COMMENTARY : O’Neal vs. Ewing Stirs Old Garden Memories

There was a moment early in the game when Shaquille O’Neal tried to spin to the baseline against Patrick Ewing, but Ewing took the baseline away from him. This was Madison Square Garden, which means Ewing’s court. He stood his ground. He would not let O’Neal come into the Garden and treat him like some aging sparring partner. Now O’Neal gave up his dribble and Ewing seemed to surround him. It did not matter. O’Neal turned slightly away and pushed his own soft version of a hook shot toward the basket. The hook shot went in. Ewing has been the big man at the Garden for a long time. He had the position. O’Neal made him look small. More and more, even on nights when he comes up one basket short, Shaquille O’Neal does that to the rest of basketball.

In the fifth row of seats, Red Holzman smiled. Suddenly, it was not the Garden of 1994 for Holzman, the Garden of 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue. This was the old Garden, and it was 1959, and Holzman was not looking at O’Neal, he was was looking at the young Wilt Chamberlain.

Holzman was a scout for the Knicks 35 years ago. He was asked the other night what he thought the first time he saw Wilt Chamberlain play.

“You want to know what I thought?” Holzman said. “I thought I was having a nightmare.”

The ball came back to O’Neal’s end of the court. They gave it to him on the left side this time. He did not wait, he just turned and hit a soft jumper. Holzman nodded. “I feel the same way watching this kid,” he said, his eyes on the court. “I feel like I’m having the same nightmare all over again.”

Holzman had a rolled-up program in his hand, the way he always had a rolled-up program in his hand when he coached the Knicks against Wilt.

“You know what you wish for when you get to be my age?” Red Holzman said. “You want to see the old guys like Wilt go up against a kid like that.” At the Knicks’ end of the court, Ewing stepped back at the top of the key and O’Neal, who is lazy a lot of the time on defense, did not come out on him. Ewing, on his way to 16 points in the first half, made a jump shot of his own.

It went this way all night. It was O’Neal against Ewing at the Garden of 33rd St., and that was enough. The Knicks tried to put the game away several times but never could. O’Neal would end up with 41 points and 17 rebounds. His last basket, hard inside, tied the score at 99. Then Ewing won the game with a baseline jumper, a jumper out of the playoffs, from the right side with 2.4 seconds left. The second week of November felt like the second week of June at the Garden. O’Neal did that to the night.

He is 7 feet, 1 inch tall and weighs over 300 pounds and can run and jump. This is only his third season, and even before the Magic have done anything in the playoffs, O’Neal seems to have become the biggest star in professional sports. Barry Bonds has never been the biggest sports star, even as he has played like one of the great baseball players of all time. Maybe Junior Griffey would have gotten there with 60 home runs, but baseball was called off. The biggest star from football is a whole team, the Dallas Cowboys. Magic Johnson is gone, Larry Bird is gone, Michael Jordan is a minor league baseball player. The stage has been left wide open, and Shaquille O’Neal, known as Shaq, has come crashing through the curtains to take it.

There is no real art in his game. There may never be. Wilt, at the beginning, was dunk shots and fall-away jump shots, and he missed even more free throws than O’Neal misses. Wednesday night, before he came to New York, O’Neal had 46 points against the Hornets. There was a time in sports when the progression, even for people who became huge stars, went something like this: Talent, achievement, recognition, unbelievable riches. Now talent and recognition are enough to make you an international celebrity, before your team has ever won a playoff game. O’Neal sells his awful rap music, he sells soft drinks, he sells sneakers, he sells anything with his name and number on it.

Things change very fast in sports. A couple of weeks ago, there was an embarrassingly bad farewell television special for Jordan. The longer he stays in baseball, the quicker he will fade. In a few years, O’Neal will be as big with the kids as Jordan ever was.

“People love size,” Chuck Daly was saying before the game. Daly, in the Hall of Fame as a coach, now works Thursday night NBA games for WTBS. “They love big action guys, and he’s a big action guy. He comes crashing into the whole thing like it’s a Schwarzenegger movie, like he’s going to annihilate the backboard and everything else.”

Behind Daly, O’Neal warmed up with a game of one-on-one against Horace Grant. O’Neal started backing in from the right side of the basket. Grant tried to throw his chest out and stop him that way. It was like trying to stop a school bus that way. O’Neal looked like he would back him all the way into the seats, but at the last second, he wheeled around Grant with a scoop shot. In the third quarter of the game, he would use the same kind of move against Anthony Mason, who had done a pretty good defensive job on Shaquille O’Neal up until then.

“I keep hearing that this is some kind of make-or-break year for this kid,” Daly said. “Come on. He’s a kid and he’s learning all the time. He’s not some hot dog. He’s got a good demeanor, he’s got a good work ethic. He plays hard every night. I mean, what the hell is there not to like? He’s the player of the ‘90s.”

He has not won anything yet. Neither had Jordan when he was in his third year. The Magic try to build around him with talented young players like Anfernee Hardaway and Nick Anderson. If they do not make it to The NBA Finals this season, it will be next season, or the season after that. The things about basketball O’Neal does not yet know, he can learn, because he seems willing to learn, and willing to work. And with speed, strength and youth, at 7-1 and 300 pounds, he comes in as the new Wilt.

“And this kid is much further along than Wilt was when Wilt first came into the league,” Red Holzman said later.

This was only the third game of the season for the Knicks. O’Neal and the Magic coming into the Garden made it feel like much more. This was not a game that made you think about the long regular season to come. This was a game that felt like it belonged in the playoffs, or in a pennant race, or a fight for first place in the Atlantic Division. O’Neal vs. Ewing did that, O’Neal vs. the Knicks did that, O’Neal in New York did that.