O’Neal Will Try to Man-Handle the Opponent

Shaquille O’Neal won’t be entirely satisfied until he gets the ball again tonight. He has lived with missing 14 of 21 shots in Game 1 against the Portland Trail Blazers for four days, which is plenty.

“I won’t be trying to miss those again,” he said. “You guys know how I get when I have a game off. I come in the next game [ticked] off. And now they’re talking, so I’m really [ticked] off now. So, I’ve got something for them.”

He added that he’d play “a man’s game.”

“If I’m going to fight you, I’d rather just beat you,” he said. “If I can’t beat you, I’ll be a man and say I can’t beat you. I’m not going to [cry about it]. . . . I’m the first guy to say that somebody is better than me. I was the first guy to say Hakeem Olajuwon beat me in the [1995] NBA finals. He killed me. He dominated me. I didn’t go, ‘Oh, he’s traveling. They had experience. Wah-wah-wah.’ I’m a man. Hakeem Olajuwon dusted my butt. These guys now are crying, ‘Three seconds!’ It’s just funny to me.”

It didn’t sound as if anyone was interested in talking O’Neal down.

“I think Shaq plays well with an attitude,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “He plays behind his emotion well. He doesn’t let it rule it and his determination.”

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It was a long and trying fifth season for Kobe Bryant, who narrowed his eyes and played through unusual criticism and then sat through several injuries and illnesses.

Jackson, who contributed some of the criticism, called it a part of Bryant’s rise to maturity.

“He came to this game and everybody said how mature he was as a young man,” Jackson said. “I think what they meant was that he was intellectual. A good conversationalist. He’s well mannered. He had a lot of poise. Maturation is what you learn from experience in life. Kobe did not have maturation. He wasn’t mature. What we hope that what this year has given him is a lot of maturity.

“One, everybody who’s a hero--or a sports hero--in this country goes through the process of falling off, losing the adoring fans or adoring press. He gets criticized--and has to learn how to be resilient. Kobe’s very resilient and very insulated. But the maturity to understand that and deal with it and come back and play even better basketball is what really is impressive to me.”

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Bryant and O’Neal are the NBA’s two most marketable players, according to a survey of 70 experts by the Sports Business Daily. All were asked to rank five players in order of marketability.

Bryant was first, followed by O’Neal, Vince Carter, Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett, Grant Hill and Ray Allen.

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Rick Fox’s sore hamstring was better again Wednesday. He is expected to play tonight. . . . Ron Harper, recovering from knee surgery, isn’t. He’s scheduled for Sunday at the earliest. Jackson’s reaction to Harper wanting to play at least another season: “I told him I lost my assistant coach all of a sudden.” . . . Jackson, on fitting Michael Jordan onto the Laker roster next season: “We could. But he’d have to conform to whatever our salary-cap restrictions are.”