The Big Houdini Shaq fined $10,000 for skipping postgame interview

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20.../playoffs/2006/06/12/shaq.fined.ap/index.html

The Big Houdini

Shaq fined $10,000 for skipping postgame interview


DALLAS (AP) -- Miami Heat center Shaquille O'Neal was fined $10,000, and the team an additional $25,000, after he did not make himself available for interviews after Sunday night Game 2 of the NBA finals.

O'Neal had a career playoff-low five points on 2-for-5 shooting in the 99-85 loss to the Dallas Mavericks. The Heat are down 0-2 hole heading to Tuesday's Game 3 in South Florida.

The NBA announced the fines about an hour after the game ended.

- I guess his feelings got hurt...the big wuss.

 

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/14799043.htm

'Ericka' getting the last laugh at Shaq's expense

RANDY GALLOWAY
In My Opinion

Shaquille O'Neal struggled to the worst playoff performance of his career Sunday night, scoring just five points on 2-for-5 shooting.


DALLAS -- Call it the Revenge of "Ericka."

Also call it an NBA Finals that will need a dramatic reversal, and quick, to reach beyond the four-game minimum.

If it smells like a sweep, follow your nose.

But the Mavericks' total dominance thus far should come as no surprise.

Don't tell me you didn't know Shaq, the most productive jumbo of this basketball era, would suddenly be reduced to a quivering 350-pound tub of jello.

You mean you never thought of that one?

But when Mr. Shaquille O'Neal is abused -- I said abused -- by his former favorite verbal whipping boy...

And when Shaq finds his butt ridin' pine for the final 15 minutes of Game 2 ...

And when Erick Dampier shockingly outscores Shaq and out-rebounds Shaq, then it was a given the Mavericks would be in cruise control on Sunday night.

Cruise they did, 99-85, and if the Heat don't locate something at home for Game 3 on Tuesday night, something like the real Shaq, then the broom looms in these Finals.

O'Neal got his mouth and his posterior handed to him in Game 2, based on those catty things he said about Dampier a year ago.

Said Damp's game was better suited for the WNBA. As in the "Ericka" tag.

Said Damp was "soft."

And until Sunday night, most of the league -- and be honest, most of North Texas (yes, I plead guilty) -- was laughing along with Shaq at those comments.

But if a guy like Damp is finally going to earn his $70 million contract, why not make it on this kind of stage?

The defense of Dampier and DeSagana Diop confused, frustrated and shut down Shaq in Game 2, after limiting him in Game 1.

O'Neal got off five shots in 28 minutes. Five for five points, his worst NBA playoff game ever.

Dampier also played 28 minutes, had six points, but dominated inside with 13 rebounds as the Mavs easily controlled the boards. A mere six rebounds from Shaq might explain why.

Pat Riley certainly won't say it, but the best the Heat had to offer offensively in Game 2 was when Alonzo Mourning was in the game.

Shaq wasn't saying that or anything else afterward.

"If you guys are waiting on Mr. O'Neal, he has departed," a member of the Heat's staff announced to a group of reporters in the locker room.

What, no funny one-liners?

About an hour after the game, and after O'Neal was a post-game no-show, commissioner David Stern announced a $10,000 fine for the player and a $25,000 fine for the Heat due to a failure to speak.

Who is laughing now?

Actually, not Dampier.

About Shaq's previous rips on him, Dampier's post-game comment was a shrugging, "I think it's behind us now."

Intentional or not by Damp, that also explained Avery Johnson's two-headed defensive dominance of O'Neal. Shaq couldn't get behind Dampier or Diop.

It was, however, a given going into Game 2 that Riley would demand that his Big Fella receive more "touches" and more shots from the paint.

Shaq was 8-for-11 in Game 1, but seemed timid in going to the bucket.

This time he seemed to want no part of "Ericka."

"Yes, we need to get [O'Neal] the basketball," said Riley. "But this game was about another team's competitiveness and energy at the start of the game.

"I mean, they doubled him every single time he caught the ball. He made the pass that he was supposed to make. Other times, they would front him. We didn't get what we wanted when we threw the ball over the top.

"Obviously, we have to go to work on that the next couple of days."

The Mavs were favored going into the Finals. But if Shaq dominated, and if Dwyane Wade lived up to his billing, then this could be an upset.

So, in two games here, Shaq has 22 points, and looks slow and tired.

