He’s The Center Of Attention : At 7 Feet 1, LSU’s O’Neal Must Deal With Problems Not Faced by 18-Year-Olds --Including if and When to Enter the NBA Draft

And now, His Shaqnificence hereby issues the following decrees:

1) If you’re going to use his nickname, please use the official Shaq-approved moniker, which is, Shaquille (the Deal) O’Neal.

Not “the Real Deal.” That one belongs to heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, fair and square.

Not “Shaq Daddy,” the nickname coined by his teammates.

Not “Love Shaq,” favored by some Louisiana State students.

And not Shaquille (I’m For Real) O’Neal, the choice of O’Neal’s father.

Remember, accept no substitutes.

2) There will be no mention of an NBA career, at least, not until he celebrates his 19th birthday or begins shaving, whichever comes first.

Of course, if you insist, O’Neal will be compelled to say that he is absolutely, positively sure . . . that he is not sure when he might leave LSU for the pros.

3) His royal centerness reminds all those concerned that although his body has grown to astounding dimensions--7 feet 1, 295 pounds--he is but two years removed from the senior prom.

Royal translation: Enough already with the breathless declarations that he is “the best ever.”

That concludes today’s requests. Carry on.

Welcome to the ever-confusing world of Shaq-dom, where America’s newest college superstar lives his life in an oversized fish bowl.

If he were merely another player with a basketball scholarship and an overactive pituitary gland, none of this would be happening. But O’Neal can do things on the court that cause opposing coaches to reach for Kleenex. And NBA owners to reach for their checkbooks.

Only a sophomore, O’Neal’s name already is required reading for anyone who glances at the weekly NCAA Division I statistics. At last look, he ranked first in rebounds per game, 15; fourth in blocked shots per game, five, and ninth in average points, 27.4. As for his numbers in the Southeastern Conference, why bother? The league is his plaything.

The simple fact is that once O’Neal gets the ball down low, he is as unstoppable as hiccups. His 62.7 field-goal percentage proves that.

If it doesn’t, look at the cover of the LSU basketball media guide, where O’Neal can be seen ramming the ball through the hoop. Fleeing for cover is a Lamar player, who looks as if he needs police protection. He apparently knows better than to try to stop one of O’Neal’s dunks.

And watch when an opposing player ventures near the lane for a shot. If O’Neal doesn’t flick away the attempt outright, he will usually force the guy to try some grotesque, ill-fated, triple-pump jumper that has as much chance of going through the hoop as O’Neal has of wearing Size 9s.

Arkansas State won’t soon forget O’Neal. He scored 53 points against the Indians earlier this season.

Against Auburn recently, O’Neal scored 20 points in 22 minutes and helped foul out the two players assigned to stop him.

“The points he scored looked so easy ,” said LSU’s Geert Hammink, who serves as O’Neal’s understudy.

And last Sunday, O’Neal sliced and diced Wimp Sanderson’s Alabama team, the conference leader at the time, for 36 points, 19 rebounds and seven blocks.

Few are spared the wrath of Shaq. Even those who have walked away with victories over LSU this season, do so with O’Neal powder burns.

“Shaquille is quite simply the most dominating player to come along since David Robinson,” said Kentucky’s Rick Pitino, who watched O’Neal score 61 points and grab 33 rebounds in the Wildcats’ two games against LSU.

And this from Mississippi State’s Richard Williams, whose Bulldogs “held” O’Neal to 27 points and 18 rebounds in an earlier victory:

“I don’t think the average person can understand it. People can’t picture in their minds how big he is. Seven-one, 295 pounds--those are numbers. Until you see him standing aside other players in this league, well, he dwarfs every player on our team. It’s just amazing. And he’s only 18 years old, for goodness sakes. It’s scary how good he can become.”

Only 18 years old. . . . It is the qualifier that gives pause. What should be a time of acne and awkwardness has instead become a countdown to greatness for O’Neal. As you might expect, there are conflicts galore.

“The perfect day? For Shaquille, he likes to eat,” said his mother, Lucille Harrison. “He likes his favorite foods. But ideally, he would like not to have any pressure on him one day. Just for one day.”

Given his druthers, O’Neal said he would like nothing more than to be average.

“I want to be like everyone else,” he said.

And in a sense, he is. If nothing else, he tries to dress like a regular college kid. On this day, O’Neal’s winter ensemble includes a pillbox-shaped cap, a couple of gold necklaces, one with a queen of hearts, a black T-shirt with Michael Jordan’s face on the front, blue jeans, white socks and black sneakers.

