Tags: Amare Stoudamire, Chris Mihm, Gary Vitti, Karl Malone, Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns, Shaquille O'Neal

It’s reassuring knowing that our team’s athletic trainer specializes in action figure and doll medicine. Unfortunately, basketball players are a different breed - one that actually requires some sort of knowledge of sports medicine and human physiology.

For far too long, Los Angeles Lakers athletic trainer Gary Vitti has been phoning it in.

Yes, he’s been around since the Showtime days, which automatically gives him tenure and a job for life, a la Stu Lantz. He even won a Trainer of the Year award back in 1991 (and devoted an entire page on his site to it).

But since the late 90’s and into present day, Vitti has been slacking off. It seems like L.A. has finally gotten to him, as he looks more primed for a day at the beach than for duty as athletic trainer for one of the biggest sports franchises in the world.

Let’s look at the what he’s been dealing with:

• An oft-injured Shaquille O’Neal (who has seemingly re-emerged healthy in Phoenix now)
• A misdiagnosis of Karl Malone, effectively ending his playing career
• The (non)-walking injury that is Chris Mihm
• The seeming misdiagnosis of Andrew Bynum (8 weeks was about a month ago!)

Somehow, Pau Gasol was able to avoid the Vitti treatment and came back promptly from injury. While both Laker big men were down, Phil Jackson offered up some choice words:

Gary Vitti is the guy that really bothers me the most because he’s our trainer who can’t get everybody healthy.

Every day he says, ‘I wish I could get this guy ready for you, but. . . . ‘

I won’t go through the litany of the rest of it.

No, PLEASE go through the litany of the rest of it, Phil. We desperately need a reason to run this guy out of town.

How does a team like the Phoenix Suns manage to stay in such great shape? They were able to bring back Amare Stoudamire from a potentially serious microfracture surgery with relative ease, and its not like the Suns play a physically lax game. Dudes are running non-stop for an entire season!

Oh, what the Lakers could be given a semblance of competence on the training staff.

Fandom aside, you have to feel for the players subjected to such inhumane treatment. Careers being wasted away by the Vitti vex.

Maybe PETA should double up the A in the acronym to include Athletes. Douse that offender in some of that red paint to smear his cocoa butter-applied fake tan.

This has clearly become a humanitarian cause.

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