i cant wait to have kids. the san leandro superior court says i already have one, but my dna swab says different.
if i had a little baby right now, id put the little buggar on my knee and id say, watch shaq play.
the baby would probably coo “ko-be… ko-be.”
but i’d say, no, little baby, shaq, watch shaq.
then id put the infant down, run to the nursery and return with a shaq jersey and put it on the child.
yes, i think shaq’s underrated. how many big men have made it through the nba and have fallen to injury or the double team or personality crisis or sex scandal or whathave you and had their careers fizzle after a season or two?
plenty.
shaq didnt have a lot of things going for him when he made it to the nba: his father was MIA, he went to a second-rate college, got drafted #1 by a second-rate team, got mixed up in the music and movie business, fathered a bunch of children out of wedlock, and never seemed to get along with his point guard, Penny Hardaway. His rookie card was going for $350 on the street, and where do you go from there? only place is down.
there was a lot of expectations on the 7’1″ 315 youngster when he was stolen away by the Lakers a few years ago. and some of that pressure, no doubt, led to his public feud with Kobe.
to pile on, Don Nelson created Hack-a-Shaq, a defense where he would just foul the big guy and make him earn his points from the charity stripe.
and for a while this technique was effective, eerilly so.
but as we now know, this is no longer the case, and Don Nelson is on a golf course in Hawaii and Shaq is in a whirlpool in downtown LA preparing for Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
dont let the fanfare of the hype daze you into thinking that this isnt a big even just because Michael Jordan isnt on the court: Shaquille O’Neal is now poised to win his third championship ring in a row. What NBA center do you know that’s done that in the last 20-30 years?
not anyone i remember seeing, and dont say Will Perdue.
anyway, im glad i dont have any little kids right now cuz if i did i would have to explain to them the genius of Phil Jackson and Tex Winter, i’d have to diagram the triangle offense, make them understand how if a few key lakers can master taking a charge they can get Kidd in foul trouble easy.
and theres nothing worse than a mother coming through the door after a hard days work as the father is running over a kid yelling, “dont move your feet. HOLD YOUR DAMN POSITION!” as little hands and feet go flying across the hardwood floors into a fern as the dog barks and the front door slams.
lakers in four, kidds, id mumble, and id place the ball in the mother’s hands, kiss her cheek and retreat to the fridge for another cold frosty one.
tomorrow night at staples.
i was going to tell you that you shouldnt be surprised if big gangly todd macculoch blocked a few of kobe’s drives to the lane tonight even though todd looks like a giraffe wearing rolling skates most of the time.
