O’Neal, Lakers Are Simply the Best

John Salley is a very funny man, and it’s a good thing because every day in practice he has to guard 7-foot-1, 330-pound Shaquille O’Neal, which makes a sense of humor a job prerequisite. “I have a chiropractor on call,” Salley said Tuesday. “I got hit with one of his elbows so hard today, I gotta go and check to see if my spleen is where it’s supposed to be.”

The point to be made about O’Neal Tuesday, on the eve of Game 1 of the NBA finals between the Lakers and Pacers, is that the full force of O’Neal in all likelihood is about to be unleashed again. The Portland Trail Blazers held him below his scoring average nine of the 11 times they met the Lakers this season, and pushed the Western Conference finals to seven games primarily because they kept O’Neal under wraps.

But the Pacers aren’t the Trail Blazers. The Pacers don’t have 7-3 Arvydas Sabonis to play behind O’Neal. They don’t have someone like Scottie Pippen, who is one of the best defensive players in NBA history, to come quickly to double-team. And they don’t have a Brian Grant or Jermaine O’Neal to bring off the bench and substitute for their big man.

So if you’re looking for the most important theme in the NBA finals, this is it: Can the Indiana Pacers keep O’Neal from scoring 40 points every night? That’s the question. And, to that end, what exactly do the Pacers have to throw at O’Neal?

The Pacers have 7-4 Rik Smits: skinny, old, injury-prone and foul-prone. Putting him alone on O’Neal is like waving a red flag in a bull’s face. “I know how strong Brian Grant of Portland is and I felt sorry for him,” Salley said of the 6-9, 250-pound Grant having to go up against O’Neal. “Smits? Now don’t make this sound like I’m dogging my man Smits, who’s a damn good player, but Smits has never been able to hold Shaq.”

Told that, Smits nodded in agreement and smiled. “He’s a tough cover,” Smits said, understating the point about as much as you can. In two regular season games this year, O’Neal sorta got the better of Smits, by a 53-16 score. Asked if he had been rooting for Portland to reach the finals, Smits said, “From a personal standpoint, one-on-one playing against Sabonis would have made my job so much easier.”

So clearly the Pacers have to double-team Shaq every time he touches the ball, right? Well, maybe not. Dale Davis, the relatively slender 6-11 power forward who will get his share of turns trying to deal with O’Neal, said, “I think we have to mix it up. Portland did a good job on him, got him frustrated at times. But even when they did, he came through in the end.”

Coach Larry Bird might have tipped his hand a bit when he said, “You’ve got to run somebody down there [to double-team Shaq]. The problem is, if you keep running people down there, he’ll find shooters. We can’t let Glen Rice get 25 or 30. We can’t let Brian Shaw or Rick Fox make plays for them. Shaq and Kobe will get their points.”

Wow, talk about a difference in philosophy. Mike Dunleavy’s was that the Trail Blazers were committed to double-teaming O’Neal and would double-team Kobe Bryant when possible, thus making Ron Harper, Rice, Fox and Shaw beat them. If Portland had gone, say, four for 13 instead of 0 for 13 in that fourth quarter of Game 7, Dunleavy would be a genius. But Bird seems to be going the other way and suggesting that the very thing he doesn’t want is for Rice, Harper, Fox and Shaw to get open and start hitting shots. Dunleavy said, “Make the other guys beat us.” Bird, if I’m reading him correctly, is saying, “Shaq and Kobe can’t beat us if we hold the others down.”

These are the question that drive a coach crazy preparing for O’Neal and the Lakers. Dunleavy and Sacramento’s Rick Adelman have some answers most teams don’t.

Smits did go head-to-head for seven games against Shaq and Orlando in the 1995 Eastern Conference finals. But as Smits was quick to point out, “Shaq’s a much better player now.”

As fabulous as Miller has been this postseason in the games that count, as great as Bryant and Rose have become for their respective teams in the roles of stars-in-ascension, it is O’Neal who has been there every single game for the Lakers this season: playing 48 minutes some nights, defeating triple-teams other nights, being what a star player in this league should be even more frequently than Miller. And it’s O’Neal, who over another full seven games, will be the reason the Lakers emerge as NBA champions.