On the Court With... Shaquille O'Neal (8 page)

The Magic got off to a quick start and at mid-season again looked like a potential NBA champion. Then something unexpected
happened. Michael Jordan returned to the NBA.

As a member of the Chicago Bulls, Jordan had been the biggest star in the NBA, leading them to three consecutive titles before
retiring to pursue his dream of playing professional baseball. But after playing in the minor leagues for a season, he decided
that he missed basketball and returned to the Bulls. Without him, the Bulls had been a good team but not a contender for the
championship. But now Jordan had returned and seemed to be playing as well as he had before his premature retirement. The
Bulls were suddenly one of the favorites again to win the NBA title.

O'Neal and his teammates tried not to worry
about that. They just focused on winning games. And that was something they were beginning to make look easy.

They won the NBA Atlantic Division with a record of 57–25, two games ahead of the New York Knicks. O'Neal seemed on the verge
of becoming the player everyone expected him to be. He won the NBA scoring title, averaging more than 29 points per game.
But he knew that would mean nothing until the Magic proved themselves in the playoffs.

In the first round they beat the Boston Celtics in four games, setting up a second-round matchup against the Chicago Bulls.
Since Jordan had returned, the Bulls had been playing better basketball, but not as consistently as they had before his retirement.
Jordan was surprisingly rusty. Sometimes he'd score big and lead the Bulls to victory by a wide margin, and at other times
he would struggle.

O'Neal and the Magic knew they had to beat the Bulls, not just Jordan. And they knew the Bulls didn't have any player who
could match up against O'Neal.

The two teams played a tough six-game series. By rotating several centers to play opposite O'Neal, the
Bulls hoped to wear him down and get him in foul trouble. But O'Neal played smart, and the Magic came out on top.

They faced Indiana in the Eastern Conference finals and got revenge for their loss in the playoffs the year before. The Magic
were going to the finals!

O'Neal and his teammates were ecstatic. This is what they dreamed of. The city of Orlando was going crazy, giving the team
a parade and already treating them like champions. Most NBA observers thought that the best teams in the NBA were in the Eastern
Conference and that the Magic would beat the Western Conference champions easily.

That notion was reinforced when the Houston Rockets won the Western Conference championship. The Rockets had barely finished
over .500 in the regular season. They looked to be a one-man team built around center Hakeem Olajuwon, who was having a spectacular
season. Indiana Pacer coach Larry Brown spoke for many when he said, “I would pay to see Shaq and Hakeem play. I can't imagine
it getting any better than this.” But few people really gave the Rockets much of a chance. The other Rocket players were either
over-the-hill veterans like Clyde Drexler or younger players unproven in
playoff competition. The press thought that even if Olajuwon played O'Neal to a standoff, the rest of the Magic would be too
much for the Rockets.

But while the Rockets had played in the Western Conference finals, the Magic had some time off. They started to celebrate
early and believed their press clippings. They lost their edge.

After storming out in the first game to take a big lead, the Magic got overconfident and lost the lead in the third quarter.
Then, after leading by three points late in the game, Nick Anderson missed four straight free throws that could have put the
game away. They lost on the last play when Olajuwon tipped in the winning basket over O'Neal.

As he wrote later in his book
Shaq Talks Back
, O'Neal believed “that was the series. … We were shell-shocked.” The Magic started rushing everything, and no one was hitting
from outside. Meanwhile, Houston's “no-name” lineup wasn't missing and Olajuwon was playing the best basketball of his career.
O'Neal was holding his own, but no one else on the Magic stepped up to help him. The Rockets won four straight games to take
the championship.

O'Neal and the Magic were humiliated. As they rode away from the Houston Arena after Game
Four, delirious Rocket fans smacked the side of the Magic bus with brooms, reminding them they had just been swept.

Coach Hill told his team to remember the feeling. Shaquille O'Neal had heard that once before. He couldn't forget it.

For Shaquille O'Neal, the 1995–96 season almost ended before it even started. In an exhibition game against Miami, he got
the ball down low against the Heat's overmatched center, Matt Geiger. O'Neal knew Geiger couldn't stop him. He spun quickly
toward the basket and went up to jam the ball through the hoop.

