Needing a Leg to Stand on

It is no longer about whether Karl Malone will limp, but how badly, and whether he can help the Lakers at all in Game 3, or in any of the remaining games of the NBA Finals.

A day after he reinjured his right knee in an overtime victory over the Detroit Pistons and in the hours before the Lakers boarded a flight for Michigan, Malone would say only that he would try, that everyone could count on that.

The Lakers said Malone’s participation would be a game-time decision. In the meantime, while the Lakers considered their options at power forward, a position at which they are vulnerable, Malone took treatments involving ice, electric stimulation and, according to trainer Gary Vitti, “some other stuff.”

A bit more buoyant than he was Tuesday night, Malone nevertheless was solemn as he rolled off Vitti’s table. His season as a Laker has meant endless hours of physical treatment, and some basketball. Practices he might have spent finding himself in an offense dominated by Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant instead were spent with his knee lashed to a bag of ice.

Asked Wednesday whether the physical complications, the first of an ironman career, were enough to make him choose summer retirement over summer rehabilitation, he said, “I don’t want to say right now. It’s an emotional time, and you say things you regret later.”

He tore a ligament in his right knee in late December, had the knee drained between the Western Conference finals and the NBA Finals, and then twisted it early in Game 2, leading to a memorable sideline conversation with Vitti.

Vitti wanted to take him from the floor and into the locker room. Malone shook his head.

“I didn’t want to go in the back,” Malone said. “Last time I went in the back, I was done for three months.”

For the moment, in the aftermath of one of the memorable finishes in team history, the Lakers are concentrating on tonight’s game. Perhaps they eventually will consider the benefits of resting Malone until Sunday’s Game 4, an option that would allow him five days’ rest rather than two.

But that wasn’t the case Wednesday. The Lakers said they would not even bother with an MRI exam, which would show them the extent of the injury and perhaps define the pain.

As Malone said, “It’s irrelevant. I do understand the situation, but it doesn’t matter at this particular time. What is that going to tell me? OK, then. I know me pretty well, and I know my body. If I suit up, I expect to play and have no excuses.”

So they worked on the knee, which had improved over a long, difficult night.

Malone’s brother, Terry, shoved reporters aside to reach him, to be near him and share his disappointment Tuesday night. Malone’s wife, Kay, wept in the hallway. Karl’s dream had become that important to all of them, all of it threatened by a ligament that won’t quite heal.

“His knee looks real good, considering,” Vitti said. “But he has some specific pain. His treatment will be for pain management.”

Vitti and others have asked Malone to consider wearing a brace, or perhaps a sleeve. Malone, who has told stories of wrestling wild boars to the ground, wouldn’t hear it.

At that, he smiled.

“I ain’t never seen a samurai with a brace on,” he said. “And I’ve been watching a lot of that movie [“The Last Samurai”] here lately.... I feel that if anybody can handle it, I can. I’m just stubborn enough to feel like that. Maybe that’s why it happened to me, out of everybody on the team. You know, I like to go out and do the occasional huntin’. I’m a pretty good guy, though. Sometimes bad things happen to good people.”

The Lakers have come to love him, as much for his country wisdom as for his relentless game. They winced Tuesday night when he injured himself again, and cringed when he no longer could clear the rim on layup attempts. The Pistons attacked him in the final quarters, sending Rasheed Wallace at him, and Malone grimaced as he tried to brace himself.

Should Malone be able to play, Coach Phil Jackson said, there will almost certainly be more of Wallace.

“That’s what we have to expect, and he has to expect it too,” Jackson said. “He has to make that judgment call as to whether he can stand up to that or not.

“I think his teammates support him. That’s the important part. They really care about him. They’re going to find a way to help him out in those situations if he’s at all capable.”

The Lakers have plenty to rally around. They’ll need one win in Detroit, at least. They’ve had their magical moments, oh-point-four followed by two-point-one, and their train-wreck moments. From near disaster, Kareem Rush appeared, and then Luke Walton saved them.

Summarizing this postseason, given the choice of “terribly difficult” or “enchanting,” Jackson grinned and said, “It’s both. It’s exactly both. Some of it, I mean, in the playoffs you have to have a tremendous amount of good fortune to win. You have to make key shots. And, as they say, you build your own luck in this game and I think that’s part of it. Guys do it by their attitude, by their camaraderie, by their belief in one another and by playing team ball. By having that unselfish attitude that builds champions. That’s some of it too.”

So, figure on Malone, at some point.

“When I consider what’s at stake here, if this truly is the last, what the hell am I saving myself for?” Malone said. “As long as I can play with my kids and do the things that I want to do when this thing is all over with, it’s totally worth it to me.”

Then he added quietly, “Just three more wins.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

TONIGHT’S GAME 3

6 PDT at Detroit

Channel 7

HOME/AWAY

With the next three games of the series scheduled for Detroit, here is the Laker playoff record on the road this season and the Piston playoff record at home:

LAKERS

at Houston 1-1

at San Antonio 1-2

at Minnesota 1-2

PISTONS

vs. Milwaukee 2-1

vs. New Jersey 3-1

vs. Indiana 2-1