He Has Great Patients

After the signings of Gary Payton and Karl Malone had receded from the front pages, the Lakers roped in their other free-agent coup of the summer.

He is the man Shaquille O’Neal credits with bringing his career back to life.

He is an innovative person who can find inspiration in a textbook or in a children’s playground.

What he does is as broad a mixture as who he is. He came to the Lakers from Glasgow via Vancouver, a journey that’s reflected in his Scottish accent tinged with Canadian pronunciations such as “a-boot” and “special-eye-zation.”

His name is Alex McKechnie and he’s a physical therapist. He has no official title with the Lakers, but there’s no shortage of suggestions.

“He’s an artist,” said Chip Schaefer, the Lakers’ athletic performance coordinator.

“He’s the resurrector of injured players,” O’Neal said.

McKechnie’s exercises can look like bizarre choreography and he tosses out such terms as “sequential firing” and “cognitive learning,” but his approach to physical therapy is actually quite simple.

He believes that muscle movements are not isolated but rather a series of related actions -- actions that can be trained. And it all begins with a strong, stable core (defined as the area between the lower chest and upper thighs).

“My ideas, they’re really an eclectic approach to rehabilitation,” McKechnie said. “When it comes down to movement patterns, movement patterns are the same. The one thing is, the hardware doesn’t change, it’s the software programming that changes.”

If muscle movement is software, McKechnie is Bill Gates.

“His approach is so unique,” General Manager Mitch Kupchak said. “Our medical staff and players gravitate toward him. The results are astounding.”

McKechnie holds a degree in rehabilitation medicine from the Leeds School of Physiotherapy in England. But he made most of his breakthroughs when he was working in Vancouver, surrounded by an innovative group of doctors and therapists that included Vancouver Canuck trainer Larry Ashley. He combined various ideas and put together his own programs.

One day, while walking his dog in the park, he saw children rocking on spring-mounted plastic horses. He noticed the torque and the recoil, which gave him the idea for the core-board, a workout platform that creates three-dimensional movement and forces the body to use its core muscles to maintain balance. Reebok bought the idea in 1999 and mass-produced it.

Beginning in the early 1980s, McKechnie worked at Simon Fraser University, with the Vancouver Whitecaps of the North American Soccer League, and the Canadian national soccer team. He began working with the Canucks and later, through the NHL Players’ Assn., with several other pro hockey players. He credits his work with former Mighty Duck Paul Kariya with helping him to gain more recognition.

McKechnie, 52, entered the Laker world six years ago, after O’Neal had suffered a strained abdominal muscle. The injury wasn’t responding to treatment, and O’Neal was facing the option of a surgical procedure that would sideline him for up to 10 months. Through a doctor in Vancouver who knew both McKechnie and Laker team doctor Steve Lombardo, they found McKechnie.

“He gave us some ideas and they seemed a little hokey,” Laker trainer Gary Vitti said. “But at that point we weren’t doing very well, so even hokey was better than what we were doing. We hooked up with Alex, and even though some of the stuff was hokey, it started to work.”

O’Neal returned to the lineup after sitting out 21 games.

“He brought me back,” O’Neal said. “I was dead, and he brought me back.”

The Lakers used his services increasingly every year, up to 40 games a season. But McKechnie was also gaining in popularity with other teams and other sports.

Former Dodger Eric Karros hired McKechnie to help him with his troublesome back two years ago, and he wonders how any athlete could not use McKechnie.

McKechnie helped Baron Davis of the New Orleans Hornets recover from back problems last year, and now Davis is playing like an MVP candidate.

“He just maintained everything and took me over the top with my conditioning and training,” Davis said. “I noticed the difference from the time he came and assessed me and told me all my problems. He told me things that doctors couldn’t tell me.”

Besides the Hornets, the Orlando Magic, Atlanta Hawks, Seattle SuperSonics and Memphis Grizzlies have used him.

As the Laker roster grew older this summer, with the addition of Malone, 40, and Payton, 35, Vitti thought the team needed to retain McKechnie’s services throughout the year. Vitti, Schaefer, strength and conditioning coach Jim Cotta and massage therapist Dan Garcia had all adapted his ideas, but as Schaefer noted, trying to run the concepts without McKechnie is like trying to run the triangle offense without Tex Winter. The timing was good for McKechnie, who was growing weary of flying from Vancouver to locations throughout the U.S. every week. His daughters had left home for college. And he wanted a chance to work on “pre-habilitation” instead of “reclamation projects.” He and the Lakers agreed to a one-year contract in September.

“I probably wouldn’t have done it for any other team,” McKechnie said. “But I’ve had a growing commitment to the Lakers over the last four to five years and it was increasing year to year.

“My decision to come here was obviously based on the quality of the staff that was here. That allowed me a range, a latitude to expand the work of my work experience and apply my knowledge.”

So when reporters entered the University of Hawaii’s Stan Sheriff Center on the first full day of training camp, after the eyes had taken in Payton and Malone in purple and gold, they wandered over to the far sideline, where McKechnie was helping Rick Fox’s recovery from surgery for a torn tendon in his right foot. It looked as if Fox was auditioning for a role in the movie “Breakin’ 3: Electric Boogaloo on the Chain Gang.” With elastic straps linking his ankles to his wrists, Fox went through a series of robot-like movements with his arms and legs.

“I just went with it,” Fox said. “When you have injuries like I have, you’re dying to come back, you’re basically willing to try anything.”

How could a bunch of arm movements help an injured foot? Stand up, pretend to throw a ball, see what happens with your feet, and you’ll get an idea.

To get a sense of the importance of core strength, make a fist with your right hand, push it down with your left hand and note the action of your stomach muscles.

For McKechnie, it was a matter of devising exercises to expand on those concepts.

“You’re going, ‘How come that wasn’t in every textbook?’ ” said Schaefer, who holds a degree in exercise science. “In its simplicity, it’s amazing. He has such an incredible grasp and insight of human movement and muscle movements and the sequencing aspects of muscles and how they move joints....

“A lot of therapists are kind of paint-by-numbers. He’s kind of like a Jackson Pollock approach.”

McKechnie doesn’t see himself as an abstract expressionist artist or any type of genius.

“There’s not one player I’ve ever worked with that doesn’t deserve the credit,” McKechnie said. “I just direct them. The key as a therapist is to empower the player and make him do the work. Nobody wants to stop. They want to continue to play.

“The key is identifying that process, to work with the player toward an end. A professor told me years ago, if you give a patient enough time, they’ll tell you what’s wrong with them. And if you really give them enough time, they’ll tell you how to fix it.”

Now McKechnie is along for the ride this Laker season, another part of the all-star lineup that includes O’Neal, Malone, Payton and Kobe Bryant.

Vitti, pausing to knock on the hardwood practice court, notes that the team seems to have fewer injury problems. And McKechnie has a prime seat for this unique collection of talent.

“I’ve been around sports my whole career, enough to know and recognize that what I’m seeing is somewhat historic,” McKechnie said. “Not only with the players, but with the coaching staff and the people that are there. You only need to travel with this team to realize the impact that it has, the charisma, the mystique that goes with it. Obviously, the Lakers have that.

“I appreciate the fact that I’m sitting in the presence of brilliance, really.”

Ask any of the Lakers to look back at the white-haired man behind their bench, and they’ll probably say the same thing.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.