Lakers Moments: A.C. Green is pure good

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Most high: Lakers forward A.C. Green goes up for a dunk in a game against the Clippers on Nov. 15, 1985.

Green is known as NBA’s iron man for playing in a record 1,192 straight games, a span of nearly 15 years. He once played the day after having an emergency root canal.

Yet with all his achievements in basketball, Green is also distinguished for his abstinence streak. The deeply religious Green took a vow to abstain from sexual activity and kept it throughout his NBA career, which included two championships during the Lakers’ ‘Showtime’ era and another with L.A. in 2000, until getting married at age 38 in 2002.

Green told the Los Angeles Times’ Chris Erskine in 2009 that his Lakers teammates initially didn’t buy into his way of life.

‘But as time went on, when the guys saw some consistency to the way I was handling my life, they gradually came to accept it,’ Green said, ‘to the point where some asked me to talk to sons and daughters.’

He also earned respect on the court. Green played nine seasons with the Lakers (from 1985 to ’93 and again in 1999-2000) and is 10th on the team’s all-time list with 735 total games played. After a 16-year NBA career, Green is 15th overall with 1,278 games played.

Read more about A.C. Green and where he ranks for the team’s career steals in All Things Lakers, the L.A. Times’ interactive database of all things purple and gold.

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-- Chuck Schilken