on one. According to his rehabilitation schedule, he’ll ride a bicycle next week, start weight-bearing exercises by imid-August and, probably, be recovered by training camp.

“I’m very, very excited,” Malone said.

Venuto said Thursday that he found a healthy ligament, more cartilage and less damage in the knee than he expected. So, rather than bracing himself for a decision on retirement, something he’d done since he tore a ligament in his knee in December, Malone was again thinking about another basketball season, his 20th.

“I want to put to rest the stuff that I’m retiring,” Malone said. “First of all, I couldn’t make a decision before surgery. Now, it’s great to have the option to play.

“Basically, what I’m doing is seeing how all of this stuff that’s going on is going to shake out.”

The NBA Finals concluded with Malone in street clothes and on the bench. He suspected a recurrence of the torn knee ligament that kept him out of 39 regular-season games. Venuto instead found a small lesion in the cartilage and performed a micro-fracture procedure, surgery in which microscopic holes are drilled in the cartilage to promote blood flow and healing.

The ligament, Venuto said, had healed “beautifully.”

Once concerned that injury would force his retirement at 41, Malone instead is optimistic that he will be able to play again. His next decision, he said, is where and with whom, and then whether his family is supportive of it.

In the last two weeks, Phil Jackson was told by the Lakers that he would not be asked back as coach, Shaquille O’Neal demanded a trade, and Kobe Bryant declared for free agency.

Malone said he hoped owner Jerry Buss and General Manager Mitch Kupchak could keep O’Neal and re-sign Bryant, because he would like to play between them again.

“I came here because Kobe and Shaq were here, on this team,” Malone said. “So, if I’m the person that makes decisions, I don’t think there’d be any decision to make. I’d do whatever I had to do to get both of those kids back.”

Malone stepped into the toxic O’Neal-Bryant relationship last fall and built friendships with both. Bryant had been charged with felony sexual assault. O’Neal and Bryant feuded on the eve of the season. O’Neal was unhappy with negotiations for a contract extension. Then the indestructible Malone, who’d missed 10 games in his career, was seriously injured for the first time.

Still, he stood between them and raised his eyebrow, stood beside them and smiled and, largely because of it, the Lakers won the Western Conference. Malone injured his knee early in the NBA Finals, limped through three more games, and the Lakers, not surprisingly, were not the same.

Malone is a free agent. If he continues his career, it probably will be with the Lakers, and, he hopes, beside O’Neal or Bryant or both.

What he believes is that it will be his decision, based on his heart, not his knee.

“My knee is going to be 100%,” he said. “I believe it. It’s going to be my choice.”