A Two-Step Recovery

Shaquille O’Neal padded his feet and swallowed his pills and lowered his eyes, and the Lakers resumed their regular season on Friday night, with all due strength and enthusiasm.

Off the injured list, where he spent five games, O’Neal again made the Lakers who they are, again made their championship three-peat appear preordained.

He scored 24 points in 28 minutes and the Lakers defeated the Phoenix Suns, 118-86, before 18,997 at Staples Center, with all who attended awash in the reminder of what he does for them, and for the Lakers. The crowd stood with him at the end, and O’Neal raised his arms to return its cheers, and when it was over he winked at his mother, seated not 50 feet away.

“It’s just the same old Shaq,” Kobe Bryant said. “He’s right back to business as usual, kicking butt and taking names.”

Not coincidentally, the Lakers scored their season-high for points, and the 32-point victory margin was their largest as well. They have won three consecutive games and are a league-best 23-6.

O’Neal made 11 of 15 field-goal attempts and took nine rebounds, and he did not play for the final 16-plus minutes. Afterward, with his team amid a run of seven games in seven cities over 11 days, O’Neal sat with his feet in a red bucket of ice, a towel on his lap, and a smile on his face.

“When a tree that’s been chopped on as much as this tree gets rest, the chlorophyll gets replenished,” he said.

And everyone laughed with O’Neal. His feet, he said, felt OK enough. Rather than drag them around uncomfortably for 40 minutes, as he had for weeks before the injured list, he ran easily, and blocked a shot, and talked the Suns out of many more.

“I always try to come back with a fabulous performance,” he said. “The team played well, and that’s what we’re supposed to do. We did what we’re supposed to do. I told the guys in the huddle, it’s about that time we pick our game up a notch. We’ve been coasting for long enough.... So, right before the playoffs we can be very, very deadly.”

Rested and therefore as lively as he’d been this season, O’Neal had most of his game, and all of his personality, and so the Lakers had no problem with the Suns.

O’Neal rested for nearly all of 13 days, starting from three days before Christmas, when the pain in his feet became too much to manage. By then, O’Neal was finding it difficult to get up and down the floor. His defense, in particular, suffered, and during a pre-Christmas game in Memphis he decided he’d require most of a couple of weeks off.

The schedule, then, did no favors for the Suns, who arrived to find a reasonably sound and content O’Neal, once again determined to force his game on them. Or, through them, as was the case.

“I thought he played right up to par,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “It’s a good feeling to play out there on the floor with him.”

Phoenix Coach Scott Skiles, already down a Jake, sent out Jake Voskuhl and hoped for the best. Center Jake Tsakalidis, who doesn’t fare well against O’Neal anyway, is on the injured list.

O’Neal scored 20 points in the first half and left for good with 4:24 left in the third quarter, when he drew his fourth foul and was benched.

Before that, however, O’Neal was at his dynamic best.

He stomped up the floor after dunks, and gleefully shook his shoulders, and then stared at the Phoenix bench.

He led the fast break once in the first half, high-dribbling down the middle of the floor before dishing to Bryant on the right wing, then getting the ball back for a finger roll.

Later, alone against Voskuhl near the three-point line, O’Neal put the ball on the floor, hesitated, crossed over and went hard to the rim. As he entered the lane, he pulled up and flipped up a six-foot shot that swished. At that, O’Neal’s eyes and mouth widened, and his mother, Lucille, chuckled at his joy.

“That’s the type of energy everybody’s grown accustomed to seeing from him,” Rick Fox said. “It not only sends a message to the opponent, but it sets a tone for our team and it sends energy through all of us.... To see him pushing the ball out on the break, that’s Shaquille. That’s what you like about him.”

The Sun coaching staff complained in November that O’Neal was stepping into the lane illegally during his free throws. Mark Cuban piled on, and the issue hung around for a week or so, long enough for O’Neal to call the Suns whiners and Cuban a punk, or some such thing.

Reminded before Friday’s game that the Suns started that, O’Neal said, “Pfft,” as though he didn’t care at all.

“Cryin’ won’t stop me,” he said. “Remember that.”