LOOK WHO’S TALKING

They have flown over deficits, sprinted past injuries, marched calmly through the most treacherous moments of their professional lives.

But these last two months, the most courageous single act I have seen among the Lakers occurs when one is standing still.

It is Ron Harper.

Every time he opens his mouth.

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With the Lakers stuck, stuck, stuck on the verge of a championship today, wondering again when they will win the one game that can make them whole, maybe this is an odd time to write about their aging point guard.

Then again, maybe not.

Ron Harper spends his entire life stuck, stuck, stuck.

Sometimes on a “C.” Other times on a “W.” Talk about somebody who would open his wallet for a vowel.

Harper stutters.

You may have heard him described as a “recovering stutterer” or “having a speech impediment,” but that’s simply politically correct blather.

Some words stick to Harper’s mouth as though they’re glued there. Many that leave, don’t do so without a fight.

Harper will take five seconds to start a sentence, and two seconds to finish it.

Sometimes he finds a word by rolling his eyes. Other times it sneaks out above a trembling bottom lip.

Ron Harper, plain and simple, is a stutterer.

It takes one to know one.

While growing up, I sounded exactly like Ron Harper.

Today my problem would seem mild, even nonexistent, in comparison.

This is thanks to years of speech therapy combined with a decision to do something Ron Harper would never do.

I ran.

I avoided words that began with

letters--such as “R”--that would get trapped under my tongue.

I changed my everyday vocabulary so I would use only words that were easy to say, and unlikely to embarrass.

Heck, at one point I even considered changing my first name because I kept stumbling on that “B.”

Once I began writing, which was another way to avoid talking, I learned other tricks.

I did virtually all of my interviews face to face, not because I was some hard-nosed reporter, but because the silence I anticipated at the other end of the phone would lock my jaws completely.

I would give my interview subjects pet names like “Buddy,” not because I was some fun guy, but because I could use those words to start a sentence and build momentum.

But this is not about me, this is about Ron Harper.

Because every time he is interviewed, he puts people like me to shame.

Harper doesn’t run. He stays. He fights. He moves to the next word and fights some more.

He has no tricks, attempts no shortcuts. He says what he wants to say, even if it takes him long, uncomfortable moments of stammering to say it.

“This is me, this is who I am,” he says. “I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Harper is undoubtedly the most pained speaker in the NBA, and perhaps one of the most pained in the history of sports, which includes the stuttering likes of Bill Walton, Lester Hayes and Bo Jackson.

Yet no Laker is quoted more.

Think about it.

“What, I’m going to sit home and say nothing because I’m worried that people will laugh at me?” he says. “You can’t hide.”

Opposing players indeed still mock him--see Portland’s classless Rasheed Wallace during the Western Conference finals.

Yet no Laker does more talking during timeouts.

Think about it.

“After all I went through growing up, nothing bothers me anymore,” he says. “The special thing about life is that you have to be who you are.”

He has always been this way. Growing up in a lower-income environment in Dayton, Ohio, he was never able to get proper treatment for his condition.

He did his therapy on the basketball court.

“Kids would mock me and talk behind my back and I was always like, ‘OK, fine, you wanna play me?’ ” Harper remembers. “That is how I got back at everybody.”

He attended Miami of Ohio partially because of the school’s speech therapy program. He became more understandable. He decided he could overcome it without challenging every critic to a game of one-on-one.

Today, he has not been to speech therapy in 14 years, and thinks about it no more than he thinks about his fingernails.

“Just look where I’ve been,” he says. “Now I’m like, whatever.”

There have been times during these playoffs when, because there was no official practice, the Lakers were required to make only one player available to the media.

That player is almost always Ron Harper.

Think about it.

Walton, who has recovered enough to become an NBC commentator, has thought plenty about it.

“Ron Harper is a testament to a man standing up and being himself,” Walton says. “Every day he tells us, ‘This is who I am. This is my game.’ ”

That game is the same with the basketball as with the consonant blocking.

Harper’s 35-year-old skills are sometimes as erratic as his speech, yet he doesn’t back away.

He struggles, and struggles, and hangs around long enough to beat Portland with a jump shot or Indiana with his defense.

When the team has needed championship focus, he has loudly offered it.

When the team has need further proof, he has showed them his three championship rings.

In Sacramento during a first-round loss, he even slipped one on his finger while sitting on the bench.

He can take one minute to say something everyone else can say in five seconds, but the team is still listening.

“We watch him every day stepping right in front of the cameras every day,” Derek Fisher said. “That’s all we need to see to know he’s a champion.”

This being Harper’s first year as a Laker, the team initially didn’t know what to make of him. Somebody even actually cracked a stuttering joke.

“Everybody laughed, it went down as one of the funniest jokes of all time,” John Salley said. “And nobody has told another one since because of the respect we have for him.

“I tell you what, Ron Harper is a real man.”

I agree. I tell Ron Harper this. I break every rule in that little journalist’s book and tell him during a group interview session that I admire him for his courage and his grace.

He stops the interview. He smiles. The eyes are focused, the lips are steady.

“Thank you very much,” he says, smooth and clear and perfect.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.