Shaq Provides the Best Therapy

The Canadian physical therapist Shaquille O’Neal credits with solving his lingering abdominal-muscle injury said that O’Neal’s most-valuable-player season is proof of how hard O’Neal worked to heal the problem.

O’Neal said he had been limited by the injury until the pain went away last off-season.

“An abdominal tear in any athlete, especially a man his size, is bad; it can last a long period of time,” said Alex McKechnie of Vancouver, who is preparing to market the exercise tool he developed specifically for O’Neal.

“Unless you work at it, it remains a problem. You’ve seen him work, you know how hard he works at it. He committed himself to it. . . .

“He was absolutely worried about it. But now I think he’s mentally 100%, he’s physically 100%. . . . He doesn’t think about it anymore.”

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Coach Phil Jackson said that given his battles with the Chicago Bulls against the Utah Jazz, and the Jazz’s proven resiliency, he would refrain from offering sympathy to the Jazz, which is on the verge of being swept out of the playoffs by Portland.

“They don’t want any remorse from me,” Jackson said. “I’m not going to give them that. . . . It’s just the way teams go and age. It looked to me like that was going to happen four years ago against Seattle. . . . Now the last three years have been great. I’m not going to count them out yet.”

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Some Lakers were pleased to see actor Ed Norton--star of “American History X,” the movie Jackson has inserted into recent game-film sessions--at courtside for Game 2 at Staples Center.

“I don’t know if he knows that he’s been in our locker room for the past two weeks,” Kobe Bryant said of Norton. “He might have to get a ring.”