Walton provides spark for Lakers

Karl Malone injured his knee, but played through the pain.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Karl Malone wasn't about to leave the game, no matter how much his knee hurt. At age 40, he's waited far too long for this opportunity.
As for Luke Walton, more than 16 years younger, he was just hoping for a chance to play.
While Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal made the biggest plays, 19-year veteran Malone and rookie Walton did the little things Tuesday night in the Lakers' overtime victory over Detroit.
Malone sprained the medial collateral ligament in his right knee early in the game, but played 39 minutes, including the entire five-minute overtime period, and had nine points and nine rebounds.
Malone missed 39 games during the regular season with an injury to the same knee. Team spokesman John Black said Malone was day to day, but the second-leading scorer in NBA history didn't sound so optimistic.
Knee problems
When asked if he had a sense about Game 3, Malone replied: "No, not really. Not right now."
Malone had his knee drained June 1, a day after the Lakers beat the Minnesota Timberwolves in the sixth and final game of the Western Conference finals.
He said he was injured earlier in that series.
He came out of Tuesday night's game limping noticeably early in the second quarter, but returned to action less than six minutes later.
"It'll be all right," he said. "I just had to stop worrying about scoring anything and just try to do other things out there. But if I'm out there on the floor, I expect a lot out of myself, and I can't do other things.
"My teammates really didn't want me to play, but I don't have these opportunities a lot and I'm not going to get that many more. But it's not about me, it's about the team."
Malone joined the Lakers last summer in search of his first championship after 18 years in Utah, where he reached the finals twice, but came up empty.
"I didn't think about the rest of the series, really," Malone said. "I just thought about this game right here. So, it's interesting, because I could care less about another game happening. I just thought about this game right here.
"I don't even know if it was an option that I wasn't going to play."
Getting a lift
With his famous father watching from the stands, Walton provided the Lakers with a much-needed lift, getting seven points, eight assists and five rebounds in 27 minutes without committing a turnover.
Walton didn't play in Game 1, and hadn't done much in the entire postseason -- no surprise considering how coach Phil Jackson feels about rookies in these situations. But the 24-year-old forward played the last 10:20 of the fourth quarter and all of overtime in this game.
"I love stuff like this -- I've always loved big games," he said. "I was just hoping that I would get my chance, and Coach gave me a chance tonight."
Walton entered having played in 13 of the Lakers' 18 postseason games, averaging 1.5 points in 4.4 minutes with a total of 10 rebounds and eight assists.
"Maybe sanity is the best excuse," Jackson said when asked to explain playing Walton so extensively. "I just needed somebody in there that could move the ball and had the ability to create things off the dribble."