The leap of faith that led physio to NBA's A list

Alex McKechnie chuckles at the leap of faith he took when he packed up almost all his belongings in Glasgow and booked a one-way flight to Vancouver, Canada on 7 September 1974.

"I had $300 in my pocket," he recounts. "And no job."

At that point it might have been hard for the newly qualified physiotherapist to imagine he would one day be telling basketball great Shaquille O'Neal - with his full entourage in tow - to wait his turn to see him.

Or that an idea he had when looking at a children's playground would spark a novel way to improve recovery from knee injuries.

His pioneering methods would make him one of sport's most sought-after physios and even earn him a small slice of British sporting history as the only Briton to win an NBA championship ring as either a player or member of the sideline staff.

He has now won six, and at the age of 74 the man credited with bringing players back from career-threatening injuries is still very much in demand.

Darting with a football in his youth around the mean Scottish streets of Easterhouse - at the time the centre of Glasgow's notorious ganglands - McKechnie dreamed of playing for Rangers.

But a car crash that injured his father and brother provided his introduction to a different career path.

Watching them recover steadily fascinated a young McKechnie. It persuaded him to study physiotherapy at a technical college in Leeds before heading to North America in search of a job.

Within a week he secured a temporary role at a hospital, and within a month he was working at a university with athletes from many sports. It sparked a fascination with an area of sports science that was under-researched - anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries.

When he first started practising there was no surgery that offered a certain cure.

"It was basically an ACL tear, and your career was basically over," says McKechnie.

Working with athletes, he started to notice a link between cruciate injuries, core strength and pelvic control, and so devised a rehabilitation process based on this.

He got his patients to wear elastic bands - which simulated resistance - while doing a series of exercises that would strengthen their core.

This approach is now common, but back then it was innovative.

Image caption,

The elastics seen here on the late Kobe Bryant are a hallmark of McKechnie's methods

His next Eureka moment came while walking his dog through a park in which children were rocking on spring-mounted horses.

It sowed the seed for the idea of a wobble board which could heighten core strength through muscle movement, training the body to learn healthy patterns which promote overall stability.

The first prototype was "built with a large engineering spring" and Reebok subsequently licensed the idea in 1999, turning it into a mass-market product sold worldwide.

Word was already spreading about the physio who was piloting new approaches and saving careers.

In 1997, when LA Lakers star O'Neal, then the most dominant centre in the NBA, sustained a strained abdominal muscle and was facing surgery that would sideline him for up to 10 months, the grapevine proposed a guru 1,200 miles up the Pacific coast.

McKechnie had treated Anaheim Ducks ice hockey player Paul Kariya for a similar issue without him needing to go under the knife, and the Lakers liked the sound of that.

The plea for assistance from the Lakers' legendary general manager Jerry West altered the Scotsman's trajectory in an instant.

Image caption,

Alex McKechnie took inspiration from this sort of play equipment for his wobble board

O'Neal, their prize asset, was despatched to McKechnie's clinic in Vancouver for an expert opinion.

Patience, it transpired, was not O'Neal's virtue.

"I get this call from the limo driver, from his security people, saying 'we're coming'," recalls McKechnie. "I go, 'sorry, I can't see you until 1.30'. They go, 'we'd like to come now'.

"I said, 'you have to sit and wait. I've got people here I'm working with. I can't just walk away'."

They hung up. 1.30 came and went. O'Neal's party had pivoted and flown back to Los Angeles.

The next day, LA Lakers orthopaedic surgeon Steve Lombardo rang McKechnie to apologise and asked if he would see O'Neal the following week, and whether he would come into downtown Vancouver for the consultation.

The response was terse. "No, Shaq can see me at my clinic. End of story."

It turned out they felt it was worth the effort.

"In comes Shaquille with bodyguards, friends, coaches, trainers - I was just inundated with people," says McKechnie.

"The big fella came in and we sat down. I'm thinking this could go any way, in any direction, at this point."

