Even at 34, the World Is Shaq’s

And now for the Jumping Shaq Flash Era, otherwise known as ... this summer.

There’s still something magic about the combination of the MDE, or Most Dominant Ever, as Shaquille O’Neal once

crowned himself -- and a great perimeter player, be it Penny Hardaway in Orlando, Kobe Bryant with the Lakers or now Dwyane Wade in Miami.

O’Neal went to the NBA Finals with Hardaway in 1995 when both were 22 and were favored to win, but the young team blew a 20-point lead in Game 1, folded like a tent and was swept by the Houston Rockets and Hakeem Olajuwon.

O’Neal then won three titles with Bryant, although they thought little of each other at times, in what many regard as the greatest tandem the game has seen.

Now O’Neal has won one with Wade, whom he calls “Flash,” but it’s not the same. This time the operative word for O’Neal was “with,” not “won.”

In his three title runs with the Lakers, O’Neal won all three Finals most-valuable-player awards and averaged 36.5 points.

This time O’Neal averaged 13.7, less than half of Wade’s 34.7.

The Heat has been Wade’s team, in fact if not in spirit, for the two seasons he and O’Neal have been together. The press is always trying to re-anoint O’Neal as “The Shaq of Old,” but that guy is not only gone, he left three years ago when Bryant led the Lakers in postseason scoring for the first time.

“Everyone knows he’s 34 years old and he’s not the young Shaq-be-nimble-Shaq be-quick no more,” Wade said last week. “But we know we wouldn’t be at this point [in] the Finals without him.”

Boston Celtics executive Danny Ainge, then coaching Phoenix, once said O’Neal and Bryant were the answer to the question, what would happen if Wilt Chamberlain had played with Michael Jordan.

Nevertheless, O’Neal still casts a huge shadow. Most opponents have gone to single coverage, but Dallas Mavericks Coach Avery Johnson seemed to fear O’Neal as much as Wade. Early in the Finals, Johnson talked about O’Neal more; before Game 2 he brushed aside a question, noting, “Right now, I don’t have time to think about that. I’ve got 350 pounds on my mind.”

When the Mavericks weren’t double-teaming O’Neal, they were fouling him, sometimes before the play began, to put him on the free-throw line, where he went 14 for 48.

Unfortunately, the Mavericks kept finding themselves in the penalty early. Wade, who’s aggressive enough, anyway, would then take the ball to the basket and spend the rest of the night shooting free throws.

For the series, Wade averaged 16.2 free-throw attempts. Allen Iverson led the league this season at 11.5.

Other than O’Neal and Wade, Miami isn’t a powerhouse. In his role as team president, Pat Riley tried to take the pressure off his stars by bringing in talented veterans, perhaps remembering the Lakers’ acquisition of Bob McAdoo, now a Heat assistant, in 1981.

Unfortunately, Riley committed himself ($53 million for six seasons) to the eccentric Antoine Walker, who makes McAdoo look like John Stockton.

Even in the East, the Heat isn’t going to run off and win 65 games next season. Not if I know O’Neal, who will hibernate till spring, come what may.

The Heat does have one thing going. O’Neal and Wade like each other.

I always knew O’Neal’s declining years would be rough in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world. Nevertheless, playing with the deferential Wade is night-and-day different than the ego war he waged with Bryant for eight seasons.

Whether that’s enough to get O’Neal those fifth and sixth titles he has been musing about remains to be seen.

Not that he has to do it, or anything else, like make sense. He’s bigger than all that. He’s Shaq.