But just as in his days at LSU, the opposition had decided the best way to slow down O'Neal was to hack at him. Even in professional
basketball, referees were still reluctant to call fouls on players guarding O'Neal. As Shaq went up to the basket, Geiger
banged into him, knocking him off balance. O'Neal still managed to throw the shot down, but he banged his hand hard on the
rim. His thumb was broken!

For the next two months, O'Neal watched the games from the sidelines as his thumb healed.
Fortunately, the Magic played well in his absence. When Shaq returned to the lineup, they started thinking about the finals
again.

But now Michael Jordan was all the way back. The Bulls lost only ten games during the regular season. When they faced the
Magic in the playoffs, Jordan and his teammates were unstoppable. Matters worsened after Horace Grant was injured in the second
game of the series. For the second year in a row, the Magic were swept in the playoffs as the Bulls went on to win another
NBA title. It was beginning to look as though Shaq would never win a title in Orlando.

At the end of the season, Shaq's contract was up. He had the right to become a free agent. O'Neal mulled returning to Orlando.
He liked the city and he liked his teammates, but he felt they were all becoming frustrated. “No one wanted to deal with their
roles down there,” he told a reporter later. “Everyone wanted the ball and their minute in the sun. But that's not the way
it is if you want to win.” At the same time, there were also other issues to consider.

In the NBA, each team is allowed to spend only a certain amount of money on player salaries, what is
known as a salary cap. The Magic had just given guard Penny Hardaway a big new contract, which didn't leave as much for O'Neal
as he wanted, not to mention the other players on the team.

In the back of his mind, he had always wanted to play for the Los Angeles Lakers. They were one of the most storied franchises
in the NBA with a long tradition of star centers. When the team had been based in Minneapolis in the 1950s, Laker center George
Mikan had revolutionized the game as the first big center in pro basketball. The great Wilt Chamberlain had also played for
the Lakers, winning a title in Los Angeles. And in the 1980s, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had teamed up with Magic Johnson to make
the Lakers one of the best teams in NBA history. O'Neal liked the notion of being the next big center to lead the Lakers to
a championship.

He also thought there were more opportunities for him off the court in Los Angeles than in Orlando. He enjoyed acting in films,
and to do so he had to spend time in Los Angeles anyway. There were also a number of musicians based in Los Angeles that he
wanted to work with on his rap records. There were other factors, too. Although O'Neal
wasn't yet married, he was now the father of his longtime girlfriend's daughter. Unlike his own biological father, O'Neal
was determined to take an active role in his daughter's life and be there for her. His girlfriend was urging O'Neal to make
the move to Los Angeles.

The Lakers were also eager to sign O'Neal. Since Magic Johnson had been forced to retire after contracting the HIV virus,
the Lakers had struggled. But they were determined to reach the top of the NBA again and decided that O'Neal was the player
to take them there. When O'Neal heard that, he was impressed. In Orlando some people had started whispering that as good as
he was, he wasn't the kind of a player who could win a championship.

Everybody kept bringing up something O'Neal had said a couple of years earlier, after the Magic had been bounced out of the
playoffs. When he was asked how he felt, he said that he still expected to win a championship, because he'd won at every level
“except college and pro.”

The press howled at the statement. From their perspective, that meant O'Neal hadn't won anywhere. But they had misunderstood
O'Neal. He had
also won other championships, in high school and summer leagues and tournaments. He hadn't won in college, but neither had
hundreds of other NBA players. All he had meant was that he was still confident in his ability to win. But everybody who read
the quote thought he just didn't understand what winning was all about.

It was time for a change. On July 18, 1996, he signed a seven-year contract with the Lakers worth $121 million.

Although Shaquille knew that he would be expected to win a championship in Los Angeles, he also knew that it might take some
time. In recent years, the Lakers had become known as a talented team that just couldn't play together. They would have to
rebuild, and although O'Neal was a key part of that rebuilding process, he wasn't the only part.

