Say hello to Shaq’s not so little decline

SALT LAKE CITY -- Here’s how big a shadow Shaquille O’Neal casts:

Even Shaquille O’Neal gets lost in it these days.

Being Shaq isn’t as much fun as it used to be with the Heat getting batted around like a pinata, the temperature rising in its locker room and someone about to blow a fuse.

At 35, O’Neal insists he’s the “baddest 35 around,” but that’s a long way from what he once was.

Not that we’ll see anyone who is what he once was anytime soon, or maybe ever.

Imagine Shaq as Tony Montana in his favorite movie, “Scarface,” as Shaq has so often.

Say goodnight to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you’re gonna see a bad guy like this again!

“You can talk about him all you want, but people know who he is,” Utah Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan said last week after O’Neal scored 12 points in another Heat loss.

“Our guys a few times, they were afraid to roll to the basket because they knew he was back there. . . . He’s got respect for all those things he’s been able to do.”

O’Neal was 34 when Dallas Coach Avery Johnson decided to double-team him in the 2006 Finals, using his three centers’ 18 fouls to hack Shaq at every opportunity too.

With the Mavericks finding themselves in the penalty early as they tried to rotate, Dwyane Wade spent the series at the rim and averaged 16 free throws a game, which Dallas owner Mark Cuban would forever blame on the referees.

Voila! O’Neal had his fourth title.

So much for the good times, or why is it you never know they’re the good times until they’re over?

The Heat isn’t even what it was in last season’s Title Defense From Hell, when it squeezed into the playoffs with 44 wins and was swept in the first round.

Jason Kapono (No. 1 in the NBA in three-point shooting) was allowed to leave for Toronto, and James Posey (No. 2) for Boston.

With Wade coming off knee and shoulder surgery, his average is down from 27 to 21, significantly more than Shaq’s, which has dropped only from 17 to 15.

Late in their careers, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were lucky enough to settle into reduced roles on title contenders.

Late in his, O’Neal’s team is “in transition” . . . to oblivion, it looks like.

“He’s being held to a standard that is for some reason or the other higher than a lot of the other centers that became like fine wine,” Heat Coach Pat Riley said last week.

“I was there [as Lakers coach] when Kareem was 37, 38, 39, [laughing] 40 . . . 41 . . . 42. But he did have a supporting cast of younger players -- more than one, you know, with Dwyane -- Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Byron Scott.”

Unfortunately, with so few options, O’Neal is held to a higher standard, internally as well as externally.

Wade questioned his “motivation.” Riley backed Wade (“If somebody’s not getting it done, I can’t be the only voice to always reprimand”) and took Shaq out 58 seconds into a game.

Last week Riley challenged his players anew, in case they had missed the fact they were “one of the worst teams in the league.”

Said O’Neal: “Yep to whatever Pat says.”

Meanwhile, the three newspapers traveling with the team reported that Alonzo Mourning had to step between O’Neal and Riley during a heated argument at practice.

As Lakers coach in the Showtime ‘80s, when Riley made today’s incarnation look mellow, he divided life into “winning” -- by which he meant titles -- and “misery.”

With the Heat 4-15 and last in the East, 0-4 on this trip while giving up 114 points a game, those down times in the ‘80s are like the good old days.

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Haven’t we seen this before somewhere . . . like during Shaq’s eight Lakers seasons?

Of course, the glory far outweighed the issues then, which was saying something, given all their issues.

If the rest of Shaq’s career will pose a challenge, his legacy is safe.

A year ago I suggested he wouldn’t take much of this. Suggesting he missed my upbeat ending (“The Age of Giants was over. . . . It was The Age of Giant and he was it”), he said he wanted to arrange a benefit boxing match so he could punch me in the mouth “and it’ll be for charity so he can’t sue me.”

What can I say?

Looks like time for a really nice retrospective!

O’Neal won’t match Russell’s 11 titles; wasn’t years ahead of his time like Chamberlain, who joined the NBA when it had two other players over 6 feet 10; and won’t age as gracefully as Abdul-Jabbar, who averaged 20 points at 38.

Nevertheless, he was Shaq, as distinctive as any of them.

When he arrived in 1992, the prevailing myth held that there were no more great centers, even with Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Patrick Ewing around.

There were no dominating centers. With the coming of 7-foot power forwards (Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki) and 6-10 small forwards (Rashard Lewis, Lamar Odom), only a head and shoulders as big as Shaq’s could be head-and-shoulders over them.

O’Neal towered above the post-Michael Jordan era, even if Lakers staffers once mused the real tipoff on Shaq was the fact he won only one MVP.

The Lakers called O’Neal “the Big Moody” but he was usually 325-350 pounds of fun, a living, breathing comic book hero with Superman logos tattooed on his arm, in his cars’ grilles and etched in the glass of his front door.

Of course, if there had been fewer pounds of fun, he would have saved his legs a lot of pounding.

How was he to know? He was one of a kind.

Early in his Lakers career, Dr. Robert Watkins, the team’s back specialist, marveled at how different he was from all the slender NBA big men.

Shaq was a mesomorph, conventionally proportioned and an athletic mesomorph at that, so superior to other big men he could easily carry more weight.

Then his beleaguered feet began suffering little injuries and he came in still heavier, using the regular season to play his way into shape.

Traded to Miami in 2004, he got serious about conditioning but there was no getting his old explosion back.

In the end, he’ll always be Shaq, identifiable by one name, reminding you of no one else, even as he goes out like Tony Montana being escorted from that fancy restaurant, railing as he disappears down the hall.

Make way for the bad guy! There’s a bad guy coming through! Better get out of his way!

Now if everyone on the Heat can just figure out how to get to the end without killing each other.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com