On Sunday night, Wade [6-of-19] continued a slump that started after his torrid first quarter in Game 1. He's had 11 buckets in the last seven quarters due to the wave of defenders Johnson keeps sending at him.

"I know we're history right now," said Riley, making a laughing reference to what he figured the media would be writing and saying.

Except, what else is there to think after two bad road performances by the Heat?

In fact, things are so dismal for Miami, when 235-pound Udonis Haslem took a hard foul on 180-pound Jason Terry, and both crashed violently to the floor, guess who wound up injured?

Haslem has a shoulder that may make him doubtful for Game 3.

Then again, that also about sizes up the Heat at the moment.

 

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=BKN-KRIEGER-06-12-06

Shaq shrinking before our eyes

By DAVE KRIEGER
Scripps Howard News Service
12-JUN-06

He is not any smaller, but he is disappearing before our eyes. Shaquille O'Neal is a father, but he is Shaq-daddy no more.

Once upon a time, this was Shaq's time of year. He is the highest-scoring center in NBA playoff history, averaging more points per postseason game than Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Hakeem Olajuwon.

After a modest 17 points and seven rebounds in Miami's Game 1 loss, Shaq, his coach and his teammates spent two days talking about how they had to get him more touches, had to give him a chance to dominate the way he can.

Eleven shots, his total in Game 1, simply wasn't enough. So, in Game 2, he got five as the Heat went down two games to none.

Welcome to the new NBA. Shaq has not yet been legislated out of existence, but he has been legislated out of domination.

All those new rules that have opened up the game? They have shut down Shaq.

Blame the legalization of the zone defense. Pat Riley does.

"You have to do different things to try to post him up in the zone," Riley said after Game 1. "That's one of the things that the zone does, is it takes away your low-post game. You have to make two or three passes to try to catch him in the zone rather than just throw it to him and let him operate."

It is legal now not merely to double Shaq with the ball; it is legal to double him without it. That's what the zone allows. With a defender behind him and a defender in front, just getting him the ball is a major chore.

To make matters worse, the Heat does not have enough versatile offensive players to make the Mavericks pay for gang-covering Shaq and Dwyane Wade.

"They know who to stay home on and they know who to leave open," Riley said following the Game 2 blowout.

The new rules also get Shaq at the other end, where he once dominated the paint. The defensive 3-second rule prevents him from camping out there. The Mavs put his man into high pick-and-rolls and make him come out on the floor, turning a defensive asset into a liability.

"My role is a lot different," Shaq acknowledged the other day, "but I still can be the point center, especially when we know what the defense is going to do. I would still like to touch it to keep everybody involved."

Imagine, the Big Diesel reduced to the role of distributor, trying to set up inferior players who cannot take advantage of open looks. This from the most physically dominant big man in NBA history.

He has spent some time lately musing about the league's transition from big men who play his style to big men who play Dirk Nowitzki's style.

The day after Game 1, I asked him if he felt the league was legislating him out of existence. He was diplomatic in his answer, but he did not deny it.

"I don't really think about it, or, if I do think about it, I really don't mention it a lot," he said. "I just try to do what I've been doing. Just trying to stay successful and stay unique as a player.

"There aren't many more players like me. They are getting to be a little bit like Dirk and Yao Ming. Hopefully, that's better for the game."

It very well may be. But it's not better for Shaq, that's for sure.

The new NBA rewards versatile big men who can face up, not those who play with their backs to the basket. Shaq has been sabotaged so far in the Finals by a combination of the rules and his own team.

A decade ago, Olajuwon made opponents pay for doubling him down low by hitting an array of outside shooters. If you doubled off Kenny Smith, he could hit the open three. So could Sam Cassell, Robert Horry, Mario Elie, Matt Bullard, Scott Brooks, Clyde Drexler.

The Heat has only three players who shoot the three, and they have not been reliable enough to persuade the Mavs to reconsider their strategy of blanketing Shaq every time he and the ball are in the same zip code.

In the second half of Game 2, even as the Heat made a run to get back in the game, Shaq sat on the bench. Once the most dominant player in the game, he was reduced to the role of spectator in the championship series. His final line showed five points and six rebounds.

The times, they have-a-changed. It is not Shaq's fault. This has been coming for a while. He is a dinosaur now, an enormous blast from the past, able only to watch as the new NBA pushes him toward extinction.

(Contact Dave Krieger of the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)

 

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/14802700.htm

Has anyone seen Shaq?