The prescribed Core-X treatment programme - based on ensuring alignment between muscles in different parts of the body - was unconventional at the time.

But it worked wonders. O'Neal was soon back in action for the Lakers without having surgery.

"He brought me back," the grateful O'Neal said. "I was dead, and he brought me back."

A mere four days after the initial consultation, McKechnie was flown to Los Angeles and a pitch delivered to retain his exclusive use throughout the demanding NBA season.

Accepting the job offer meant a change of pace - but all-areas access within one of global sport's most famous and glamourous clubs.

Image caption,

David Beckham was among the celebrities regularly in the crowd at Lakers games

To sit nightly in the courtside seats occupied by the Lakers coaching and training staff in that era was akin to a spot in the front row of a box-office title fight.

O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, combustible but extraordinary in unison. A head coach in Phil Jackson who had moulded Michael Jordan into a winning machine for the Chicago Bulls and was now replicating that feat in the shadow of Hollywood.

"The Jack Nicholsons of the world, all these other famous people, were sitting three, four feet away from where I'm sitting," McKechnie says. "It's the thing I'll say about the Lakers - the Lakers entertain. It's an entertainment industry.

"Every single agent is represented around the courtside. It's unbelievable. People from rock stars to David Beckham - when he was playing [football] there in LA - were there during that period, Just amazing, really."

The Lakers' supremacy in that era ensured their top billing. Keeping the headline act of O'Neal in rude health was fundamental amid huge fluctuations in his weight and a notorious distaste for keeping fit in the off-season.

McKechnie is, Jackson enthused, "a guy that can keep players on the floor".

That talent convinced O'Neal to rent a house in Vancouver and maintain his alliance with the physio during the summer hiatus.

"He [O'Neal] played bocce in my backyard with my daughters or would be out chasing the neighbours' dog," McKechnie chuckles.

The staff at the clinic felt his presence too. "He'd fool around at the reception desk and would check patients in," he says. "Just Shaq being Shaq."

McKechnie also worked with Bryant, supporting the late superstar's gruelling regime which devoted six hours each day to precise weightlifting, cardio and skills sessions.

Former England footballer Owen Hargreaves, who had been sidelined for two years with a series of knee injuries, sought out McKechnie and worked with him to make an unlikely return to the field.

McKechnie - who once said he treats "broken-down athletes who are almost like reclamation projects" - had discovered Hargreaves' knee issues were caused by pelvic instability and therefore got him working to strengthen his core. It is now an industry standard with universal acceptance.

Image caption,

Alex McKechnie won NBA championship rings in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009, 2010 and 2019

In 2011, McKechnie was unexpectedly tempted to return to Canada, granted the title of assistant coach to Nick Nurse, once of the London Towers and the Manchester Giants but then head coach of the Toronto Raptors.

He was there when the Raptors won their first and only NBA championship ring in 2019, centred around prolonged health for their often fragile centrepiece Kawhi Leonard. Another quiet accomplishment for McKechnie, his sixth title acquired - and you sense this was the triumph he enjoyed most.

"It was incredible," recalls McKechnie, who is now vice-president of player health and performance at the team. "The [victory] parade was like nothing you've ever seen in your life. It was unbelievable. There was a million people out there to see us celebrate."

McKechnie has now completed 26 regular seasons in the NBA. Another play-off campaign lies ahead this month. His personal acclaim is widespread.

Invitations regularly arrive from Premier League football clubs to drop by. It is a chance to share wisdom and acquire fresh ideas, he says, because he is "looking for a competitive edge at all times".

That is why, in his eighth decade, McKechnie remains a master of the relentless world he inhabits.

The man who left Scotland with just enough cash to place a wild bet on himself still appreciates the pay-offs from inhabiting this high-pressure world where his healing hands can provide a critical assist.

"The NBA is like a rock concert tour," he says. "You roll in, we unload in the hotel. We set up treatment rooms. We set up everything in the hotel, we treat, pack it up, go to the arena, play, and then it's on the flight to the next city.

"It's an unbelievable lifestyle."