In light of his retirement, here is the Shaquille O’Neal I choose to remember: Corpulent and arrogant as hell, ripping through one of the most dominant half-decades of any baller on record. The Shaq of 98-03 was the Goliath and the Golem rolled into one, a towering tub on legs who had like three moves: a whiplash sky hook with no arc, a standing dunk from anywhere inside the circle, and that awful, awful post move where he’d get the ball in position, back his man down not with footwork or cleverness but by shoving his ass out and moving as slowly and surely as a pickup in reverse, then just dunk the ball or lay it in, no problems. You can see it employed to horrible effect in the video above, wherein poor Chris Dudley (your 2010 GOP gubernational candidate for Oregon!) is made to look like a plaything as Shaq backs him down 5 feet, dunks on him, thrusts his dick in his face and shoves him down. Watch it in slo-mo, about 50 seconds in! Watch it like twenty times.
He was incredibly unguardable. I remember watching in horror as the Sacramento Kings—my team of the day, as 11-year old Jeremy couldn’t quite deal with the post-Jordan Bulls—threw center after center at him to no avail. They had flopping Vlade Divac and goofy Scot Pollard with his frosted tips, and couldn’t do shit but watch. Here’s what you need to know, if you don’t spend 18 hours a week on Basketball Reference: Facing a 3-2 deficit in the 2002 conference Finals, Shaq dropped 41 and 35 points, effectively sending the C-Webb dream to Youtube purgatory.
If you didn’t watch basketball, Shaq was also the ubiquitous basketball crossover star of 1995-present: Shaq-Fu, the Boston Pops thing, the rap albums (one collaboration with Biggie!), Kazaam and Blue Chips and Steel (two of which I saw in theaters), the Shaq Pack (a Burger King value meal, the gimmick being a packet of dippable cheese product, I think), his Twitter (the first essential celebrity Twitter to follow), multiple WWF/WWE appearances and, if you believe the groupie tell-alls, a tiny dick (though, if we’re speaking proportionally, he’s probably still hung like Shadowfax). Here’s another thing: It’ll be 14 years before I have more Shaq-less years than Shaq-full ones. Wow! 4 rings, 1 MVP, a gajillion points and Youtubes to remember forever. Rest in retirement, big guy.
