Livingston still finding his way back

He is averaging 6.3 points and 17.4 minutes. He is still 6-foot-7 and thinner than the 3-point line. He is only 25, because he bypassed his commitment to Duke when the Clippers made him the fourth pick of the 2004 draft, out of Peoria, Ill.

"I'll never know how close I am to what I would have been," Livingston said back in February, at Charlotte's shootaround before the Bobcats beat the Lakers.

"But I like to think I'm as close to 100 percent as I'm going to be. Sometimes I can elevate like I used to. Other days I can't."

He laughed. "I'm getting old, you know."

Charlotte coach Paul Silas says Livingston is closer to fine than Livingston thinks.

"He's so much bigger than other point guards, so that helps on both ends," Silas said. "Once he gets confidence shooting the three, look out. Twenty-five point games will be nothing for him."

To reach Charlotte, Livingston made stopovers in the NBA's Developmental League, Miami, Oklahoma City and Washington. Arrival, he says, is a relative term. He gets to the arena three hours in advance, for ice and lifting. He ices his knee three times a day.

Others find it easier to revisit Feb. 26 now that they see Livingston running again.

Shimoyama was sitting behind the Clippers bench when all the players rose as one, and trainer Jason Powell immediately waved in the paramedics.

"I didn't know what happened," he said. "From the way people reacted, I thought maybe a bone had broken through the skin.

"When I got out there my job was to get the knee back in place, because he had dislocated his kneecap, too. It took about four or five seconds, but time was important. I didn't want him to lose circulation in his foot. If he had, amputation was a possibility."

Shimoyama remembers grunting, "Come on, Steve," as he forced everything back into place.

I've never seen an injury like this in basketball," said Dr. Tony Daly, the Clippers' chief physician at the time, now deceased.

"It's more commonly associated with football, when people bang into each other."

Dr. James Andrews, renowned reassembler of athletes, did the three-hour operation on March 13. Livingston was laid up for four weeks and used crutches for the next five. Since then he has needed arthroscopic surgery and has fought tendinitis.

Remarkably, there was no inflammation of his spirit.

"I really thought it was 50-50 whether he'd come back," Shimoyama said.

"At first when I went to the hospital I was just dealing with regular nurses and doctors, and they weren't optimistic," Livingston said. "And Dr. Daly wasn't that optimistic either. But then the surgeons had a lot of confidence.

"Yeah, I had a lot of down time and it was tough. I was going to be the Clippers' point guard of the future and our team was taking off. But it all comes down to the realization, mentally, that it is what it is, and you really just have to make the most of it."