Here’s a New Year’s Resolution for Everyone: End the Feud Already

Now that it’s all over, we learned that sometimes the games really do match the hype, that everyone here can pause long enough to acknowledge the good times gone by, and what would be the perfect gift for Shaquille O’Neal, the man we thought had everything.

“I don’t have a hatchet,” O’Neal said.

In other words, he won’t be burying one with Kobe Bryant any time soon. The animosity lives on even after so much was settled Saturday in the matchup everyone awaited from the day the NBA schedules came out last summer.

What a Christmas classic. Maybe not on the “Miracle on 34th Street” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” level, but about as entertaining an NBA game as you could get, with the Miami Heat beating the Lakers, 104-102, as Bryant’s three-point shot at the end of overtime bounced off the rim. Bryant got 42 points; O’Neal’s team got the victory.

Of course the presence of O’Neal, the ghost of championships past, made everything bigger. A celebrity-studded sellout crowd of 18,997, filling Staples Center early, standing from the moment the teams came out for warmups until after tipoff. A crush of cameras at the visitors’ end of the court. And, of course, the national TV audience.

The classiest part of the day came before the game. The scoreboard screens showed a tribute to O’Neal, and it sure was good to hear the Superman theme booming through Staples Center once again. There was Magic Johnson and Denzel Washington mixed among Staples staffers and Laker fans saying, “We miss you Shaq.”

There were loud cheers from the crowd.

The highlight tape showed, various O’Neal dunks, O’Neal clowning around, and the alley-oop pass from Kobe that secured Game 7 against Portland in 2000.

“A City is Forever Grateful,” the words said.

“Can you dig it?” the video Shaq asked, and the crowd roared again.

And finally, the words, “Thank you.”

“I really didn’t watch it,” O’Neal said. “I didn’t want to go into flashback mode. I think my sons had a good time.”

He was the first visiting player introduced, and the fans roared again, for about half a minute.

He raised his right hand to acknowledge the crowd, and they cheered even more.

Now that the franchise got it right and the fans got it right, it’s time for O’Neal to do the right thing. He needs to chill with all of the shots at Bryant. No need for them to go to dinner -- it’s not as if they did when they were teammates. Just don’t toss any more logs onto the fire.

Bryant won the battle for L.A., but O’Neal is winning the war of winning: His team’s in first, while the Lakers are barely above .500

O’Neal and Bryant can agree on one thing: The media are largely responsible for perpetuating their feud.

“It depends how quickly you all get tired of it,” Bryant said when asked how long it will be an issue. “You guys keep it going more than me or him keep it going,” O’Neal said.

But O’Neal keeps feeding it. It started after he got to Miami, then picked up when it was revealed that Bryant brought up Shaq’s name when police questioned Bryant about an alleged rape in Colorado in June 2003.

O’Neal couldn’t bring himself to look at Bryant before the game, and barely acknowledged him with a quick pat on the back as they arrived at midcourt for the tipoff.

“Being married, I don’t want interplay or foreplay with another guy,” O’Neal joked afterward. “I’m a married man. ‘Hey, how you doin’?’ That’s it. Got to keep it moving.”

A simple handshake would have gone a long way toward letting everyone else move along.

So would avoiding taking some easy shots.

After expressing his fondness for the L.A. police force, the city’s children, the Fox Hills Mall and the Beverly Center, O’Neal got to what he hasn’t missed since he moved to Miami.

“I don’t miss the traffic,” O’Neal said. “I don’t miss two or three people.”

We know Bryant sits atop that short list, even if O’Neal won’t call him by name.

In fact, when asked for whom the “no layups, no dunks” policy he enforced Saturday applied, O’Neal said: “Basically everybody, but especially, you know, him.”

So zealous was O’Neal that he was guilty of the very fault he used to apply to Bryant: putting his own agenda before the team’s. He was so intent on denying Bryant any attacks on the rim by brute force that he fouled out with 2:15 left in regulation. Bryant drew three of the fouls on O’Neal, including O’Neal’s sixth. (It proved once again that Kobe’s unmatched when it comes to getting rid of Shaq.)

“I felt that I had let my team down,” O’Neal said. “But no layups and no dunks.”

The ex-teammate’s obsession with each other was evident from the start.

Bryant went at O’Neal off screen-and-rolls on the Lakers’ initial two possessions. O’Neal blocked Bryant’s first shot, but Bryant found enough room to score over O’Neal on the second.

O’Neal also showed his awareness of the crowd and the cameras. After throwing down an alley-oop, he broke out the old “gorilla walk”, stomping down the court as he shouted at Snoop Dogg.

Quick thought on the D-o-double-g: He’s helping out with the New Year’s Eve festivities in Times Square while Dick Clark recuperates from a stroke. If Clark has to retire, wouldn’t it be great to have Snoop be the host of it annually? Three, two, one ... Happy New Yizzle!

If we can have a New Year’s Eve without Dick Clark, it shouldn’t be far-fetched that we can go a year without any shots between Shaq and Kobe. Can we just get through 365 days?

Saturday was a start, in that it got all of the retrospectives out of the way. What happened in the past can stay there for a little while. “It’s over,” Laker owner Jerry Buss said. “Let’s get on with life.”

And get over the feud.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.