O’Neal’s Future Likely to Include Reduced Minutes

Shaquille O’Neal started Sunday a tenth of a point ahead of Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson in the scoring race and two-tenths of a rebound behind Dikembe Mutombo in that race.

No one has won both since Wilt Chamberlain in 1965 but Phil Jackson says O’Neal may be missing something important the rest of the way--minutes.

“We’ll probably be cutting back more than anything else with Shaquille and the rest of our players,” Jackson said before Sunday’s game. “This is a hard time, the last 12 games or so of the season, when the pressure of that amount of time and minutes is just difficult for players. We’ve got to watch that.

“Everybody was alerted this week when [Phoenix’s] Jason Kidd went down and [Portland’s Arvydas] Sabonis went down. . . . Those are the type of things that take a team from playoff hopes to possible playoff elimination. . . . “

Orlando’s Doc Rivers, himself a leading candidate for coach of the year, suggested recently that Jackson deserves the award. Jackson, in turn, nominates Rivers, Seattle’s Paul Westphal, Philadelphia’s Larry Brown and Utah’s Jerry Sloan.

“A lot of people are working with diminishing numbers and less talent and probably driving their teams harder,” said Jackson. “Obviously, Doc has got to be one of the people in that group.

“I think Seattle has been a surprise to everybody’s that been experts, so to speak, this year. . . . I think Brown’s done a good job in Philadelphia. He’s been a coach that’s been deserving of some consideration. Obviously, in our conference out here in the West, Jerry Sloan, just managing to keep Utah at the pace they’re at is also a person I think is doing a good job. . . .

“It’s kinda like the Academy Awards. Usually the guy who deserves it gets it the next time around--’Oh yeah, we forgot about him.’. . . .

“You go back to the incident where [Houston’s] Don Chaney won it one year after Hakeem [Olajuwon went out, in 1991] and they had to play with Otis Thorpe at center? He did a heck of a job and they fired him the next year.”