Or is it the Big Distraction?
Fanhouse’s Tim Potvak reports that after the door closed in Atlanta for him, Shaquille O’Neal is lobbying hard to play for the Boston Celtics.
Wow. Just wow.
In the strangest of NBA summers (as I write this, even Chris Paul is planning an escape to NY…before the season even starts), things just climbed a level higher on the strangeness scale. It doesn’t reach Tom Cruise and Kate scale or anything like that. But it does bring one’s brain cells to attention. The very thought of Shaq as a Celtic requires…some thought.
It is a veritable gold mine for a writer’s imagination. Shaq is one of the biggest personalities to ever play the game.
As Trey Kirby of Yahoo Sports so aptly puts it…
he’ll go down as one of the more successful players in history. He’s currently seventh in all-time scoring, has four championships, an MVP and 15 All-Star appearances. Pretty great career, even if it could have been exponentially better considering his size and athleticism.
So many story lines, so little time.
Shaq, a man of largesse in more ways than one, the namer of names, gave the Celtics’ own Paul Pierce his name of The Truth.
If he was added, he and Jermaine would be O’Neal and O’Neal, law firm for the defense, Irish-African-American shot blockers, and middle eaters extraordinaire.
It would be the Big Aristotle and the Big Baby. (Insert pre-game buffet joke here.) Both Glen Davis and Shaq are former LSU Tigers and Davis is the player Shaq affectionately refers to as ‘his illegitimate son’. At least Shaq wouldn’t have to worry about any more broken thumbs.
There would be the immediate story line of a possible Finals clash between Shaq and Kobe.
There were Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Becall, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid… and Shaq and Kobe.
Irony, revenge, vengeance, jealousy, drama and a juicy clash of former teammates that would eat up precious blog, newspaper and TV space as it rolled into view. Oh, the ratings, the ratings.
One of the biggest negatives for the Celtics- I couldn’t think of anything that would motivate Kobe Bryant more than that.
But there appear to be real life issues that are getting in the way of this Salvadore Dali, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds surrealistic dream.
1) 38 year old Shaq has been wanting about $8 million a year for 2 years and a significant role on any team he goes to.
2) He is nowhere near the player he was even a few years ago.
3) He is more prone to injury now.
4) He has been known to not play well in the second half of back-to-back games. (Just last season, in virtually the same amount of minutes, he scored 9.5 vs 12.8 points, shot 48.3% vs 59.7%, took 7.3 shots vs 9.1 shots, and blocked .8 vs 1.4 shots. )
5) He hasn’t been on the finishing end of a fastbreak since fax machines used thermal paper.
6) He is another larger-than-life personality (perhaps the largest) to add to Doc Rivers’ bucket of impossible or high maintenance personalities to coach. Doc’s bucket overfloweth.
In his favor:
1) The Celtics need a big man. If Shaq is anything, he is a big man. That is the one thing he actually gotten better at in recent years.
1) The Celtics need rebounding. Even in his abbreviated last season, Shaq rebounded well at 6.7 in 23 plus minutes (13 plus per game on a 48 minute prorating) . That would put him right at Kendrick Perkin’s level, who was…btw…the Celtics top rebounder and better than Jermaine O’Neal (11.7 per 48)
1) He wouldn’t be hammering Rajon Rondo on drives and clobbering Kevin Garnett inside anymore. (I couldn’t find a video of that playoff assault on KG’s noggin that wasn’t even called a foul.)
1) The Celtics still play a half court game for the most part and that is Shaq’s exclusive method of play now.
5) He actually was more productive offensively (individually) than Rasheed Wallace was last season. Shaq averaged 12 points on 56%, his worse season in 14 years, 6.7 rebounds and 1.7 assists in 23:23 minutes. Sheed averaged 9 points on 40.9% shooting, 4.1 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 assist in 22:30 minutes.
6) If he accepts a bench role, he casts a wide shadow for short minutes and you need would Liquid Plummer Extra Strength to get him unclogged from the middle.
If Danny accepted him, he would be yet another player I would have to expand my thinking to accept after finding it easy to make him the bad guy all of these years.
The Celtics owned the last team Shaq played for in the playoffs and it could be said that was part of the reason why.
It has been written that the Celtics aren’t interested in him. They would know best why that is, after playing against him in last year’s playoffs. They also know best their own team chemistry issues, having had to navigate a few bumps in the road this past season.
Imminently quotable, there has been a media circus around the Big Attraction for years. Would he fit in and help, or would he be the Big Distraction on a road that needs none if they are truly going to compete for another title?
‘Someday I might have to put down a basketball and have a regular 9-to-5 like everybody else.’ – Shaq.
The question is when? In the meantime, the very idea of Shaq playing with the Celtics is mind blowing. And as Shaq said about Paul Pierce some years ago..
That is @#!%$# Truth.
‘Quote me on that. And don’t take nothing out.’
