Aching O'Neal Hurts So Good

By TIM KAWAKAMI

March 14, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DENVER —

Shaquille O’Neal, marching to higher orders these days and playing at a level much, much more than a mile high, dragged a bad leg and carried a tired team on Monday night.

He limped. He grimaced. The Denver Nuggets, rested and roaring, swarmed.

And somehow, O’Neal pushed the Lakers to their 19th consecutive victory, the third-longest single-season winning streak in NBA history.

O’Neal, with a sore right hamstring that threatened to keep him out of the game entirely, did not exactly perform 330-pound ballet in the Lakers’ 118-108 victory over the Denver Nuggets before a sellout crowd at the Pepsi Center.

But slow down? Nope. With the Lakers improving their NBA-best record to 53-11, it’s only getting faster and more amazing, and the emerging stories are like tales from the battlefield.

In the latest chapters of this increasingly historic season, with this increasingly historic player, O’Neal outsprinted his defender constantly, scored 40 points and passed out seven assists in 44 blue-collar minutes.

“The big fella, you know, he amazes me at every turn,” said forward Glen Rice. “When you have a guy with a hamstring injury . . .

“To be able to go out there and gut it out and put up the type of performance he did tonight just says a lot on how much he’s grown.

“We figured the big guy would go out there, whether it’d be eight minutes, 10 minutes, he was going to give it his all. And he got it going on, and it loosened up on him and he just stayed out there and continued to play.”

O’Neal said he first tweaked the leg during the Lakers’ March 5 victory over the Miami Heat, which is interesting, since he has averaged 42.2 points in the four games that have followed.

On Monday, O’Neal made 14 of 20 field-goal tries, and was deadly from the free-throw line, making 12 of 16, including six-for-six in the fourth quarter, as the Lakers, who used up a ton of energy Sunday to come back against Sacramento, fended off a last Nugget run.

How has O’Neal been able to post such numbers even as he spends hours in the training room getting his leg massaged?

“Because,” O’Neal said, “I have heart.”

O’Neal also has two days off now before the Lakers’ next game, at Washington on Thursday, and Coach Phil Jackson said that he will give O’Neal both days off to recuperate.

O’Neal said he felt much better once he loosened up during the game, and said, with rest, he should be fine for the rest of this trip, which has four more games to go, including a back-to-back finale in New York and Miami.

Once he gets home, O’Neal said he is sure acupuncture treatment will heal him.

The effort, said his teammates, was as inspiring as it was effective.

“OK, we see him getting the treatment and how he’s moving . . . and then he goes in and plays and still has the type of game he had tonight,” said guard Brian Shaw, who came off the bench to score a season-high 14 points.

“I had a sore ankle, [Derek] Fisher had a sore ankle, everybody has some nicks here and there. But you look at Shaq and say, ‘If he can play through it and all the pounding he gets night in and night out, I have to play through mine as well.’ . . .

“That’s how his year has gone so far, he’s been able to dominate even when he hasn’t felt up to par.”

The Lakers, meanwhile, have been able to dominate for months at a time--they had an earlier 16-game winning streak, and, in the current run, haven’t lost since Feb. 1.

Only the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks, who won 20 in a row, and, of course, the 1971-72 Lakers, who won 33, have put together longer single-season streaks, and both teams won titles.

“When you have a winning streak, it’s kind of intriguing to go through it and find a way to continue on,” said Jackson, who won 18 in a row with the 1994-95 Bulls.

“This is special for us, and we’re very proud of it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

STREAKS AND BEYOND

LONGEST NBA WINNING STREAKS

Longest winning streaks

in NBA history:

33--LAKERS

Nov. 5, 1971-Jan. 7, 1972

20--WASHINGTON

March 13-Dec. 4, 1948*

20--MILWAUKEE

Feb. 6-March 8, 1971