Shaq: It Says Championship in the Fine Print

All right, Miss Kelly B., let’s try our semiannual letter to Shaquille O’Neal, Mr. Crutch of the L.A. Lakers. Fed-Ex it--time is critical here. Tell them, he’ll be the one with the basketball who looks as if they had to climb a beanstalk to get him:

Dear Shaq,

Heh-heh, good to talk to you again, ol’ buddy. Murray here. You remember, the guy with the horn-rims, always asking those dumb questions?

Look, Shaq, nice start, eliminating those freaky Portlands. But, tell me something, how in the world did they ever get in the league in the first place? They couldn’t post up your grandmother. And how did they win one game?

Well, never mind. I have to caution you again, though. That’s only the beginning! No time to rest on laurels.

What we’re talking here is the championship. The whole ball o’ wax.

Nothing less will do, Shaq. L.A. doesn’t settle for less. When Jerry Buss signed you, it was implicit in the contract. NBA championship or give the money back.

You see, we have a tradition of that here. When Jack Kent Cooke bought the team, he realized what it lacked was a center, the big man in the middle. The team had a lot of character, but character closes on Saturday night. So, he went out and got the biggest and best there was, Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt threw in 9 million or so points and the Lakers finally won a championship.

Cooke then got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Same mission, same result. Lakers win title. As Al Davis had it, “Just win, baby!” Everything else is Bridgeport.

So, that’s what you’re supposed to do, Shaq. Get that flag up in the rafters.

L.A.’s a pretty laid-back community, Shaq. But not about being second-best.

You know, we had a chance to get the St. Louis Browns in baseball once. They’re now the Baltimore Orioles but they could have been in L.A. Only L.A. didn’t want them. They came with the cellar attached. We don’t do cellars. So we got the Brooklyn Dodgers, no less, instead. They were top floor. They came with Sandy Koufax, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella and Duke Snider attached.

When we got a pro football team, it was no expansion franchise either. It was the Cleveland Rams, the defending champions.

You begin to see the point, Shaq? I mean, Hollywood is right here and Hollywood is very conscious of above-the-title billing. Hollywood wants stars. So does L.A.

We got the Lakers. We didn’t get the Fort Wayne Pistons or the Providence Whozits or the Rochester Royals. L.A. is a high-end town--Neiman Marcus, not Woolworth’s.

You get my drift, Shaq? The town’s running out of patience. You’ve been here almost two years now and the natives are getting restless. They’re going around saying, “We shoulda got Michael Jordan.”

Can’t have that, Shaq. Jerry Buss is embarrassed. It’s no good to say you’re doing your best. That only counts in horseshoes. I mean, we don’t want you to do your best, we want you to be the best. Quit fooling around.

You see, Hollywood doesn’t deal in “Nice try,” either. Hollywood deals in box office.

You know all that licorice you read about “It’s not whether you won or lost, it’s how you played the game,” or “It’s not the winning or losing, it’s the taking part?” Easy for Grantland Rice and Baron Coubertin to say. But they weren’t handing out million-dollar contracts.

Picture George Steinbrenner, can you, going down to the locker room after his pitcher has balked in the winning run in the World Series and saying to him “Don’t feel bad, son, you did your best.”

So, we don’t want no the-check-is-in-the-mail stuff, Shaq. We want Jordan’s head on a platter right now. Or Karl Malone’s. Not next year. Next month. We want that bunting up on the ceiling.

And, speaking of Malone, we don’t lose games to Utah, Shaq. Tacky. Not allowed. Too humiliating. We might put up with losing to Chicago. The New York Knicks, even. But not Utah, Shaq. Let’s be clear on that. Not to a team called (ugh!) the Utah Jazz.

The Lakers got only 77 points in one playoff game last year against Utah. Shaq, we expect you to make 77 points by yourself in a game like that. Pay attention, this is for your own good.

I’ve been meaning to talk to you about a few things, Shaq. The free throws. You got this big trouble, Shaq. When the other team wants the ball, it has a sure-fire method of getting it. They just foul you. Then, they go up and get the rebound when you miss the free throw.

But when you guys want the ball, Eddie Jones has to go out and steal it for you.

However you do it, Shaq, it might be advisable that you do it this year--win, that is. Don’t keep us standing around on tiptoe with our eyes closed, waiting to be kissed. It’s getting kind of old. I mean, are you the best center in the game or aren’t you? Make up your mind.

After all, you’ve got your movie career to think of too. Make it big this year and maybe they’ll give you the Clark Gable part in a remake of “Gone With The Wind.” Blow it and you’ll get their answering machines.

So, why don’t you just go out there and take over the playoffs? That’s what Chamberlain and Abdul-Jabbar would have done. That’s what Jordan does. Who’s going to stop you? Greg Ostertag? Luc Longley? Rik Smits? Vlade Divac? Don’t make me laugh.

Do yourself a favor, Shaq. Just win the championship. You can’t keep us waiting around here the rest of the century. We had a deal, didn’t we?