O’Neal? More Like Old’Neal

It doesn’t seem like the Finals without Shaquille O’Neal and all the merriment he brings, so even when he’s old and gray, they should let him play in it.

Oh, that has already happened?

Even Men of Steel have to get old sometimes. O’Neal is 34 and he isn’t gray, but he’s not the Shaq who won all those Finals MVPs as a Laker. That Shaq averaged 32 points in five Finals. This Shaq scored 17 points Thursday night as the Mavericks shut down his Miami Heat and won Game 1, 90-80.

For all the praise heaped upon him as the Heat advanced to the Finals, O’Neal came in averaging 20.4 points in this post-season, mostly against single coverage. Nevertheless, Mavericks Coach Avery Johnson paid him the compliment of double-teaming him as if he were the Shaq of Old.

“As you saw tonight, we pretty much had our whole team guarding Shaq,” Johnson said. “We’ve seen how he really exploited single coverage.”

It’s a good thing Johnson wasn’t coaching when O’Neal was younger, back when he was averaging 35 against the Philadelphia 76ers and knocking Dikembe Mutombo horizontal nightly in the 2001 Finals. If Johnson thought this postseason was impressive, he might have hidden under his bed if he saw that video.

Even in the 2004 Finals, which the Lakers lost in five games to the Detroit Pistons, a visibly slowed O’Neal still averaged 26.6 points. Now he and Dwyane Wade have switched roles, with Shaq playing Robin to Wade’s Batman but, personality still counting for what it does, the buildup for this series revolved around Shaq.

In Finals form, O’Neal told ESPN, “To quote Kevin Garnett, if you don’t like Shaquille O’Neal, there’s something wrong with you.”

He’s right about that. In a league of ever-more bland personalities, there’s only one of him and he has the ratings to prove it.

Even with the Lakers meeting little resistance as they won 4-2, 4-1 and 4-0 in 2000, 2001 and 2002, respectively, the Finals drew ratings of 11.6, 12.2 and 10.2.

After the Lakers were knocked out in the second round, the San Antonio Spurs and New Jersey Nets drew a 6.5 in 2003.

A year later with the Lakers back in the Finals -- briefly -- against the Pistons, the ratings went back to 11.5.

Last spring when it was the Spurs and Pistons, the ratings dropped back to 8.2, even with a seven-game series.

O’Neal has recently been musing about winning “five or six titles” but, of course, has yet to nail down a fourth one and may never get a better chance than this.

The Heat got a good draw with a soft second-round opponent, New Jersey, before meeting an imploding Detroit team in the Eastern finals. Now Miami plays Dallas, which is very good but not dominating.

The Heat got a great start too, running up an 11-point lead as the Mavericks double-teamed O’Neal. Most teams now try to contain O’Neal with one player and help out more on Wade. With the Mavericks eyeing Shaq instead, Wade had 15 by halftime.

However, Wade went cold at the end, missing his last three shots with O’Neal sitting on the bench to keep from picking up his third foul.

The Mavericks closed the half with a 10-0 run and went back into the lead.

The Mavericks led for most of the second half. With Wade shooting five for 14 in the second half and O’Neal getting only seven shots, the Heat couldn’t run them down.

“I was just getting the ball to my guys,” said a subdued O’Neal. “We just have to mix it up. First half, I thought we played pretty good except for the last three minutes of the second quarter.

“You know, we’ve just got to keep doing what we’ve been doing, [playing] inside out. Today we made a lot of mental and a lot of silly mistakes. We can’t make mistakes against a team like this.”

That was as good as his quotes got Thursday night, so the fun hasn’t started yet even if the series has.

Of course, the Heat probably will have to win one before Shaq unleashes his sense of humor, before the Mavericks win too many more.