It’s Time We Had a Talk About Silent Treatment

The fact that my wife wasn’t speaking to me Saturday when I left for the Super Bowl probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you.

I mean, get in line, right?

For some reason, this sort of thing seems to happen a lot to me. Sometimes it’s a university president or a grumpy baseball player who turns and walks in the opposite direction--friends, my kids and even my wife avoiding me, especially on days when they know I’m scheduled to write.

It got ridiculous here this week when Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke yelled at one of our writers to stop talking to me because the two of them have roles in a movie being made, and Plaschke doesn’t want it known yet they can’t act worth a darn, as if I’d write that.

The pilot on my airplane Saturday wouldn’t tell me why we weren’t taking off on time. I shrugged it off because I’ve already got so many people who don’t want to talk with me these days that I’m talking to myself just to have a conversation with somebody . . . and I’m beginning to understand, by the way, why no one wants to talk with me.

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NOW I’M SURE it’s different for you, maybe experiencing this week for the very first time what it’s like to get the cold shoulder from an athlete without any hint or explanation of what you did wrong.

Let me tell you, once it starts--you could become me.

First it was Shaquille O’Neal looking you in the collective face and going silent, the big baby pouting with no explanation. Then it was Phil Jackson after practice refusing to let anyone know what he and Jeanie Buss were thinking.

Now if I had told you eight days would go by without Shaq talking to you even once--via print, radio or TV--you’d probably have wondered if life was worth living anymore. My heavens, what he took away from us.

At the very least, you would have prayed that it was all a mistake and it was Tyronn Lue who was clamming up.

Well, how does it feel to be treated like a sports writer?

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SHAQ TALKED FRIDAY night, of course, after he had gotten his 41 points, like some kid carrying on in the grocery store until his mother buys him a sucker and then he’s all giggles.

Before the game, he sat in front of his locker, grunted once, which everyone interpreted as anti-Kobe Bryant, and then trudged onto the court.

The Rockets were missing their only three centers on the roster, which left a bunch of reluctant midgets guarding Shaq, and while he was all happy about getting 41 points, if his teammates were really behind him they would have fed him the ball and let him go after Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point night.

When the game was over, word circulated that Shaq would speak, and I’m surprised local TV programming wasn’t interrupted.

He sat in front of his locker surrounded by about 40 people, who were starving for a good sound bite. Shaq lowered his head and mumbled like he was in confession, and 25 reporters never heard what he had to say because when he talks like this, he’s on automatic pilot--his monotone voice aimed at the floor--and everyone waited eight days for this?

TV reporter John Ireland asked the same question you would have asked--why hadn’t Shaq been talking--and Shaq looked up and began chewing into a green apple. Very disgusting, not to mention discourteous.

Eventually, Shaq relented, ending the interview by saying, “If I can’t say what I want to say, why say anything at all?”

Maybe that’s good enough for you, and it was for all the reporters who went on to talk to Kobe, and maybe this is why people don’t want to talk to me, because I pressed on. You’ve got an imposing giant here with all the money anyone needs for security, a certified L.A. icon, who talks about the big dog doing this and the big dog doing that, and when it comes to the good old American tradition of speaking his mind, he comes across like a nervous chihuahua.

“Why can’t you say what you want?” I asked.

“Have to be politically correct,” Shaq said, which means I guess he won’t be appearing any time soon with Bill Maher.

Why do you have to be politically correct? I said.

“That’s life,” he replied while walking away.

I followed, and told him I thought it was silly, yes, that’s the word I used, silly, that he chose to go silent.

And he said, “I don’t think it’s silly.”

And I said, “I think it’s silly.”

And he said, “I don’t think it’s silly.”

“Silly,” I said, and you see what people are missing when they don’t talk to me.

Excuse me, that’s my cell phone ringing, and undoubtedly my wife wanting to apologize. We know this--it’s not Kevin Brown, Steven Sample, Plaschke, F.P. Santangelo, Davey Johnson, Philip Anschutz, Pierre Gauthier . . .

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THE MOST CHILLING line in the “Jason Kidd belts his wife” story never made it into The Times Saturday. “Don’t worry about me,” Kidd’s wife told the 911 operator, “this is minor compared to what I usually go through.”

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OFFICIALS AT RAYMOND James Stadium put down new grass Jan. 11 in preparation for the Super Bowl, a hybrid of Bermuda grass from golfer Greg Norman’s farm outside Orlando. As you can imagine, officials are worried that something might get into the grass, choking it and leaving it dead right before the big game.

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TODAY’S LAST WORD comes in an e-mail from Anthony:

“According to you, you’re the smartest man on the planet--so why aren’t you coaching the Lakers? Matter of fact--Mr. Know-It-All, why not coach the Lakers and the Dodgers.”

Victory parades wear me out.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at his e-mail address: t.j.simers@latimes.com