Shaq’s Talks Are a Scream

Empowered by a summer in which he shed the rough equivalent of an NBA point guard from his belt line, and in which he was rewarded with top-of-the-line free agents Karl Malone and Gary Payton, Shaquille O’Neal said between the Lakers’ first two exhibition games that he could play until he was 39, eight more seasons.

“I think I can go seven, eight more years,” he said. “This game is fun. It’s what I do. I’ll go about seven or eight. Seven or eight, easily.... That’s perfect. Then I can be sheriff and I can arrest your [butt] for writing that bull that you write.”

O’Neal does waver on these things. Two years ago, he promised he would quit when Phil Jackson did. Last year, he claimed to despise a “raggedy” league whose rules allowed lesser players to batter him.

Now, after a night on the court with his new pals when he scored 14 points in the third quarter against the bottom-of-the-division Golden State Warriors, O’Neal envisioned his legs carrying him across NBA floors to the cusp of his 40th birthday.

There is an issue. O’Neal is under contract with the Lakers for only three more seasons. He believes he is due a three-year extension worth more than $100 million, so much so that when he blocked a Mike Dunleavy shot in the third quarter Tuesday, he turned to his bench and shouted, “Now you gonna pay me?”

Owner Jerry Buss sat courtside. General Manager Mitch Kupchak sat at halfcourt, 12 rows up, reading glasses halfway down his nose.

“Ohhhh-ho-ho-ho-ho,” Buss said, nodding, “I think he looked over here a couple of times, didn’t he?”

As to whether he got O’Neal’s contract message, Buss said, “He really looked good tonight.”

Even if Buss wanted to, the collective bargaining agreement does not allow him to extend O’Neal’s contract until next week, or three years after his last extension. O’Neal, though, is working off the adrenaline of his general manager’s comments last week, in which Kupchak cast doubt that the process would be simple and automatic.

If either missed the first flare of negotiations, then, O’Neal later plopped down on the bench, spat a profanity and said, “Pay me.”

In a light-hearted postgame news conference at the Stan Sheriff Center, O’Neal was asked to confirm the demand he made in the moments after Dunleavy drove the lane.

“I didn’t mumble,” he said. “You read my lips and you read them clearly.”

It is becoming difficult to keep up. A few days before, O’Neal leaned back and pledged a conciliatory course, citing the nation’s overworked and underpaid, some of whom O’Neal aids in his charities, particularly the children.

Even among the Lakers, some of whom would qualify as overpaid and underworked, O’Neal’s negotiating stance will not go unnoticed. This is, after all, the team of Malone, who has taken a $17.75-million pay cut to be a Laker, and Payton, who gave up $7.7 million for the same chance. It is the team of Derek Fisher, who graciously and dutifully stepped out of the starting lineup for Payton, even as he entered a potential free-agent year. Horace Grant accepted a contract that is only partially guaranteed to stand beside them all.

Any grumbling about a contract, when O’Neal has three years and more than $88 million left on his, might not sit particularly well with the new Lakers, but for now they’ll laugh along with him. O’Neal, Malone and Payton sat in a row on the bench when Tuesday’s exhibition game was nearly done, talking excitedly, clearly pleased with their first day. Asked if O’Neal had taken his contract musings from the court to the sideline, Malone chuckled and said, “You know Shaq.”

Allen Iverson and Kevin Garnett have received extensions in recent weeks, though Garnett’s was at enough of a cut to make O’Neal the league’s highest-paid player beginning next season. The Lakers, meanwhile, find themselves in the same bind as Garnett’s Minnesota Timberwolves, who were finding that the combination of Garnett’s salary and the restrictions of the salary cap and the luxury tax were keeping them from adding enough good players around Garnett.

So Kupchak advised reporters not to assume the broad contract details during upcoming negotiations between the organization and O’Neal’s representatives. That’s assuming there are negotiations.

“It doesn’t really bother me, because I’m blessed,” O’Neal had said. “I’ll never complain about what I’m getting or what I’m not getting. Things could be done. If they’re not done, then other things can be done.”

O’Neal’s only recourse would be to opt out of his contract after next season, a move that would leave behind $32.4 million, with no way to make it up on the free-agent market, unless it came from the Lakers.

“I’m not really worried about that,” he said an hour after shouting his demands in a packed arena. “I’ve always been a professional, and I’ve got professional people working for me. They know and understand what needs to be done. I’ve been here, what, seven years now, and I’ve always played hard and gave my maximum, even when I was hurt. So, I just want the same honesty and respect in return.... If it gets done, it gets done. If not, we understand.

“It’s not going to be done through you guys. If I have something to say to them, I’ll walk upstairs and say it to them. They know if they’ve got something to say to me, they can come say it to me.... Hopefully, it gets worked out.”

He grinned.

“In the end, Shaquille O’Neal will be fine, because I’m always fine, because there’s no other like me,” he said. “I’m in demand. I’m like Halle Berry, I’m in demand. I’m fine and I’m in demand.”

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Staff writer J.A. Adande contributed to this report.