O’Neal Leaves a Post-Up Note

After he scored 37 points and took 12 rebounds and fouled out two Cleveland Cavalier centers and won a road basketball game in overtime Wednesday night, Shaquille O’Neal reminded everyone that his Laker teammates had sought him on most possessions.

These things happen, O’Neal said, when the ball finds him and he finds short jumpers or friendly shooters. And, sure enough, at the end of a 111-106 overtime victory at Gund Arena, his points were a season high, as were Gary Payton’s (30) and Horace Grant’s (11).

O’Neal and Payton had moved as O’Neal and Kobe Bryant once had on some nights, O’Neal bludgeoning the inside, Payton flitting on the perimeter, the Lakers playing just enough defense to get by. Playing for the fourth consecutive game without Bryant and the 21st without Karl Malone, they gave up 32 points to swingman LeBron James and 25 points (and 16 rebounds) to power forward Carlos Boozer.

But James missed a jumper at the end of regulation when Payton slapped at the ball on the way up, and the Lakers scored 19 overtime points, five by O’Neal and five by rookie Maurice Carter, all from the free-throw line.

While O’Neal commended his teammates for looking for him over his past two games -- he scored 36 points Sunday in Toronto -- it’d actually been three games in which they searched. In Indiana on Monday, O’Neal could not be found, having been suspended for using two vulgarities in a live postgame interview. So vulnerable, the Lakers lost by 13 points, in a season where there can be few more throw-away games.

Payton grabbed O’Neal after that game, presumably at the team hotel, and asked him not to anger the league anymore. Just, he said, for everyone else’s sake.

“We had a chat,” Payton said. “We sat after the game ... and I told him we need him on the floor. He said ‘OK.’ We can talk like that.”

Self recrimination being something of a blind spot for him, O’Neal laid the blame for his suspension on the league but appeared to be over any residual anger.

“I said what I felt, and people try to control people,” he said. “But you can never control me. I’m a 31-year-old juvenile delinquent. Nobody can control me.

“I regret not being there for the team, but it wasn’t my decision. Things you can’t control, you should never worry about.”

He played the game’s first 33 minutes and 48 in all. He missed 11 of 20 free throws, the main reason everyone stayed another five minutes, but made 14 of 21 field-goal attempts.

As O’Neal observed afterward, “If I had hit my free throws I’d have hit 50,” and the Lakers might not have been less spent tonight, when they play the Philadelphia 76ers.

So, the Lakers labored through parts of the third quarter, when they fell behind by 10 points, and the fourth, when they trailed by five with less than three minutes remaining. Rick Fox, who started over Devean George at small forward, banked in a runner and O’Neal made a layup and after Cleveland’s Eric Williams made a free throw, Payton’s three-pointer gave the Lakers their first lead in 22 game minutes.

O’Neal made two free throws with 32.9 seconds left, tying the score, 92-92.

The Lakers scored the first six points of overtime, and the Cavaliers were gone, and O’Neal had an idea why. If the season is going to rest on him, he said, then he’ll need some things set straight, right now, three games into a seven-game trip, 46 games into an 82-game trek.

“Always,” he said. “Not the next [36] games, but for the rest of my career. If we don’t win, it doesn’t matter how many Hall of Famers we got on this team, I’m going to get the blame first, Phil [Jackson] is going to get the blame second. So, of course I feel responsible. But if they’re going to make me responsible, I would like to touch the ball. Let me either shoot it or let me pass it.

“The last two nights, they gave me the ball, let me go to work, let me get everybody involved. I’m not comfortable with touching the ball, then running up and down the court five, 10 minutes, doing regular big-man stuff.”

He said he’d leave that to regular big men.

For now, he said, “Guys are coming to me every time down, which means they want me to do something with it. It’s good. I finally feel like the old Shaq.”