Seems Shaquille O’Neal finally got mad. Lucky for the Bulls it was a week too late, though it may not be good for me.
It seems Shaq is a little upset at my suggestion last week that perhaps the Miami Heat might be better off without Shaq plodding up and down the court.
I was just writing out loud, as I sometimes do, but it apparently caught Shaq’s attention and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that Shaq called the Heat offices last Monday to check if he was being traded. Heat coach Pat Riley assured Shaq he was not and then said:
“The last thing on our minds right now is to trade him. We want to try to put players around him. Shaq has made this franchise matter. We won a world championship with Shaquille. He’s been very good for business and the community.”
Reassured, Shaq went back to planning his injury absences for next season, but before that, at a team function at the AmericanAirlines Arena, he said, “Obviously, it’s an idiot like Sam stirring up trouble.”
O’Neal said local media “should be spanked” for picking up the suggestion.
“Sam has no credibility after this,” he added.
Though he did check with the Heat pretty quickly.
“I promise he wouldn’t say that to my face in a dark alley, where it’s just me and him and no witnesses,” Shaq warned. “I guarantee he wouldn’t say that to me, guarantee it.”
Anyone got my back?
“Sam is an idiot — i-d-o-u-t — idiot,” Shaq added in also pulling out of the national spelling bee.
I am reserving judgment, though, on the sentiment because I have heard this before. Not just at home.
You never know
As I wrote last week, it’s unlikely, but Dallas’ first-round loss makes it clear that MVP-to-be Dirk Nowitzki needs someone inside for scoring help.
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Jermaine O’Neal?
I wrote that he told the Pacers he wants to go to the Knicks, and then O’Neal said he doesn’t want to leave. But his buddy, Stephen Jackson, told Yahoo Sports, “I don’t think [O’Neal] has any patience [left]. … He wants to get out of there because all of the guys they brought in to build the team around him are gone now. I talked to him awhile back, and he was saying that if he did get traded, he would want to go to those two teams (Knicks or Lakers).
“[Knicks coach/GM Isiah Thomas] and Jermaine are good friends. If it does happen, look out East. Him and [Eddy] Curry in the paint are going to be a monster. But him and Kobe [Bryant] will be a monster too.”
Closer to home
And so we come to our Bulls again. Can they get a post scorer? Can they get an inside presence? Can they get a star, seemingly the missing piece against the Pistons.
There’ll be talk this summer about Kevin Garnett, Jermaine O’Neal, Pau Gasol, Zach Randolph, Drew Gooden, perhaps Andrew Bogut — if the Bucks get Greg Oden — Darko Milicic, Marcus Camby and perhaps Amare Stoudemire if the Suns lose to the Spurs.
Knowing what you do now, what would you be willing to give up for players like those? Or should the Bulls just take the draft pick, re-sign everyone and keep going?
Magic mayhem
The Orlando Magic appears to be saying, “Take my coach, please.”
“Sometimes there are no guarantees in life,” team President Bob Vander Weide said after the Magic was swept by the Pistons in the first round of the playoffs, a disappointing end after a 13-4 start this season.
Vander Weide said there are philosophical issues between management and coach Brian Hill, chiefly regarding the team’s style of play.
“We have to see if there wasn’t the opportunity to run the ball more,” Vander Weide said.
Coaches get fired all the time, and with two more years left on his deal, Hill will be taken care of. But Hill is a decent man whom the Magic brought back, and it appears he’ll take the fall for a poorly managed franchise.
Yes, they have Dwight Howard, though it would be good if he practiced free throws on occasion. The roster probably doesn’t have another true NBA starter, with the team apparently realizing guard Jameer Nelson is not a starting-level player and backing off talk of extending his contract. And word around the NBA is Grant Hill will try to hook on with a contender.
Perhaps no one has loused up the draft more than the Magic the last two years, with lottery picks Fran Vazquez and J.J. Redick.
But the organization rarely gets criticized for perhaps the biggest mistake in NBA history. Grizzlies general manager Jerry West was on the Dan Patrick show on WMVP-AM 1000 last week, talking about the Lakers’ signing of Shaquille O’Neal in 1996. He acknowledged it wasn’t easy because O’Neal wanted to stay in Orlando, and a six-year deal would have done it. But the Magic played hardball, offering four years and $54 million, and only began to raise the offer as the Lakers’ bidding increased.