But how many 18-year-olds are faced with forfeiting their adolescence in return for an NBA contract worth millions? O’Neal is.

How many grew up ashamed of their size, embarrassed by the endless search for clothes that fit and classmates who didn’t taunt? O’Neal did.

And how many have had a basketball program strapped to their backs and been asked to carry it as far as possible? O’Neal has.

So you can understand O’Neal’s reluctance to go from 18 directly to manhood. It is one of the reasons his parents’ phone bill back in San Antonio averages about $350 a month. Every day, O’Neal calls home, or his parents call him.

Still, this is what O’Neal deals with. He can do what LSU Coach Dale Brown predicts he will do--stay in school. Or he can do what absolutely no one would blame him for doing--bolt for the riches of the NBA.

“He’s like a man among little boys,” said Arkansas Coach Nolan Richardson. “He’d better hurry up. I’ll help pack his suitcase. (As the No. 1 pick,) he can buy himself a university.”

O’Neal isn’t going anywhere, at the moment. His parents insist that he will remain at LSU. O’Neal, who is getting good at being noncommittal, simply says, “I’m not thinking about the NBA right now.”

That’s not entirely true. O’Neal does think about the pros. A lot. Earlier this season, when the Tigers traveled to Georgia for a game, Bulldog alumnus and NBA star Dominique Wilkens was in attendance. O’Neal took one look at Wilkens’ $800 suit and said to himself, “That’s going to be me one day.”

Now then, did he mean one day this year? Next year? The year after?

“I’m not going to lie to you, (the NBA is) very tempting,” O’Neal said. “I (could) buy my mom her own company. I could get her a van with a TV. I could get my father a sports bar, call it, ‘Shaquille’s Bar & Tavern’ and let him run it. I’d probably let (Mom) run all my business stuff--endorsements, business stuff.”

This is the way O’Neal thinks: family first, Shaquille second. It is a lesson taught by two loving but no-nonsense parents--Army Sgt. Philip Harrison, a career military man, and, of course, Lucille, who knows a thing or two about discipline.

It was Lucille who used to tell her son that he needed to become more aggressive on the basketball court.

“He was wimpy,” she said.

It was also Lucille who used to take Shaquille shopping for clothes, a long, frustrating process that became even more difficult as O’Neal grew older and taller. Specialty stores rarely had sizes to fit his build. Shoe stores almost never had anything he could wear. The Army base PX was useless, too.

He was 14 and already, at 6-8, you needed a step ladder to measure him. A year or so later, he was 6-10. Then 6-11. Then 7-1 . . . and growing?

“Kids used to mess with me,” said O’Neal, whose parents weren’t married when he was born and who uses his mother’s surname. “Nobody liked me because I was tall. I used to be ashamed because I was tall.”

The day that forever changed O’Neal’s life occurred five years ago, when LSU’s Brown happened to visit the Army base in Wildflecken, West Germany, where O’Neal’s father was stationed.

The story, now almost legend, finds Brown face-to-shoulder with Shaquille, then 13. Brown mistakes O’Neal for a soldier and O’Neal politely informs the coach that he is barely a teen-ager. Brown, no dummy, later leaves a message for Craig Carse, the LSU assistant coach who doubles as LSU’s recruiting coordinator.

“Dale put a letter on my desk. It said, ‘See me,’ ” Carse said.

The letter was from O’Neal. He was interested in LSU.

As late as his junior year in high school, O’Neal was a virtual recruiting unknown. One time, Brown and Carse watched their then-6-9 secret dominate a San Antonio AAU game. They were the only two coaches in the gym that night.

Word eventually got out. It always does. In the end, O’Neal stuck with LSU.

“They didn’t tell me what (they thought) I wanted to hear,” he said.

They also didn’t tell him he would become a marked man, although he probably should have figured it out for himself. As his skills grew, so did the number of methods, legal and not-so-legal, used to stop him.

Without exaggerating--and this is difficult for Brown to do--the LSU coach said he has seen about every defense tried against his star center. If a team could quintuple-team O’Neal, it would do it.

But the tactics that might still send O’Neal packing for the pros are the borderline methods, the ones that cause Philip and Lucille Harrison to close their eyes in fear. Forearms to the back aren’t uncommon. Several times this season, a defender undercut O’Neal during a dunk or drive. One player even tried punching O’Neal in the stomach.

