Pivotal

Bill Walton pops a videotape into the recorder and a game between the Lakers and Chicago Bulls appears on the screen.

The game, played Jan. 12, would have been another ho-hum midseason bore--except that Laker center Shaquille O’Neal loses his cool after being hacked one too many times by Brad Miller of the Bulls.

Footage of O’Neal’s swing (and miss) at Miller’s head sparked debate about the punishment O’Neal takes--and delivers--and the difficulty of officiating a game that features a player who has no peer.

“They always talk about all the great players getting all the calls,” said Walton, a television commentator who was one of basketball’s best centers.

“But the great players are involved in every single play. The better they are the more stiffs that are going to be out there who are going to come and try to slow [them] down by fouling.... That’s why you keep moving.”

And speaking of moving....

“Right when Shaq gets the ball, watch his feet,” Walton said. “First of all, he gets hit, now watch his feet and ask which one is his pivot foot. What’s a defensive player to do if they don’t call that? Call the violations!”

The tape continues to roll.

“How is that not steps?” Walton asks. “He just changed pivot feet on the way to the basket.... As a defensive player, your goal is to make the guy use bad footwork, but if the referee doesn’t call steps, they don’t call double dribble, they don’t call three seconds, then what do you do?”

What to do, indeed.

What O’Neal is allowed--and what leeway opponents are given in trying to defend him--will be key to the Lakers’ success in the playoffs, beginning Sunday against Portland at Staples Center.

Mark Cuban, the controversial owner of the Dallas Mavericks, put the spotlight on officiating this week when he said, “Ref assignments are more important than playoff matchups in the West. You get the wrong ref, that’s worse than getting the Lakers.”

Teams can’t pick which officials work their games, but Cuban, who has been fined more than $1 million for critical comments about NBA referees the last two seasons, reportedly has compiled pages of statistics on the tendencies of some officials.

O’Neal, according to Cuban and others, is guilty of traveling, camping in the paint for more than three seconds, charging and using his off arm to clear his path of defenders while he launches a shot.

On orders from the league offices, referees can’t be interviewed about their work. As for Walton, he sees both sides.

“There’s a small handful of guys who are the most difficult guys in the history of the game to referee,” Walton said. “Shaq’s one of them.... Shaq’s combination of power and skill separates him from any player in the history of basketball other than Wilt [Chamberlain]....

“It’s always tough when you’re the biggest and strongest because there is no sympathy. There is no recognition that there is anything wrong. But as a referee, none of that should matter. When you see a hit, when you see someone committing a foul, you should call it.

“He absorbs a lot and he gives a lot. Like all the great ones--Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar], Magic [Johnson], [Larry] Bird--they all gave it out. But none of those guys had the physical power that you have with Shaq, so when he gives it out, it’s like life-threatening.”

O’Neal is officially listed at 7 feet 1, 335 pounds, and he is all but impossible to guard straight up in a league increasingly devoid of other quality big men. Even though he was slowed this season by pain from an arthritic right big toe, O’Neal averaged 27.2 points and 10.5 rebounds.

“There’s no answer for him,” Clipper Coach Alvin Gentry said. “You’ve got to be willing to use your 18 fouls from your three post players on him. If he catches it in the low post, there’s not a guy in the NBA, the NFL, major league baseball or the NHL who can stop him. Maybe in the WWF.... “

The key, Walton said, is to not let O’Neal receive a pass close to the basket.

“Shaq is so powerful, it’s very difficult because he can get great position and he is phenomenal, probably the best center ever, at that reverse spin move where he catches the lob and dunks it. But it’s also the way he reposts himself.... Once he gives the ball up, you relax defensively a little bit and he just takes advantage of that.

“[The defender] is standing there and all of a sudden Shaq has the ball. He doesn’t like where he is and he throws it out and backs up and he’s right where he wants to be.

“Basketball is exactly like chess. It’s all about control of the areas, the positions. John Wooden had so many great sayings: ‘Basketball is not a game of size and strength. It is a game of skill, timing and position.’ Shaq has all that stuff, but he also has the unmatched power and he can play both games.”

Michael Olowokandi, the Clippers’ 7-foot center, offered this advice about guarding O’Neal, who outweighs him by about 70 pounds: “Your best possible hope is to try to draw a charge. He’s too big, too experienced and his footwork is too good. He could score 100 points on you if he wanted to.

“If you’re behind him and he makes that turn where he dips his shoulder into you, you have to hope for a charge. You’re at the mercy of the refs.”

Olowokandi and the Clippers did a credible job in four games against O’Neal this season, “holding” him to an average of 22.5 points. It was a far cry from the March 6, 2000 game, when O’Neal went for a career-best 61 points against them.

What stood out this season, however, was a near fight between Olowokandi and O’Neal in the closing moments of the Lakers’ victory March 15. A frustrated O’Neal claimed Olowokandi was too rough with him. An equally perturbed Olowokandi said O’Neal could dish it out but not take it and it was time for him to “grow up.”

O’Neal has been praised for his restraint. Until going after Miller, he had been a model citizen in the face of constant pounding.

It’s an admirable trait, according to Walton.

“The way you get back [at opponents] is in the course of the action,” he said. “Taking a hard foul on a blocked shot. On a rebound, you go past the normal rotation of your elbows. A lot of times, you have the mind-set, ‘I’m going to punch them all out,’ but that’s just the rage that makes you play better.

“It’s part of your preparation, your willingness to go out there and do anything, but you have to play with self-restraint.”

So how in the name of James Naismith do you stop O’Neal without fouling out in the game’s first six possessions?

Some say there are tricks of the trade that can at least slow O’Neal after he stations himself on the left block, his favorite starting spot in the offense. Walton believes Sacramento’s Vlade Divac is perhaps best suited of all the Lakers’ potential playoff foes to thwart O’Neal.

“Vlade, despite his flaws, has the best chance because he can run, think and pass,” Walton said. “You can run an offense through him, he can catch the ball and all that stuff.”

There are three keys to defending O’Neal, according to Walton.

“Eliminate the lobs, eliminate his right-handed jump hook and eliminate his offensive rebounding,” he said. “On the offensive end, your goals would be to run him and have the ball in your hands a lot so that he would have to guard the ball.

“And constantly make him move. Don’t ever let him stop.”

Olowokandi offered these tips:

“You have to cut him off before they think he’s open. Your teammates have to play the passing lanes. Then maybe their guys will pass the ball away from him. It’s partly psychological. If they think they can get it to him, they will. You have to overplay him. When you see the ball two passes away, you have to be ready to cut that off. You have to discourage them from passing the ball to him.”

And it that fails?

“Just pray,” Olowokandi said.