2002: Fall Feature: Surgeon in the NBA

By Gary Libman

Dr. Steve Lombardo '63 holds a sneaker that belonged to his patient, Shaquille O'Neal.

Above an aquarium in Dr. Steve Lombardo's office rests an extremely long purple and white shoe that belonged to one of the largest and most important feet in America.

“People see it,” Lombardo says of the size-22 basketball shoe worn by Shaquille O'Neal, “and they think it's like a model from a store, it's so big.”

The shoe is inscribed “To Dr. Lombardo. 'Six to eight weeks,'” and refers to Lombardo's decision in 1997 when the star center hyper-extended his knee.

“I told him he would probably be out six to eight weeks,” recalls the trim Lombardo, dapper in a suit and tie behind a large desk in his West Los Angeles office. “At the month mark he said, 'I'm going back.' But he still had swelling, atrophied muscles and a decreased range of motion, and I said, 'You really can't.' He was upset.”

O'Neal took his plea to the top of the Los Angeles Lakers' organization, but owner Jerry Buss supported Lombardo and O'Neal missed 28 games. Management's backing of Lombardo highlights his crucial role as team physician for the three-time defending NBA champions.

“I'm an integral part of the network of the team,” says Lombardo, a 1963 Amherst graduate and an orthopedic surgeon at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic, a pioneer in sports medicine. “The only mistake you can make in this case is to have him [O'Neal] go back too soon. There's a bigger downside to that than if you hold him out an extra week. But the Lakers realize this athlete is a long-term investment, so they want to make the best decision.”

Lombardo's importance to the Lakers is also appreciated by former general manager Jerry West. “He's been the constant that has been there to diagnose and treat some very serious injuries to some of our truly great players,” says West, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player. “Almost every player I know has had confidence that he's the person who is going to steer them in the right direction for the best medical advice.

“No [player] would go out there for the Lakers who would jeopardize their career in any way,” says West, now president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies. “Dr. Lombardo always would be on the cautious side with regard to getting the player back into action. He's simply the best you can find.”

Lombardo has been the Lakers' physician since 1974 and is also the team doctor for the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women's National Basketball Association. He held the same position with the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League from 1974 to 1992. He has operated on Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and treated Kobe Bryant and Wayne Gretzky. He's also attended to celebrities such as Wayne Newton, James Garner and Ben Vereen.

Although athletes and celebrities constitute less than one percent of his practice, he spends a lot of time with the Lakers, attending all practices, sitting behind the bench at home games and traveling with the team during the playoffs.

This season a major concern will be O'Neal. As the Lakers won their third consecutive championship, the 7-foot, one-inch, 335-pound center struggled with injuries.

A cut finger suffered during the playoffs has healed and a painful little toe has been surgically repaired. However, an arthritic big toe that restricted O'Neal's motion and pained him periodically last season did not heal, and the player underwent surgery in September, about seven weeks before the NBA season. Nevertheless, Lombardo predicted that O'Neal will play well in 2002-03, as the Lakers seek their fourth straight title.

“Shaq's tough,” Lombardo says. “He's played with pain throughout his career and always delivered when important issues are on the line; I've got all the confidence in him.”

Lombardo also cares for the other Lakers star, Bryant, 24, who resisted the physician's recommendations on one occasion in 1999. In the first half of a game in Minnesota, Bryant severely injured his shooting hand. Despite the injury, he made five of six shots in the second half. After the game, an X-ray revealed a broken metacarpal, the longest bone in Bryant's hand. Despite the broken bone, Bryant insisted he'd played well and vowed not to miss any games.

“That's fine with me,” Lombardo told the strong-willed Bryant. “The first time a guy hits you in that hand, the broken bone may pop right through the skin.”

“He said, 'Okay, what do I need to do?''' Lombardo recalls. “We put him in a splint. He missed five to six weeks.”

Lombardo, 60, pursued his career partly out of a love of athletics. He lettered in four sports in high school in Pawtucket, R.I., and in two sports at Amherst. But his Amherst experience was about far more than sports.

“We had an unusually diversified mix of people from all over the country,” he says of the then all-male student body. “They brought a lot of different things to the party culturally and intellectually. I came out of a small town in Rhode Island and really hadn't been many places. College really stimulated me in a lot of different ways and contributed greatly to my growth as a person.

“I majored in biology,” he says, “and the professors were some of the best in the world. A lot of the study skills and methodology of evaluating problems and coming up with solutions that I used later on, I learned at Amherst.”

In addition to attending school in the '60s, Lombardo began running well before the fitness craze. “People would look at you and say 'What is that guy doing?'” he says.

His love of sports and fitness and a tendency to be organized, hard working and structured convinced him that he might enjoy orthopedic surgery. He enrolled in the University of Kentucky Medical School in 1963.

“It was a brand new school,” says Lombardo, “But it had a wonderful faculty and a very progressive curriculum. I felt very well trained.”

Lombardo graduated there in 1967. He says that after 35 years in orthopedics the hardest thing to deal with is the paperwork dictated by insurance companies. “The paperwork,” he says, “and the checks and balances a physician has to have his attention on, with some justification, take a higher percentage of a physician's time. There's more units of time spent on that area that takes away from time that you would spend delivering medical care.”

Nevertheless, Lombardo loves his work. “This is a wonderful profession,” he says during an interview, pouring decaf from a stainless steel thermos into a cup. “Taking care of the team is just the frosting on the cake. I wish everybody in the world felt as good about what they're doing as I do. People say, 'you're working hard.' I say, 'I'm into working hard.' This isn't work. This is fun.”

Part of the attraction, Lombardo says, is that his field is so dynamic. “Some of the problems may be the same as what we saw five or 10 years ago,” he says, “but the approach and solutions are dynamically changing. The level at which you can help a person is better than it was five, 10, 15 years ago. To continue to be good, you have to remain current.

“Twenty years ago, for example, when a person got a torn anterior cruciate ligament, that was pretty much career-ending. You could name a bunch of NBA players whose careers ended that way. Now, you can take high school or college kids and do this surgery [substituting a tendon for a torn ligament] and they can be making 10 million dollars three years later. San Antonio one year had four guys out of 12 on the roster who previously had ACL surgery, and they were in the playoffs and playing at high level.”

Another important part of what he does, Lombardo says, is helping people continue what they like rather than requiring them to stop. “People come in not to have me tell them to stop doing something they like,” says Lombardo, who runs, lifts weights, plays golf and exercises to stay in shape. “They come in because they want me to tell them to continue doing something they enjoy.

“That's where the art of medicine comes in. I could tell a lot of people to quit what they're doing and take up chess or checkers and that would help their problem. But I think it's very important for their mental hygiene to do the thing that's kind of an outlet for them. Sometimes I have to tell them to break off for a while, but if you can find middle ground where they can continue doing what they enjoy, they're going to be happier, saner patients.”

Those opportunities to help patients have resulted in a happy career choice. “I couldn't have done a better blueprint for a career,” Lombardo says. “Every patient is different in terms of the problem they have. To have them share their problem with me and trust me in how to help them, plus getting to know them—it's a wonderful profession. It was worth going to school for 28 years.”

Gary Libman is a freelance writer living in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena.

Photo: David Gautreau