Riley Has Big Plan for O’Neal

Shaquille O’Neal laughed at the idea: diaper-clad men of gargantuan size summoned as battering rams to make the NBA’s most imposing big man even better.

Don’t laugh, Shaq. It might happen.

Coach Pat Riley is talking about adding extra bulk -- and he means real tonnage -- to Miami Heat practices.

Riley’s idea? Sumo wrestlers.

“We’re going to bring them in and have them lean on him and lean on him, and we’re not going to let him just back them in,” Riley said. “And then he’s going to have to take 100 jump hooks and 100 turnaround jumpers.”

In Riley’s eyes, there isn’t much difference between sumo wrestling and the way teams defend his 7-foot-1, 340-pound center. Matches between sumotoris dressed in mawashis -- diapers, in the vernacular of the uninformed -- typically last 10 to 15 seconds, with two massive men pushing and shoving, trying to knock the other from a circle.

Defending O’Neal is essentially the same concept.

“The only ways for teams to keep Shaquille from getting good position is to hold him and to grab him,” Heat center Alonzo Mourning said.

Opposing post players often keep at least one arm and often both -- plus elbows -- in his back, using every bit of leverage they can muster from their 260-pound bodies to keep him away from the basket. If O’Neal defended in a similar fashion, bodies would fly and he’d spend most games entirely sidelined with foul trouble.

“You can’t stop him,” Hawk center John Edwards said last week after O’Neal scored 28 points against Atlanta.

Riley divulged his plan Sunday, after the Heat beat the Lakers, 97-92 -- a game in which O’Neal struggled a bit offensively, shooting eight for 18 against the likes of Chris Mihm and Kwame Brown and finishing with 18 points.