How Can You Miss O’Neal When Topic Is the Next Big Thing?

The feet that come closest to fitting Michael Jordan’s high-tops will be squeaking through town today.

They will be dunking with power, playing defense with passion, leading with grace.

But few will be watching.

Because they will be doing it at practice.

The long-sought heir apparent is not Vince Carter, no matter how many breaths he takes away tonight at Staples Center against the Clippers.

The heir is, instead, a guy once thought too one-dimensional, too distracted, too silly.

The heir is a guy who, maturing roughly four years in the last four months, is no longer any of those things.

The heir, as should be plainly apparent, is Shaquille O’Neal.

The NBA can quit looking now.

It can quit searching above rims in Toronto or beyond three-point lines in Minnesota or at high school proms in Philadelphia.

It can quit shaking down every young leaper with a big smile in hopes of finding that perfect combination of ability and likability, of superstar and salesman.

The NBA can stop being so desperate to replace the aura of its greatest player ever.

For one thing, when Michael Jordan retired, the mold retired with him.

For another thing, the NBA already possesses the closest thing to that. Right under its nose.

“I’m playing this year like a man on a mission,” O’Neal said Tuesday.

When the season started, it was a mission to win an NBA championship.

But it has turned into something more enduring, taking him to the threshold of the room that holds the cloak of greatness passed from NBA generation to generation.

Equal parts reminder and promise, the cloak has been handed down from the likes of Bill Russell to Jerry West to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Julius Erving to Magic Johnson to No. 23 to . . .

Of course, O’Neal must lead a team to a championship. And it must be here. And it probably should be this season.

But if that happens, and it appears that it may happen, then that garment could soon be his.

Doesn’t matter how many times Carter goes 360. Doesn’t matter how many nationally televised Foosball games are won by Kevin Garnett.

Who cares how well Grant Hill plays the piano? And, um, well, it doesn’t matter how many teenagers scream for Kobe Bryant.

The mantle fits nobody the way it fits O’Neal.

He just turned 28, which was Jordan’s age when he won his first championship.

He is coached by Phil Jackson, who, as we now see, was more than Jordan’s prop.

O’Neal started his career in the center of controversy but has refined himself into becoming the center of everything good.

He now plays defense.

For now, anyway, he makes his free throws.

He is accessible to the media, he has donated more than $1 million to children, he is as civil off the court as he is rough on it.

And just look who’s voting for him.

None other than Kobe himself.

Since O’Neal barked at him in late January, Kobe is being more selective in his shots, choosing instead to look first to his former rival who could now be his role model.

Even if the league won’t admit it.

Even if others outside this town still sometimes look at O’Neal as a genie rapper.

The league wrongly continues to push the acrobats instead of the construction workers, the stuffed toys instead of the staring 7-footers.

Another sign of O’Neal’s maturity is how he handles this obvious snub.

The old O’Neal would have ripped those who praised Vince Carter.

The new O’Neal understands.

“Me being a marketing expert, I know what the league is trying to do,” he said with a chuckle. “They will always market someone who has the ball all the time. The little man.”

O’Neal noted that this wasn’t even the first time this has happened in Los Angeles, much less the NBA.

“Look back to when Kareem played with Magic. . . . Magic got all the hype,” he said. “People cheer when somebody gets crossed up and goes behind their back and dunks. Nobody cheers chest passes. Nobody cheers the kind of stuff that big men do.”

Rather than challenge those tonight who would anoint the wrong guy, O’Neal said he would join them.

“If you want to put somebody in that next Jordan thing, it will probably be Vince, and I would agree,” he said. “Marketing-wise, he does things nobody else can do. I love to watch him.”

Which brings us to possibly the most amazingly ironic thing about O’Neal’s amazing MVP season.

For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t think he’s the best player in the league.

“Certain guys are better all-around players than I am. I believe that,” said O’Neal, who scored a career-high 61 points against the Clippers on Monday. “I’m probably not the best.”

He paused.

“But most dominant, I’ll take that,” he said. “Yeah, most dominant. I like that.”

Dominant doesn’t always sell. But in this case, it should.

There will never be another Michael Jordan. But finally, we have a Shaquille O’Neal.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.