Shaq Won’t Take It Back

This could be about Phil Jackson’s misunderstood sense of humor, which runs anywhere between William F. Buckley and Carrot Top. It has been entirely lost on Shaquille O’Neal.

Having gotten much of his disappointment in Jackson’s coaching methods off his chest the day before, O’Neal said Friday night that he regretted none of it. In fact, he said, the cleansing in Houston did nothing to soften his view of a once-strong relationship that apparently has withered.

He said he has not met with Jackson, who suggested Thursday that O’Neal needed to be kept on an edge, and that that typically meant being angry at something. Or, at somebody. Jackson said he was willing to take that hit.

“I don’t need to talk [to Jackson],” O’Neal said. “I don’t need to talk to anybody. I just do my job. I’m no one’s whipping boy. I’ll follow orders. I don’t need to have a conversation with him. I don’t need to have dinner with him. It’s about respect.”

He’ll just play and, he said, Jackson could save his motivation techniques for the others.

“I ain’t Toni [Kukoc]. I ain’t ... Horace [Grant],” O’Neal said of two famed Jackson targets. “I don’t need motivation. I’m already motivated. I don’t worry about that stuff.

“However, I don’t get into that, how they treat me. I do my job. It ain’t over for me. I don’t ever start it. I don’t start anything. But, any man who stands for nothing, will fall for everything.”

The Lakers, of course, are quite unfazed, because these things occur often enough in Lakerland. O’Neal, who had surgery on his toe in late summer, was grumpy early in training camp, but has been positively perky since relieving himself of his criticism for Jackson. Also, he is a father again, which delights him.

Jackson declined comment Friday. He often decides when a story has run its course, or when his participation in it is over, and he was eager to leave this one in Texas.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said. “We’re not talking about this tonight.”

Players and team personnel shrugged. Most weren’t aware that O’Neal had gone public with feelings they’d heard in private for weeks.

They have won two NBA championships with a grumpy O’Neal, though his mood was dark for a different reason. This season has started better than those did. The Lakers were 7-0 when they arrived here, and were scoring 105.1 points per game even with their triangle askew, before getting 83 Friday.

Their new players are energetic and eager, if somewhat hamstrung by Jackson’s complex offense. The Lakers can wait. O’Neal led the league in scoring and Kobe Bryant wasn’t far behind. If O’Neal is very mad, and there’s no reason to believe he isn’t, his game has not suffered.

The fact is, Jackson provokes. It’s how he coaches, how he communicates, and he is sure life is more interesting that way.