| Wednesday, May 10
By Mike Monroe
Special to ESPN.com |
|
|  | | Shaq dominated the NBA this season, but now he's even matured as a person. |
The criteria for the NBA's Most Valuable Player award are strictly
subjective and very personal.
You don't need to know much more about quantifying a player's value,
though, than the number of wins his team enjoys, and by that singular
measure, somebody on the Los Angeles Lakers had to be this season's MVP.
Since Shaquille O'Neal was the Lakers' leading scorer, rebounder and
shot blocker, it looks like 121 of the 122 voters got it right.
Someday, O'Neal said at Tuesday's press conference at which his
ascendancy as the league's best player was made official, Kobe Bryant
will win some MVP awards of his own.
For now, the Lakers have only one MVP, and O'Neal is the man.
You may recall the column in this space several weeks ago in which the
contributions of this season's MVP candidates were broken down according
to the formula once devised by three-time MVP Larry Bird (points,
rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots; minus missed shots, missed
free throws, personal fouls and turnovers). O'Neal was a runaway leader
in that mathematical breakdown.
Fact is, O'Neal was most valuable this season for the effect he had on
opponents' approach. There is no way to approach the Lakers without first
determining some way to deal with the player who now wants to be known as "The Big Aristotle," in honor of the appropriate quote O'Neal used to
sum up his approach to the season.
The worst approach, it appears, is the one Phoenix coach Scott Skiles
seems intent on pursuing in the Western semifinals. Skiles refused to
double team O'Neal in Sunday's Game 1 of a series that doesn't figure to
last much more than one more week. Despite missing no fewer than five
layins, O'Neal still scored 37 points and grabbed 14 rebounds.
The Suns just don't like to double, Skiles said, and if he is serious
then his team is in serious trouble. It was hilarious to hear the Lakers,
when asked if they expected the Suns to double O'Neal in Game 2,
extolling the virtues of Luc Longley as a defender, as if to encourage
Skiles to allow Longley to guard O'Neal by himself.
O'Neal once reacted boorishly to what he believed was disrespect from
those who cover the NBA. It is a measure of his growth, both as player
and person, that a young man who once visited Greece and thought the
Parthenon was a night club Tuesday quoted Aristotle as he received the
Most Valuable Player trophy.
It was back in 1994, when O'Neal was a member of the U.S. team playing
in the World Championships, in Athens, when he was asked if he had
visited the Parthenon and replied that he didn't know the names of the
night clubs where he had been taking in Athens night life.
In 2000, O'Neal's acceptance speech on being awarded the MVP Trophy
began with a quote from the Greek philosopher about excellence.
"Mark this down:" the 7-foot-1, 335-pound O'Neal said at the ceremony
at the Lakers' practice facility in El Segundo. "From this day forward,
I want to be known as The Big Aristotle, because it was Aristotle who
said, 'Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you
repeatedly do.' "
What O'Neal did this season -- repeatedly -- was dominate games as few
players in NBA history, a fact reflected by the overwhelming nature of
the media vote that resulted in the award. He received 121 first-place
votes from the 122 voters.
O'Neal was the NBA's leading scorer (29.7 points per game), its No. 2
rebounder (13.6) its top percentage shooter (54.8), its No. 3 shot
blocker (3.03) and No. 4 in average minutes played (40.0).
O'Neal thanked all the voters and said he believed his consistency this
season separated it from the first seven seasons of his career.
"This year I just wanted to come out and be very consistent and
dominate and play hard," O'Neal said.
A pre-season meeting with new Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who had coached
Michael Jordan during his five MVP seasons in Chicago, cemented in
O'Neal's mind the need to return to the kind of dominance he had showed
in the first four season of his career, with the Orlando Magic.
"I met with Phil at his house in Montana," O'Neal recalled. "I rented
a boat and went up to his house. He kept it real simple: He said, 'I want
you to dominate; I want you to rebound; I want you to score; I want you to
play defense; I want you to get your blocked shots back up.' And I tried
to do that."
O'Neal dropped in, unannounced, on Jackson, puttering up to the dock at
Jackson's log cabin home on a Montana lake in a motorboat with his uncle,
Jerome. As the boat approached the dock, O'Neal noticed a glare coming
from a window of Jackson's home.
It was pure inspiration.
"As you pull up on Phil's dock," O'Neal recalled, "Phil has a window
and you can see all six of those gold balls (from the replica
championship trophies Jackson keeps). And the sun was hitting those gold
balls and the 'bling-blinging' was hitting my eyes. It was just an
unusual feeling.
"Phil came and told me what was expected of me and said, 'See you
later.' "
And the rest is MVP history.
O'Neal's Lakers teammates said they could tell the difference in
O'Neal's demeanor and approach from the first day of training camp.
"I think it happened from the first day," said Lakers forward Robert
Horry, who played on two championship teams in Houston with MVP center
Hakeem Olajuwon. "He came in feeling really good and feeling healthy and
feeling inspired. He had a new coach. He had a new system. He was like a
little kid on Christmas Day, and everything fell into place for us."
"Here's a guy," said Lakers guard Ron Harper, who won three
championships with the Chicago Bulls during some of Jordan's MVP years,
"who came in training camp maybe out of shape; worked his way into
shape; played all season long and did everything we asked him to do.
"That's how you get MVP. And you lead your team, and he led our team
all season long."
Asked to compare O'Neal's contribution to that made by Jordan to the
Bulls, Harper demurred.
"These are guys who love this game," Harper said, "and those guys
deserve things, I think. Shaq has found that he loves this game, and
every day he comes in here he tried hard, and he improved his game."
Mike Monroe, who covers the NBA for the Denver Post, writes a Western Conference column for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him at monroe128@go.com |  |
