Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way to Play All 82 Games

You could watch every repetition in an NBA player’s exercise routine, and that wouldn’t show you what it takes to play all 82 games in a regular season.

You could stay up all night with the team’s trainer as he treats an injury in his hotel room, and that wouldn’t give you the secret to lasting an entire season, either.

“I don’t know that the trainer has that much to do with a guy playing 82,” Laker trainer Gary Vitti said. “If a guy wants to play 82 ... let’s put it this way: There’s guys that can play 82 but don’t. Some want to but can’t.”

The secret is inside. It’s a matter of the mind as much as the body -- even in the case of Karl Malone’s chiseled physique.

“It’s a grueling schedule,” Vitti said. “There’s a whole mental/physical thing that goes along with it. There’s some days you

And you won’t find boots strapped any more tightly than on the feet of Malone and Gary Payton, the Lakers’ two major free-agent acquisitions last summer. Malone went the distance 10 times, played all but one game six times and sat out two games twice during his 18 seasons in Utah. Payton played the full schedule nine times and played 81 twice while in Seattle.

“These guys just don’t miss,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “I think that’s infectious, and I think it’s great for us.”

There’s a sense of duty and honor that drives a player to reach that magic number.

“When you play 82 games, that means you’re durable, you’re a tough guy, you didn’t let your teammates down, and you played every night,” Payton said. “I really take pride in that, playing 82, 81.

“It takes a toughness, and that’s what I’ve got. Even if you’re hurt and sore, you know that you can go out and give them some kind of help and have the team win.”

Vitti has seen the gold standard for durability. He was the Laker trainer when A.C. Green played eight full seasons in Los Angeles, including the bulk of his NBA-record 1,192 consecutive games.

But Malone’s toughness and his credentials impress even Vitti. Of the 10 games Malone has sat out in his career, six were because of suspensions. He went from April 22, 1989, to March 15, 2002 without missing a game because of injury or illness. That’s right, the ‘90’s without a sick day.

“Karl, at his age -- he’s hurt now -- he’s out there doing it,” Vitti said. “He’s a consummate professional, gets treatment, compliant, does exactly what you tell him to do.”

Now that Malone is 40 and Payton is 35, it takes even more for them to drag themselves onto the court each night. Payton sprained his ankle during practice Nov. 9. Malone tweaked his left hamstring in a game against Toronto three days later. Remarkably, Payton said he had never suffered a sprained ankle and Malone had never had hamstring problems in any of their thousands of NBA games before this season.

The odds are catching up to them just as surely as their age is, but Malone sounded more determined than ever to suit up every night. He turned down millions of dollars to come to the Lakers for a shot at the championship, and he recognizes that his time frame is limited. He’s at a point where he can almost count every game remaining in his career -- so why not play in all of them?

“If it’s one of those things where they say you shouldn’t play, we’ll take a hard look at it, but it’s hard for me not to,” Malone said. “After you make the sacrifice that I’ve made, it’s tough not to play. No matter what, I still owe it to the fans, and myself and my family for me to play.”

Another reason Malone stubbornly stays in the lineup is that he doesn’t want to get out of game conditioning. No amount of sprints or bicycle work can duplicate playing in an NBA game.

Malone’s ability to keep chugging along is a primary reason he’s within sight of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record 38,387 career points. At his current average of 15.2 points per game, Malone would reach Abdul-Jabbar’s record 50 games into next season.

Where would Shaquille O’Neal be had he not missed 129 games during his 12 NBA seasons? Multiply the number of missed games by his career scoring average of 27.5 points per game and that’s 3,558 points. Tack that on to his career total of 20,747 points and he would move from 27th to 14th on the all-time scoring list. The bulk of his missed games came because of a broken thumb in 1995-96, a hyperextended left knee in 1996-97, a strained abdominal muscle in 1997-98 and the now-infamous arthritic big toe over the last two seasons.

O’Neal said that playing every game and maximizing his points mattered more to him, “When I was a young, high-jumpin’, court-runnin’ no-championship-winnin’ fool.”

Now he has a lower threshold -- and a different approach.

“It’s not who starts,” he said last month. “It’s who finishes.

“So I’m going to try to be out there all the games, but I like to pace myself, because I play a different type of game than any big man has ever played. I’m sort of like playing 80 football games a year. Every now and then I might take one game, maybe two, to rejuvenate my battery.

“But I’ve never missed a playoff game.”

With that approach, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Malone already has outlasted O’Neal (who sat out Sunday’s game because of a strained left calf) in Malone’s preseason challenge to see who could play every game.

And it’s a reminder of the sharp mental edge that separated Michael Jordan from everyone else in the league when he played. Chip Schaeffer, the Lakers’ athletic-performance coordinator, was the Chicago Bulls’ trainer from 1990-1998. He knew Jordan well enough to accurately predict that, if nothing else, Jordan would play all 82 games last season in his farewell tour around the league.

“Because consistency and durability mean something to him,” Schaeffer said.

“I saw so many times, on back-to-backs, where he had injuries in one game, hurting his back in Portland, we had a game in Sacramento the next night, working around the clock. He was determined he was going to play no matter what.”

Can a player get so caught up in playing that he hurts the team? Occasionally. Or, perhaps that should be, on one occasion. Malone can think of one occasion when he should have sat out: when the Jazz played Seattle on Nov. 3, 2002. Malone had the flu that day, and he didn’t make a single shot or free throw for the first time in his career.

“I shouldn’t have played in that game,” Malone recalled. “That’s the only game in my career that I actually said that. Probably 15 years earlier, I could have.”

Not that Malone is conceding too much because of his age. No one should question his judgment when he decides whether to play, either. The first game after he injured his hamstring he had 16 points and nine rebounds. Then he posted double-doubles in four of the next five games.

“There’s a difference between playing in pain and sucking it up and doing something silly, where you shouldn’t go out there,” Malone said. “That’s the balance.”

You can believe players such as Malone and Payton know the difference -- just as you can count on them putting on that uniform night after night.

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Pencil Them In

A look at the number of games played by Lakers Karl Malone and Gary Payton during their careers:

*--* MALONE PAYTON 1985-86...81 1990-91...82 1986-87...82 1991-92...81 1987-88...82 1992-93...82 1988-89...80 1993-94...82 1989-90...82 1994-95...82 1990-91...82 1995-96...81 1991-92...81 1996-97...82 1992-93...82 1997-98...82 1993-94...82 1998-99...*50 1994-95...82 1999-00...82 1995-96...82 2000-01...79 1996-97...82 2001-02...82 1997-98...81 2002-03...80 1998-99...*49 1999-00...82 2000-01...81 2001-02...80 2002-03...81

*--*

*Season shortened because of lockout.

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