Shaq Dab in the Middle

That’s 76 points and 65.1% shooting and 28 rebounds in two games against the New Jersey Nets this season for the man from Newark, a few tollbooths southwest of the Meadowlands.

That’s 134 points and 64.4% shooting and 51 rebounds in four games over two seasons for Shaquille O’Neal against the Nets, who defend him as if they were a man with his hand out, collecting quarters on the turnpike as O’Neal whizzes past, bass thumping.

So, while the Lakers try to get a handle on Jason Kidd and what he does in tonight’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals at Staples Center, the Nets have the larger task in O’Neal, and what he does.

Frankly, O’Neal couldn’t care. Go straight up, double-team him, zone him, bolo tie him with the Collins twins, dress out Willis Reed, whatever.

Not interested.

“Been getting doubled all my life,” he said Thursday afternoon.

He is twice the Finals MVP, even as news conferences and skull sessions raged with debates on how to stop him, from L.A. to Indianapolis to Philadelphia, and now New Jersey.

It is neither a new issue nor a new story: O’Neal grinds through the regular season, gathers momentum in the early rounds, then thumps some poor fellow from the Eastern Conference, be it Rik Smits, Dikembe Mutombo or Todd MacCulloch.

Since being outplayed by Houston’s Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1995 Finals, an experience he occasionally trots out to prove his humility, O’Neal has averaged 35.8 points and 16.3 rebounds in 12 Finals games.

The popular theory is that by the time the Finals come around, O’Neal is mulling his ultimate place in the game, and what another banner or two would do for that. Even teammates, who would seem to know him as well as anyone, concur, though O’Neal denies it.

“It’s not that I want it to be a part of my legacy,” O’Neal said. “When I was in Orlando, we got swept. I made a promise to myself and my family that if we ever got back to the Finals I will make sure that [doesn’t] happen again. So every game on, I just have to make myself known, make my presence known.”

He does leave an impression. Typically, it’s in the face or neck region.

In the wake of another enormous game by O’Neal--36 points and 16 rebounds in Game 1--a question being lobbed around the news conferences Thursday afternoon was the basketball version of “Ginger or Mary Ann?” That is, “Shaq or Michael?”

Jackson, an otherwise intelligent man, last year was sucked into the Shaq-or-Kobe query, chose Shaq, and suffered the consequences. A year later, he grinned.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “You want to stab me in the back now or later?”

He won six championships with Michael Jordan, and has two--in two seasons--with O’Neal. Kobe Bryant, however, did not hesitate.

“Shaq,” he said. “Because Shaq shoots such a high percentage. I think everybody knows that. I mean, you give him the ball in the paint, that’s an automatic two. He’s a modern Wilt Chamberlain. What he does, you don’t see anybody else doing in the history of the game.”

So, he’d bypass Jordan, then?

“I would have to, man,” Bryant said. “I would have to take Shaq.”

Byron Scott?

“Shaq,” he said. “He’s the most dominant player in the game. I mean, finding guys like Shaq, they come around once in a lifetime. I’m not saying you’re going to find two or three Michael Jordans, but you just don’t find a Shaq.”

Not unless you look into the lane, beneath the bodies, come June.

What looks OK to O’Neal in December, looks good to him in February, and better to him in April. By June, the ring and the championship are close enough, and he becomes a combination of all of those old centers he idolized, from Ewing to Robinson, and Chamberlain and Russell from further back.

Even so, this has been the most trying season of his past three, given the arthritic toe that probably will require postseason surgery. There have been other injuries, but the big right toe has been the constant ache in his life, from October in Hawaii to this morning in Beverly Hills.

“I still feel pretty much the same, but I’ve been getting through it all year,” O’Neal said. “I don’t think anybody can do what I do. I’ve been playing through pain. I never really talk about the pain unless you guys ask me. But I’ve just always been sucking it up.”

Asked if it were easier to play through now, with the end of the season so clear, he shook his head and said, “No, it’s not whether it’s easy, hard. When I go into the game, the adrenaline takes over. Feel no pain.”

Particularly now, though, in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, versus three months ago, when the only things ahead were trips and ice buckets and little anti-inflammatory tablets and games whose meanings were debatable.

“Oh, yeah, of course, of course,” he said. “Definitely more now.”