A Little Slaq?

The three NBA championships, it turned out, brought Shaquille O’Neal golden trophies and diamond rings and a degree of professional satisfaction, but he’s waiting on the rest.

He’ll play basketball again tonight for the Lakers, ultimately for the chance for a fourth of everything. He’ll play against the Portland Trail Blazers on a toe that needed surgery in September and a pain-killing injection four months later, on a knee that required acupuncture treatment -- his last resort in the past -- just Wednesday.

He sat out two games this week, wins for the Lakers, no less, and sensed not sympathy but suspicion, curious, he said, given his previous three seasons. Was it not O’Neal who won one and predicted two, who won two and guaranteed three? Who sat Thursday afternoon and gnawed on something called free-range chicken in a restaurant where the garnish out-sizes the food by two to one, because he wants to be light and fast and, you know, him again?

He did not demand to know. He did not summon his “Can you dig it?” voice. He wondered. They raise banners and before they wring the last bit of spotlight from it, he’s too fat and undisciplined to win another, and then come spring he’s not so overweight the NBA Finals MVP podium can’t hold him and another trophy, so it seems.

Just curious, he said, but how many before he can be trusted? Four? Five? More than Magic and Kareem? More than Michael? How many more?

At an out-of-the-way table in Beverly Hills, seated across from business manager Mike Parris, near a garden in which he said he occasionally meditates, O’Neal said he has everything but what he wants -- a little room to be him.

“Just once, I should get a benefit-of-the-doubt clause,” he said. “Just once. Now, if I play like this this year and I play like this next year, then you maybe could say that my game [has slipped]. But before I even give you guys the opportunity to think like that, I’ll be long gone. I’ll be in Florida chilling with the babies. I’m just sore right now. I’m beat up. That’s what I am -- beat up.”

He doesn’t look like a man under enormous pressure. In 20 minutes, he has shown his versatility -- Maria Shriver comes to shake his hand and LL Cool J comes to hug him -- and his generous side: “To Patrick,” he writes to Shriver’s 9-year-old, “I’ll see you in the NBA. Shaq.” Employees wander over to him and he knows most of their names without sneaking a look at their gold name badges, but they don’t pester him, and he doesn’t mind anyway. He plucks a fistful of orchids from a large vase and hands the flowers to a woman standing nearby, and she fairly swoons at the gesture.

They ask about his foot and his knee and he answers, “I’ll be fine, I’ll be back,” and they’re sure he’s right, because nothing could possibly hurt a man this large and unafraid. And, yet, there is a certain amount of surrender in him. When his children wanted snow during a two-day break in January, O’Neal flew the family to Sun Valley, where the kids spent, oh, 20 minutes in a drift before the cold and the waning novelty drove them indoors.

Some days, being him is enough. Others, well, he’s not supposed to be fragile, he’s not supposed to be embarrassed and he’s not supposed to be difficult and surly and moody. But, he is.

“It’s fun,” he said. “Mostly fun. Most of the time. I just see with me, there’s no room. There’s no room for mistakes. No room for benefit of the doubt. I have to accept that. Sometimes I didn’t accept that and I got upset. But I really can’t get upset. I just sit back and look at people, read people. Now I know how everybody is, especially through tough times. This is a dog-eat-dog business we’re in. Dog-eat-dog. Dog-eat-dog from the media. Dog-eat-dog from the organization. Just dog-eat-dog. Now I can just move on.”

Not that there were a lot of choices. The Lakers are 28-25, tied for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference with only 29 games to play. Kobe Bryant, whom O’Neal is touting for league MVP, has put together one of the most memorable three weeks of offensive basketball in history, and O’Neal has become almost an afterthought.

In fact, when O’Neal is mentioned lately, more often it is to condemn him for his waistline, or his choice of dates for surgery, or his unwillingness to share his post-game thoughts with the media. Though he has averaged 25.9 points and 10.6 rebounds -- about two points and two rebounds off his career numbers -- he has not brought his signature dominance to more than the occasional game, and he very often has taken the blame for the Lakers’ disappointing first months.

Still, O’Neal is almost serene, and he smiles a lot and -- here’s the thing -- he’s not going to change, beginning with his heft. While he once hoped to return to 300 pounds from more than 340, as with most 30-year-olds (he’ll be 31 March 6), reality comes hard and strong and medium-rare.

“Being me has made me me,” he said. “I haven’t been 300 since my rookie year. I won championships at 330, 335. The beating that I take, I need my meat. I’m not going to get down to 300. I’d be quick, probably a step quicker. I’d probably jump a little higher, but I wouldn’t have that meat when I get the hard foul. Right now I’m 335, 14% body fat. I came in, like, 355. I came in heavy, but I couldn’t work out. I worked hard, I’m eating right, I’m staying on the treadmill. The lowest I’d probably get is 320, 315. But 295, it’ll never happen.”

The fact is, he said, he’s not as quick because his foot and knee hurt, which he hoped was solved with a few days off and the strategic needle or two. His size is a coincidence, he said.

“I was 335 when I busted Rik Smits’ ... ,” he said. “I was 335 when I busted Dikembe [Mutombo] and Todd MacCulloch. And I was 335 last year. I’m 332 right now.”

He’d lost three pounds in 12 seconds. Over lunch. O’Neal laughed. Mike Parris laughed. O’Neal does not fear for his career. He does not believe his best days are gone, that he now fades to the background as Bryant, 24, becomes Jordan to his Cartwright. He is injured. Was injured. Whatever it is today, a few inches closer to the ground, a step or two behind. There is a lot to do to make the Lakers whole again, to make them winners again.

“We’ve got time,” he said. “We’re not there now. But things that are going on with me, it’s only going to get better. I’m coming. I’ll get there.”

His only curiosity, he said, is who’s coming with him.