BY SAM SMITH
Chicago Tribune

MIAMI - Sometimes the other guys just are better.

"I've been in a lot of playoff games," Miami coach Pat Riley was saying late Sunday in Dallas after his Heat fell behind the Mavericks 2-0 in the NBA Finals.

"I've got beat by 40, by 30, by 25, won by 25 or 30. Doesn't make any difference. The whole thing is about the next game and trying to leave this behind us. Maybe it will set a fire in us to do something a little different."

Maybe win a game? Everyone can tell now, including the Heat players. Everyone has seen it: The fast kid shows up and you don't even have to race him to know. When Michael Jordan walked on the court, there was this feeling of inevitability.

By the way, anyone seen Shaq?

These NBA Finals might not end in four games, but the inevitable seems obvious.

The Mavs have beaten the Heat 12 of the last 14 times they've played. No team that has won the first two games at home in the 2-3-2 Finals format has ever lost the series. Only two teams, the last the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers, have recovered from an 0-2 deficit to win the championship.

Shaquille O'Neal, coming off a career playoff-low five points in the Game 2 loss, never has beaten Erick Dampier's Mavericks as a member of the Heat. And Dampier (six points, 13 rebounds) outplayed O'Neal in Game 2. Since Dampier came to the Mavs, Dallas is 6-0 against Shaq and the Heat with an average winning margin of 16.3 points per game.

But it's more than history and statistics.

The Mavs had an answer for everything the Heat has done.

Miami brings in Gary Payton and Dallas counters with Devin Harris, who makes Payton look silly, blowing by him and Jason Williams for 11 points off the bench. Payton is averaging one point on 1-for-8 shooting and appears to have quit in the Finals, as he did with the Lakers in 2004.

Dallas' Jerry Stackhouse broke the game open with 10 points in a 79-second burst in the second quarter, finishing with 19 off the bench. Stackhouse said he took advantage of Miami's increased attention on Jason Terry, who burned the Heat with 32 points in Game 1.

"Maybe they will be a little more conscious of both of us the next game," Stackhouse said.

It's pretty clear the Mavs are deeper and quicker. When Miami brings in Alonzo Mourning, Dallas goes with Keith Van Horn and Dirk Nowitzki inside, and they're too quick for the Heat. It's not like, other than Nowitzki, these are the `86 Celtics or the `96 Bulls. Most NBA teams have already had Stackhouse, Van Horn, Adrian Griffin or DeSagana Diop on their roster.

Dallas is more athletic, but Miami appears just happy to be here after last season's late flop. It's as if only one team is playing for the title.

"This game was about another team's competitiveness and energy," Riley said.

And a former other worldly center.

O'Neal had joked the other day before Game 2 about his beginnings:

"I don't know the name of the planet," O'Neal said. "The files were destroyed. My mother originally told me I wasn't born, that I was found on a train. I have a lot of heritage in Texas, but I consider myself a New Jerseyan. I was found on the Amtraks in Jersey City."

O'Neal was nowhere to be found after Game 2, having left in shame and embarrassment. The NBA announced a $10,000 fine for O'Neal and a $25,000 fine for the Heat for their lack of availability to the media.

What O'Neal deserved was a finger-wagging from his dad for running away when things went badly.

"He can't be as dominant as he wants to be right now," said Dwyane Wade, showing himself the true class of the team by taking the hit for O'Neal. "His other guys (are) not playing as well as we should. So they're able to key on him and take away the other guys because we're missing shots, not being efficient."

Dallas is swarming O'Neal, showing him the most aggressive double-teaming he has seen in a few years and fronting him on the post, which is said to be fatal. Miami has been able to lob to O'Neal when that occurs, but Dallas recovers and helps, seemingly playing in fast forward while Miami is on a slow treadmill.

Not that the Heat can do much with its AARP roster. Williams buries himself in so many screens you'd think he was slow dancing. Walker, left open by the Mavs' double-teams, finished with 20 points, but most came in extended garbage time.

And now Udonis Haslem, Miami's toughest guy, may be out or limited with a shoulder injury suffered early in Game 2. He says he'll play, but he's the primary defender on Nowitzki and the Heat needs him healthy.

"Now the series switches to Miami," Walker said. "We have three games on our home floor. Tuesday becomes the biggest game of the season for us. This series is far from over."

It's all they have to hold onto now.