In the draft that year, the Lakers had gambled. Instead of selecting a mature college player who could help them win right
away, they had selected a player right out of high school, Kobe Bryant. Bryant's father had played in the NBA, and even though
Kobe was mature beyond his years, he was still only seventeen years old. Many people expected him to be
a star one day, but for the time being he had a lot to learn, not only about basketball but about life in the NBA.

That was one area in which O'Neal could help him out. Bryant lived with his family in LA, but he was on his own on the road.
O'Neal took him under his wing and helped him stay out of trouble. Many young NBA players get into trouble with drugs, women,
or other distractions. O'Neal, despite his fame and fortune, didn't like partying the way so many other pro players did. When
Bryant was with O'Neal, the Lakers knew he wouldn't get into trouble.

While the Lakers were an improved team with O'Neal, they still weren't championship material. Like the players on the Magic,
the Lakers sometimes seemed to be competing with one another for the right to shoot the ball. They'd play great for a week
or two, then start getting selfish and fall apart.

Head coach Del Harris seemed powerless to keep them on track. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that in the fourth quarter
of close games, the opposing teams kept fouling O'Neal to send him
to the free throw line. He was almost certain to miss, which gave the ball back to the other team. Shaquille's teammates soon
stopped passing him the ball late in the game.

One other problem plagued the Lakers. They were trying to win and rebuild at the same time, a difficult task. Coach Harris
tried to play Kobe Bryant as much as possible, even though he wasn't quite ready to contribute, so the rookie could gain experience.
Some of the veteran players on the team were upset when Bryant's playing time cut into their own minutes on the court.

Nevertheless, the presence of O'Neal made the Lakers a much better team than in recent seasons. They finished second to Seattle
in the Pacific Division with a record of 56–26, then blew past Portland in the first round of the playoffs.

But in the second round they faced Utah. Paced by point guard John Stockton and power forward Karl Malone, the Jazz were a
tough, experienced team that played smart. Although they didn't stop Shaquille, they were able to slow him down, getting him
in foul trouble or to the foul line late in the games. The Lakers dropped the first two games
before winning the next two. But in Game Five O'Neal fouled out and in overtime Kobe Bryant kept shooting and missing. The
Jazz defeated the Lakers and ended their season.

It was much the same story in the 1997–98 season. The Lakers raced through the regular season, winning 61 games, then stumbled
again in the playoffs against Utah in the conference finals. Then, in 1998–99, the season started late because of a labor
disagreement between the players and owners. When the season finally got under way in January, the Lakers were a mess. To
make room for Kobe Bryant, they had traded guard Nick Van Exel and several other players, leaving them without much depth.
Most players began the strike-abbreviated season out of shape. In the first weeks, the Lakers struggled. Coach Harris was
fired and replaced by former player Kurt Rambis.

The team was caught between the past and the future. The Lakers desperately wanted to get Kobe Bryant playing time, which
angered many veterans who felt the emerging young star shot too much and played too much one-on-one basketball. Even O'Neal
began to have problems with Bryant. He didn't think the Lakers could become a championship
team unless they all worked together. Instead, the team was coming apart.

Despite all their troubles, the Lakers still qualified for the playoffs. In the first round it looked as if they might have
learned how to play together. They defeated the Rockets in four games. Bryant and O'Neal both seemed to learn how best to
take advantage of each other's skills. Bryant stopped looking to shoot every time he got the ball and instead passed inside
to O'Neal whenever he had the opportunity. O'Neal, meanwhile, kept feeding the ball to Bryant to key fast breaks. The Lakers
looked almost unstoppable.

But their success was just an illusion. They met the San Antonio Spurs in the second round and the Spurs, paced by Twin Towers
David Robinson and Tim Duncan, were a much better team than the Rockets. The two big men were able to keep O'Neal in check,
and the other Lakers responded by getting overanxious and playing one-on-one. The Spurs swept the Lakers and ended their season.
Although O'Neal was disappointed with the loss, he was almost glad the season was over. He was just as frustrated playing
for the Lakers as he had been with the Magic.