Lakers in His Corner

If Shaquille O’Neal awoke Sunday in Beverly Hills with an ounce of regret, it was not for the punch he threw the night before in Chicago, but for the necessity of it.

Who would protect Shaq, if not Shaq?

In that moment, he chose himself. If not the NBA leadership, if not its referees, then him, with a fist the size of a cantaloupe sent whistling past another man’s head, with terrible intentions.

It appears now that the Laker center has put an entire league on notice; he no longer will take cheap shots, he will defend himself, and he will hurt back.

He called it “a raggedy ... league” last week for exactly this reason, because of what he perceives as a double standard in assessing fouls. The guard nudged 25 feet from the basket goes to the free-throw line and he, slashed across the wrists beneath the rim, does not.

The relative violence of the fouls against O’Neal is next to impossible to quantify. But the hack by Brad Miller in Saturday’s fourth quarter was the first flagrant foul assessed against an opponent on O’Neal this season, and there have been dozens of harder fouls. There were a handful harder Saturday night alone, when Charles Oakley, Miller and the young Bulls chopped and hacked with little regard for the proximity of the basketball.

“Even in the first half they were coming way too hard to foul him,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “The referees never warned them. They never said, ‘OK guys, cut it down, that’s a little excessive.’ Just to say a word, is what we need to hear. What the league does not want to see is Shaq explode and break somebody’s face up.”

Jackson said the organization has been in contact with the league office, to no avail.

“How many times can we do it?” he said. “We do it all the time. We don’t complain because we don’t whine. But we say, ‘That’s too hard.’ I told the referees the first half, ‘That’s too hard. That’s excessive contact.’”

Laker General Manager Mitch Kupchak said Sunday he would ask the league’s Competition Committee to examine the way O’Neal is officiated. It meets again in February, during All-Star weekend.

“I want to make sure we’re heard as an organization,” Kupchak said. “Here’s a man who clearly is subjected physically to this every time he catches the ball.”

Of course, O’Neal, who imposes a violent game as well, will find it all too typical that he will be the one punished. That announcement, from league disciplinarian Stu Jackson, is expected today, for at least a game and probably more. He is likely to miss Saturday’s game at San Antonio. Miller, Oakley and Ron Artest of the Bulls also could be assessed suspensions or fines, though they are expected to be less severe than O’Neal’s.

“It’s not about the suspension or the money,” Laker guard Brian Shaw said. “It’s about the respect. You can be physical, but you have to be clean. As big and strong as he is, when he does it it’s always in self-defense. You never see him go over and try to take somebody’s head off. As big and strong as he is, if he did that, somebody would really get hurt.

“He has to restrain himself every day. A lot of fouls for everybody else are not going to be fouls to him. He accepts that for the most part. But if it’s a foul, it’s a foul, regardless of how strong the guy is.”

Bull General Manager Jerry Krause, Jackson’s former boss, said the Lakers had no right to complain, that the higher standard comes with a superstar player.

“I don’t know if he takes a beating,” he said. “Michael [Jordan] took a beating every night. Wilt [Chamberlain] took a beating every night. Bill Russell took a beating every night. All great players, particularly when you’re a great inside player, give and take poundings. When you’re a great player it just comes with the territory.”

When Jackson said in training camp that the three-peat season was more difficult than attempting to win the first or the second, he did not mention O’Neal by name. Though O’Neal was healing from surgery on the small toe of his left foot, Jackson could not have foretold O’Neal’s trying season.

O’Neal declared “[Mess] with Shaq Week” when his public spat with Jackson was followed by the league’s fine for having excessively long shorts. It became “Mess with Shaq Month” when both of his feet began to ache, an ailment that forced him to the injured list Christmas Day.

Today, when the suspension and fine come down, O’Neal surely will believe it to be “Mess with Shaq Season,” and it is not yet midway through January.

Amazingly, O’Neal has been playful and charming through most of the difficult moments, though he talks of early retirement more often than ever. It is his nature, generally, to be upbeat, and he was delighted in November by the birth of his fourth child, a daughter named Amirah Sanaa.

O’Neal also has been remarkable for his restraint. Players of lesser skill and heft, players such as Miller and Oakley, long have employed their six fouls as weapons against O’Neal, 7 feet 1 and 341 pounds. And O’Neal has understood, though with a predictable disdain for those clumsy methods.

His poor free-throw percentage has enabled the strategy. The overzealous, meantime, were protected by O’Neal’s promises--to himself, to his coach, to his father and mother--to resist retaliation. He came to believe he was the world’s only football player to engage in four games a week, and to perform unpadded as well.

Nothing can harm Superman, after all, and isn’t that the tattoo on his biceps? And isn’t that the theme music played at Staples Center? And isn’t that the logo on the grilles of his car?

Often, O’Neal would lower his head, raise his eyes and trudge to the free-throw line. Not the last time, however.

He chased Miller to the baseline and rolled an overhand right that nicked Miller’s ear.

“They say, ‘You should be able to take that,’” Laker forward Samaki Walker said. “It’s like when you’re growing up, they say, ‘Well, you’re big, you should be able to take that.’

“There were some plays early in the game he complained about. He told them that they were roughing him up. That play there, it got carried away. I couldn’t say that I would handle the situation any different. That was a situation that could have injured him. He’s got to stand up for himself.”