O’Neal’s Effort Burns the Suns

The Suns revolved around Shaquille O’Neal, and got smashed by a gravitational force they could not resist.

Eight blocked shots. Eighteen rebounds--13 in the second half. Thirty-four points. Even a salvageable free-throw performance.

“I’ll tell you what,” teammate Glen Rice said, “he could do that every game.

“He dominated the game in all aspects.”

In by far his best game of the young but already incident-filled season, O’Neal lit up the statistical sheet and towed the Lakers to an important, 91-82 victory over the Phoenix Suns on Monday before 19,023 at America West Arena.

The Suns didn’t try a junk defense, didn’t intentionally foul him, didn’t even swarm him on defense, preferring to see him try his luck with 10-foot jumpers.

They played regular, no-tricks basketball, and nobody had to wonder about flagrant fouls or ejections, suspensions and recriminations in the aftermath.

O’Neal started slow, wobbled a little on a bad left ankle and right shoulder, then gradually gobbled up huge pieces of the Sun offense by flinging himself at every shot attempt within reach and controlling the defensive boards.

“To get to the level that the team has to get, he has to do that on the defensive end,” Rice said. “He could lead the league in the blocked shots.

“And he loves blocking shots. He likes the idea coming over from the weak side blocking shots.”

Phoenix, full of firepower and triggered by Jason Kidd, ran the Lakers ragged twice in the exhibition season, keeping them backpedaling throughout.

But Monday, the Suns shot the ball wildly, made only 36.8% of their field-goal tries (32 for 87) and managed only 36 points in the second half, despite Kidd’s urgent efforts.

“I still don’t think I dominated,” said O’Neal, who played 43 minutes and made six of his 10 fourth-quarter free throws after starting 0 for 4.

“I still missed too many throws. You know, I hit one out of two. Now I’m just going to keep practicing. I can’t get any worse, I can only get better. . .

“I’m the type of player, I like to be as close to perfect as possible. And I know there’s no such thing as perfect. But 34-18-8 and six for 14 from the line, that’s not good enough for me. Not good enough for Phil [Jackson], not good enough for the other Phil [his father, Sgt. Phil Harrison].

“But my team’s 7-2. It’s all about winning.”

And the Lakers, O’Neal pointed out, are 6-0 in games that he finishes--including road victories over Utah and Phoenix, two Western Conference rivals.

Said Jackson about O’Neal: “Second period I thought he was fatigued. He was struggling to get his breath.

“I told him he was going to go a long time and he had to get his wind. And I started calling timeouts every two or three minutes to try and get him through this space I thought he was fatigued in.

“He got himself stronger sometime in the course of the game.”

O’Neal made at least half of his 14 baskets on jumpers from outside the key, dipping away from the relatively straight-up defense of Luc Longley and Oliver Miller.

He also had four assists.

“I think I was taking shots they’d rather me take,” O’Neal said. “I wasn’t in the paint most of those shots.”

For Jackson, the most important part of the Laker performance was keeping the Suns from breaking out offensively.

Phoenix scored only 10 fastbreak points, and, other than Kidd (who led them with 20 points and 10 assists), never seemed to get into an offensive flow.

Penny Hardaway made only five of his 15 shots, rookie Shawn Marion was only two for eight, and Longley was three for 10.

The Lakers, meanwhile, only made 29 of their 76 field-goal attempts (38.2%), and only got eight points from their bench--six from Brian Shaw and two from Robert Horry.

But the Lakers made 31 of 46 free-throw tries (11 of 12 by Rice, who finished with 23 points) and outrebounded the Suns, 52-44.

“We got tempo in our control,” Jackson said. “We were able to go into Shaq, who had just an awesome game as far as filling up the stat sheet and playing the complete [game]. He even made some free throws down the stretch.

“We needed to stay really in control, and we were able to do it with our rebounding and our defense, the way we kept the pace of the game in our control.”