So upset was Philip Harrison with the treatment that he threatened to pull his son from school and declare him eligible for the NBA draft.

Not surprisingly, Brown resorted to some crisis control and immediately compiled a videotape of supposed missed calls and flagrant fouls against his big man and sent it to the SEC offices in Birmingham, Ala. The tape must have worked; O’Neal is happier with his treatment by conference referees and Harrison has quit talking about his son’s early departure.

Away from the game, O’Neal is a quiet sort. In fact, people are always asking him to speak up. And when former teammate Chris Jackson would suffer from a particularly difficult attack of Tourette’s syndrome, he would gently hug the guard and tell him not to worry about anything.

But on the court, O’Neal has learned to play, well, certainly not wimpy.

“I’m a big man,” he said. “I’m out there to win.”

When LSU beat Auburn recently, O’Neal took special delight in the victory. Earlier this season, Auburn had held him to a season-low 15 points, thanks to the efforts of Robert McKie.

This time, O’Neal was unstoppable and LSU won by 37.

“I wanted (McKie) to know who the man was,” O’Neal said.

He knows now.

And ask teammate Hammink, the LSU import from the Netherlands, about the occasional elbow sandwich he gets from O’Neal during practices.

“That’s why I’m so ugly,” he said.

O’Neal isn’t without his faults or his self-criticisms. Using his own grading system, O’Neal said he is “a pretty good player, but I don’t think I’m the best.”

And don’t forget, said O’Neal, that Duke held him to nine shots and 15 points earlier this month. Meanwhile, Blue Devil center Christian Laettner had a field day, as did Duke’s Cameron Crazies, who yelled, “One, two, three, four, Shaquille can’t play no more.”

“I want to laugh,” O’Neal said. “But I can’t laugh because I’m down by 18.”

And when the Crazies started chanting, “Overrated, Overrated?”

“I laughed that time,” he said.

Back in San Antonio, Philip Harrison watched the game and laughed, too. The night before, father and son had talked about Laettner’s favorite move, a little head fake. Sure enough, O’Neal fell for it every time.

“They took him to school,” Harrison said. “The crowd, Duke, Laettner--they gave him an old-fashioned brow beating. It made him wake up. But you know, he’s only 18 years old. People forget that.”

Even Brown has to remind himself that he is coaching a kid, not a franchise to be. It isn’t easy.

“You get where you take him for granted,” Brown said. “He’s almost void of ego.”

To help with O’Neal’s development, Brown has asked former UCLA legend and NBA star Bill Walton to help with the tutoring. Walton spent several days with the team earlier in the season and returns next week for another session with O’Neal and teammates.

“I think he’s a phenomenal basketball player with unparalleled physical skills at the college level,” Walton said.

But Walton is more concerned about the inner O’Neal. The body parts are fine, almost without peer. It is O’Neal’s ability to deal with the rest of the game that earns Walton’s attention.

“We talk about everything,” Walton said. “I try to express to him the importance of having basketball skills and not relying on being the biggest, strongest guy in the gym.”

O’Neal and Walton talk about being tall. About the ridicule. About mistakes that Waltononce made. About staying in school.

“Hopefully, he can learn from my mistakes and maybe not suffer,” Walton said.

Opinions vary on what O’Neal should do next. Walton would recommend that he stay in school. Brown said he would be “shocked” if O’Neal left early for the NBA. Carse said he would be “stunned.” You bet they would.

One NBA general manager, requesting anonymity, all but guaranteed that O’Neal would be the first selection in the draft this year. Still, he counseled patience.

“I wouldn’t want my 18-year-old son to come into the NBA,” he said. “He’s going to enter a whole different world, an unforgiving world. These guys are just going to treat him like another player. And physical? Oh, my god, it will be three times as bad, particularly in his rookie year.”

You know how Arkansas’ Richardson feels. From strictly an opponent’s standpoint, Mississippi State’s Williams suggested that he would shed no tears if O’Neal left. Pitino, who once coached the New York Knicks, offered more realistic considerations.

“I feel it will be very difficult for him to remain in school, especially with the new collective bargaining agreement that is coming up,” Pitino said. “But I hope he does remain at LSU, at least, for another year.”

Who knows what will happen. Right now, about the only sure things in O’Neal’s life are the heat in his dorm room (cranked up high), the sound on his stereo (cranked up extra high during his deejay sessions) and the weekend gangster movie festivals (“Scarface” and “Goodfellas” both receive enthusiastic thumbs up).

In other words, simply being 18.