Shaq! Shut Yo Mouth

(12/17/99)

Shaquille O'Neal, the starting center for the Los Angeles Lakers, shoots free throws exceptionally poorly. While the average success rate on these unguarded shots in the NBA runs about 70 percent, Shaq routinely struggles to get his average up to 50 percent. Currently, he languishes at 43 percent. Shaq's inability to succeed on this simple play has been rightly cited as a major defect in his game, and has contributed to many Lakers losses, as Shaq cannot be relied upon to get the key points from the free throw line that often decide games.

Now, Shaq has responded anew to his critics. Says he, "Out of 100 things, I don't do one thing very well…I'm glad I don't shoot 80 percent. It would be hard to live with me. I'd be a self-centered jerk."

Shaquille O'Neal, just to refresh everyone's memories, makes 400 times an average elementary schoolteacher's yearly salary to run up and down a court for 48 minutes 82 times a year (plus playoff games, of which there have been few in recent years for Shaq). He achieved this salary after signing with the Lakers as a free agent, leaving the Orlando team that drafted him in a fit of pique when a poll of Orlando citizens said his demand of $11 million or more per year over a ten-year contract was excessive. Shaq said that Orlando had shown him a lack of gratitude for getting them, well, no championships. He is the author of the famous quote, "I've won at every level, except college and the NBA." He has produced bad movies, tepid rap CDs and endless streams of commercials for Pepsi (note the especially offensive plurals on all three of those). His agitation at the Laker offense's latter-day focus on the young Kobe (Japan) Bryant, whom Shaq seems to view more as an interloper bent on staging a palace coup than as a teammate, has torn the Laker locker room apart to such an extent that it has cost two Laker coaches their jobs, since no one is going to fire Shaq. Now Shaq is threatening us all with the prediction that if he masters a simple skill essential to his profession (I mean, I can hit free throws better than Shaq can, and I'm a slow short white boy), we will be exposed to a "self-centered jerk."

When I read that quote, I was dumbfounded. My dumbfoundedness resulted not so much from Shaq's idea that everyone's psychological well-being was spared by his ineptitude on the free throw line as from consideration of whether it was possible for Shaq to be a more self-centered jerk than he is now. I mean, if he feels he's a kind, reserved, giving soul now, what would he do if he became self-centered? Demand that he touch the ball on every possession, even breakaway dunks? Institute a pregame ritual whereby all of his teammates kiss Shaq's feet for good luck? Insist that the Lakers change their name to "Shaq and the Shaq-O-Lanterns"? Have we really encouraged American athletes to be so arrogant that Shaq can look deep within his soul and say, "If you think I'm self-centered now, you ain't seen nothing yet"?

Furthermore, this kind of quote sets a dangerous precedent. Isn't Shaq's quote reminiscent of the as-yet-unsaid Bill Gates quote, "Thank God I'm not handsome and charismatic. Then everyone in America would hate me!" Will players with more complete skill sets and more modesty like Grant Hill or Tim Duncan see a quote like this as a license to be much more arrogant than they now are, knowing that if they doubled their arrogance they couldn't match even the free-throw-shooting-ability-less Shaq?

I think what we need to do is very simple. Whenever Shaq is interviewed in a formal setting or questioned in the locker room after a game, he should only be allowed to speak a number of words indexed against the percentage of free throws he made in the previous game. I suggest making the multiplier 1, but I suppose this would prove unfair restraint of trade for ESPN's SportsCenter, whose nightly Shaq quote is one of their staples during basketball season (along with the Vince Carter Dunk-of-the-Day and snide remarks about having to announce the score of the Golden State game). Still, if we could somehow make this proposal law, we would be sending a message to the current generation of unjustifiably arrogant NBA superstars: If you can't say something reasonably modest, don't say anything at all.

Well, Shaq has now won on one level (the NBA), but he still can't shoot free throws, and he now refers to himself as "The Big Aristotle" for some reason, and he's released a greatest-hits rap album, all of which continue to earn him my scorn. Just because he makes millions of dollars and gets all the women he wants and is one of the four or five best in the world at what he does (when he's healthy), that don't make him better than me. Now I have to go pay my phone bill.

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