It was perhaps the worst premature breakup of a team in history after the Magic was in the 1995 Finals. And now Brian Hill, the coach from 1993-97 as well, is the problem?
He’s here all week
Who knew Tim Duncan was funny?
The Suns aren’t laughing, not with the way Duncan has been carving them up in the Western Conference semifinals (Note to Suns: maybe try a double-team).
After a collision with Steve Nash in Game 1, Duncan noted how Spurs teammate Tony Parker wasn’t the one hurt but stayed on the floor.
“He was fine when he got hit,” Duncan said. “He’s French. He just stays down a little longer.”
And Saturday after Manu Ginobili got poked in the eye and responded with a scoring burst to give the Spurs an edge, Duncan said the poke in the eye straightened out Ginobili’s shot and the team is considering it again for Monday’s game.
Wacky Warriors
Oh, the fun it would have been, especially because the Bulls drafted Ron Artest a year later. You forget with all his stops that Stephen Jackson was in Bulls camp for the 1998-99 season. Now he’s coming up big for the Warriors.
“I needed a new start,” said the player who also has been with the Suns, Nets, Hawks, Grizzlies, Spurs, Kings (he was a ballboy there as a kid), Pacers, CBA, Australia and Venezuela.
“We needed to make a change on the court,” Warriors coach Don Nelson said of obtaining Jackson from the Pacers during the season. “So we were willing to take that risk off the court.”
Jackson faces possible jail time for two altercations he says were rooted in aiding his former Pacers teammates in Indianapolis. The trial is in June.
And then there’s Matt Barnes, a second-round pick of the Grizzlies who has been with the Cavs, SuperSonics, Clippers, Kings, 76ers, Knicks and in the ABA and developmental league, who now is being called by teammates the Dennis Rodman of the Warriors. He has the tattoos too.
“It’s a wonderful story,” Nelson said. “Here’s a guy that was a walk-on looking for a job. I basically told him I was looking for a guy exactly like him to be my 12th guy and to be a utility guy. Here he is starting and is a big factor in the playoffs for us.”
It’s a loose bunch. After Mickael Pietrus missed two free throws that probably would have won Game 2, he refused to shoot free throws the next day at practice.
“If I practice free throws today, I will think about it tomorrow,” he explained. “I’m going to go home, play with my puppy, take him to Golden Gate Park and make him happy.”
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All that Jazz
Utah coach Jerry Sloan should be safe this time no matter what happens, though Sloan again has left hints he could walk away after the season.
In 1989, after the Jazz seemed to clearly give away games down the stretch, the Warriors moved to the No. 7 seed under Don Nelson. They used 6-foot-6-inch Chris Mullin on 7–4 center Mark Eaton and swept the No. 2-seeded Jazz in the playoffs. Then general manager Dave Checketts had to talk Utah owner Larry Miller out of firing Sloan.
Both coaches still are going strong, Sloan at 65 and Nelson turning 67 on Tuesday. So much for the younger generation.
This ‘n’ that
Tom Newell is working on a TV date for an experimental exhibition game June 16 with 11-foot-high baskets. The NBA once tried 12-foot baskets in a regular-season game with George Mikan because of his dominance. … The Sonics have former Bulls assistant and Mavs coach Jim Cleamons, now an assistant with the Lakers, on their list to replace Bob Hill. But new owner Clay Bennett is cutting back drastically with a more dire financial situation than expected. … The belief in Houston is coach Jeff Van Gundy — with general manager Carroll Dawson retiring and being replaced by sabermetrics guy Daryl Morey — will leave. … Coach Doc Rivers got an extension through 2008-09 and apparently declined anything longer because he believes the Celtics will be a strong playoff team next season.
Layups
The Mavs go into next season having lost eight of their last 10 playoff games. … Shaquille O’Neal joins Darwin Cook as the only players on playoff teams swept six times. … Former Bulls head coach Bill Cartwright and ex-assistant Scott Brooks are leading up the Kings’ coaching search. … Nets President Rod Thorn admitted last week in an interview he was close to trading Jason Kidd to the Lakers in February, but the Lakers wouldn’t give up Andrew Bynum. They will now. …
Good one from a reader to the New York Post about Nowitzki’s upcoming MVP award ceremony: “If [Commissioner] David Stern is as smart as advertised, he’ll sign a promotional deal with Southwest Airlines and turn the whole event into one of those ‘Want to get away?’ ads.”
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