THE BREAKUP, THE SEQUEL

Wince if that big dog looks familiar ...

Seems like old times, or it would if Shaquille O’Neal wasn’t going into the NBA Finals in a red and black No. 32 jersey instead of a purple and gold No. 34.

It may be Dallas vs. Miami but it will look like The Shaq Show, at least off the court -- ESPN just did a highlight reel of his news conferences -- prompting Lakers fans who are strong enough to watch to wonder:

Did he really have to go?

Here’s the part that will rankle Lakers fans forever: The answer is no, not if O’Neal and Kobe Bryant had acted like grown-ups who understood what a unique opportunity they had.

Of course, that’s a tough assumption since they hadn’t acted like grown-ups before that. Both were capable of being adults, but not when it came to each other.

When soap opera divas feud for years, you can’t be surprised when someone stomps off the set. O’Neal had to go or Bryant almost certainly would have.

Bryant was torched for running O’Neal off, but each was ready to be rid of the other and to leave if that was what it took. Bryant was actually the one who wanted to go and O’Neal the one who wanted to stay.

In any case, their glory days together were over. They had been teammates for eight seasons when the Lakers lost in the 2004 Finals with Bryant a free agent and O’Neal a year away, refusing to move off his demand for $27 million a season.

Everyone else was worn out after eight seasons of accommodating their diva behavior. Now, with hundreds of millions in commitments at hand, owner Jerry Buss had no inclination to keep going.

Buss has always insisted he made a purely financial decision not to re-sign O’Neal. Whether Buss ever concedes it, it was also a choice between the 32-year-old O’Neal and the 25-year-old Bryant, which was no choice at all.

And Buss had to choose. The remarkable thing was not that O’Neal and Bryant wanted to go their own way, but that they stayed together that long.

It had taken four seasons and the arrival of Phil Jackson to forge a working relationship, leading to their 2000 title. A year later, however, it took a spring thaw after a season-long renewal of their feud, with Bryant musing about leaving and O’Neal proclaiming himself “the big dog,” to repeat.

In a forgotten footnote to Lakers history, O’Neal and Bryant got along in the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons when Shaq’s conditioning became the issue. In Game 3 of their 2002 playoff series against San Antonio, Jackson asked O’Neal whether he was going to get a rebound, O’Neal started in Jackson’s direction and teammate Brian Shaw jumped between them.

O’Neal was seven years older than Bryant, better grounded, and the life of the party. Nevertheless, he was less secure than the bulletproof Bryant.

For his part, Bryant had to fall in line behind O’Neal, which wasn’t his life’s ambition. Off the floor, however, O’Neal knew Buss doted on Bryant.

Bryant’s arrest in the summer of 2003 changed everything. With his poise failing him for the first time, Bryant came back angry at O’Neal for not calling (O’Neal said he left a message), reviving their feud to new heights.

Bryant began secretly signaling the Clippers. Whether Buss knew of it, no one could miss the speculation, which included a fan at a Lakers-Clippers game getting on the video screen wearing a red Clippers No. 8 Bryant jersey.

At midseason, with Bryant injured and the team on the road, Buss visited Bryant at his Newport Beach home. A few days later, the Lakers withdrew their extension offer to Jackson and, in an unusual move, announced it. It looked like a signal to Bryant, who was also at odds with Jackson.

Amazingly, the team surmounted all these and subsequent issues, such as Bryant’s raging at teammates after one criticized him anonymously for not shooting at Sacramento. They reached the 2004 Finals where they were expected to roll over Detroit, looking like they might cheat the odds again and go off into the sunset.

Rick Fox said O’Neal told him, “We need to keep this together, because when it’s gone, it’s going to be gone.”

Bryant said for the first time he wasn’t sure he would opt out of his contract.

The Pistons’ upset ended the good feeling. Buss was heard before the flight home grumbling about O’Neal’s play. A few days later, General Manager Mitch Kupchak said Bryant was untouchable but waffled on O’Neal, prompting O’Neal’s demand to be traded.

O’Neal was traded July 14. The next day, Bryant re-signed -- but not before going back and forth until the very end. The night before, his agent told officials on both teams he didn’t know whether it would be the Lakers or Clippers. Bryant made up his mind on a walk with his wife, Vanessa.

As Buss noted, keeping O’Neal and losing Bryant would have left a team that couldn’t win a title and had no cap room. But whether Buss understood it as he gave Rudy Tomjanovich $6 million a season to re-enact Showtime, rebuilding around Bryant wasn’t going to be a romp in the meadow, either.

If Bryant ever talked about the breakup candidly, he would surely say he now sees everything in a different light.

Whether O’Neal will forever regret his part in their breakup will depend on how these Finals go.

O’Neal and Bryant seem linked by fate as well as by memory. Last month, their wives had daughters within minutes of each other, prompting a nostalgic parody in the San Jose Mercury News:

“MIAMI -- Mearah Sanaa O’Neal, born Monday to Shaquille and Shaunie, lashed out at the emergence six minutes later of Gianna Maria-Onore Bryant, daughter of Kobe and Vanessa.

“ ‘This was my day,’ Mearah said. ‘It has always been that way. Everyone was with the program. Everyone except one person.’

“But Gianna didn’t hold her tongue with those tiny little fingers. ‘We tried it with Mear,’ she told ESPN’s Jim Gray. ‘But I’m younger. I’m the future. Maybe if she had gotten herself in shape and hadn’t been carrying all that baby fat, we wouldn’t be in this situation.’

“ ‘I’m glad it happened May 1,’ Mearah O’Neal said, ‘because every time we meet, it’s going to be mayday for her.’ ”

There may never be anything like their fathers again, but that show’s over.