Malone’s Swelling Is Down

Karl Malone received treatment on his sprained knee Wednesday and performed various range-of-motion exercises while his teammates practiced.

His progress has been as expected since Sunday, when Malone’s knee was pinned beneath Phoenix forward Scott Williams. Malone has not played since and probably will sit out at least two more games.

“He’s doing pretty good,” Coach Phil Jackson said. “Not as good as he was perhaps [Tuesday], according to the report. But his swelling’s down and his mood’s better.... He’s optimistic.”

Malone told team officials he did not know whether he would attend games today or Sunday, because the frustration of sitting out is very difficult for him. He will be examined Sunday night or Monday morning by team physician Steve Lombardo.

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While the most memorable Lakers-vs.-Yao Ming moment was Kobe Bryant’s dunk on the 7-foot-5 Houston Rocket center, the hype last season generally was saved for Yao vs. Shaquille O’Neal.

That’s over.

But O’Neal said Wednesday that he looks forward to the Yao matchup, even if he doesn’t consider it a matchup, if you know what he means.

“It’s cool,” O’Neal said. “It would be better if he played me one on one. But they’re not going to play me one on one. They’re going to double with [Kelvin] Cato, they’re going to triple like they all do. You guys always look at it as a Yao-Shaq matchup. I play him one on one, but he don’t play me one on one. You all know what the Diesel can do.”

More important, Jackson said, will be the defense away from the basket.

“Every single team knows the weakness of the Lakers is screen-and-rolls,” he said. “Every team we play against, it’s always screen-and-rolls. So, we’re going to see Steve Francis and [Cuttino] Mobley in screen-and-rolls.”

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Bryant continues to draw more All-Star votes than any other player in the Western Conference, even as he faces a felony sexual assault charge.

Bryant trails Toronto’s Vince Carter and Detroit’s Ben Wallace overall but has received nearly 50,000 more votes than his nearest conference challenger (Tim Duncan) and has more than double the votes of the nearest guard (Francis).

O’Neal leads Western Conference centers, just ahead of Yao. Malone is fourth among forwards, Gary Payton third among guards.

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TODAY

vs. Houston, 5:30 p.m., Channel 7

Site -- Staples Center.

Radio -- KLAC (570), KWKW (1330).

Records -- Lakers 20-6, Rockets 15-12.

Record vs. Rockets (2002-03) -- 2-2.

Update -- The Rockets have lost two games in a row and five of seven. While they have adopted Jeff Van Gundy’s defensive style and have 15 wins for it, the Rockets rank 27th in the league in scoring and have scored as many as 100 points in regulation once since opening night. The Lakers average 102.2 points a game. Cuttino Mobley averages 19 points in Rocket wins. The Rockets are 10-2 when Steve Francis has more than five assists. In his second season, Yao Ming averages 16 points, 9.3 rebounds and 2.04 blocks. In about 20 minutes a game, former Clipper Eric Piatkowski is shooting 34.8% from the three-point arc.

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Stamp of Reliability

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The Lakers’ Karl Malone, by sitting out tonight’s game against the Houston Rockets because of a sprained knee, will have sat out more games (three) this season than in any other in his 19-season NBA career. The following are NBA players who rarely sat out games, listed in order by the percentage of regular-season games they sat out to the total of games their teams played:

*--* Player Pos. Career From Seasons Sat Out of Team’s Games Pct. A.C. GREEN F 1985-2001 16 3 of 1,281 002 GARY PAYTON G 1990- 14 6 of 1,059 006 ELVIN HAYES F-C 1968-84 16 9 of 1,312 007 RANDY SMITH G 1971-83 12 8 of 984 008 KARL MALONE F 1985- 19 12 of 1,470 008 BILL C 1980-94* 14 11 of 1,079 010 LAIMBEER JOHN G 1984-2003 19 22 of 1,526 014 STOCKTON CLIFFORD F 1989- 15 18 of 1,141 016 ROBINSON WALT C 1961-75** 14 19 of 1,062 018 BELLAMY DAN ISSEL F 1970-85*** 15 24 of 1,242 019 MARK G 1987-2003 16 27 of 1,281 021 JACKSON CHET WALKER F 1962-75 13 25 of 1,057 024 JOHN G-F 1962-78 16 33 of 1,303 025 HAVLICEK REGGIE G 1987- 17 38 of 1,309 029 MILLER ALEX F 1976-91 15 37 of 1,230 030 ENGLISH *Retired during 1993-94 season. **Waived after one game in 1975-76 and retired. ***Include s six ABA seasons. CRITERIA * Players considered had their teams play at least 984 games (12 seasons) and started their careers no earlier than 1961-62, the NBA’s first regular season of 80 games or more. The 1966-67 season was 81 games, and regular seasons were 82 games thereafter , with the exception of the lockout season of 1998-99 when 50 were played. NOTABLE * In some instances players were traded during the season, allowing them to play more than 82 games. Because of a quirk in the schedule, a trade from the New York Knicks to the Detroit Pistons on Dec. 19, 1968 allowed Walt Bellamy to play an NBA-record 88 games in the 1968-69 season. * A.C. Green (1,192 games) and Randy Smith (906) have the NBA’s two longest games-play ed streaks. Johnny “Red” Kerr is third on the consecutiv e-games list (844), and he sat out nine of 914 games in his career from 1954-66 -- all in his final season.

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