GSH
04-22-2008, 12:09 PM
Shaq's whining is the same old warmed-over poop sandwich he's served up every year since he came to the league. I pulled a few references. There were a lot more, but they're all basically the same thing. Shaq whines because people play him hard on defense, and whines because they won't let him sumo wrestle with them on the other end. The Suns would like everyone to believe that the Spurs have no skills but flopping. But Shaq has been saying the exact...same...shit...about every playoff opponent for years. He always wants things both ways, and the sportswriters play along because it makes for good controversy.
From an article during the 2001 playoffs http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/nba/2001/playoffs/news/2001/06/11/shaq_lakers_ap/:
A day after accusing Dikembe Mutombo of "flopping and crying every time I back him down," Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal issued that concise message to his Philadelphia counterpart. O'Neal was ready Monday when the subject of Mutombo, the NBA's defensive player of the year this season, was broached by reporters. "Good, I don't have to repeat myself," O'Neal said when told Mutombo had taken his remarks following Game 3 of the NBA Finals as a challenge. "I said what I said, and I meant what I said. So, hey, good.
"Challenge me. Treat me like a game of checkers and play me. I'm allowed to pivot, I'm allowed to play strong, I'm allowed to be powerful. That's what I've been doing my whole career and I'm not going to change. "So, you know, just play me. Treat me like Sega and play me."
With the Lakers leading 86-84 Sunday night, O'Neal was called for an offensive foul on Mutombo, his sixth, to put him on the bench with 2:21 remaining... O'Neal also committed an offensive foul against Mutombo in the third quarter, his fourth, just 15 seconds after he was called for a loose ball foul against the Philadelphia center.
Mutombo seemed hurt by O'Neal's comments immediately after Game 3, calling O'Neal a good friend and saying he didn't know how to respond. A day later, Mutombo took the offensive. "When he says that, it's related to what? Him fouling out? Am I the referee?" Mutombo said. "These are the Finals; these are the NBA championships. Nobody let me drive on the freeway to get to where I am today. It doesn't make sense at all for an intelligent person to say that."... "How am I going to flop if I have stitches in my mouth? That sounds so stupid. I hope he didn't mean that. I don't give a damn whatever the guy is saying about me... Sometimes you lose your friends in the middle of a battle. We don't play for the same organization. Right now, we just want to win a ring."
From an article during the 2002 playoffs http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-95765217.html
Being a big guy in a skinny guy's game creates problems, most obviously for the opposing team. When O'Neal wants to enter the lane, he simply can bull through his defender, who can do little except absorb the blow and try to keep his feet. Sitting in front of his locker after a battle with O'Neal last week, Kings center Vlade Divac pointed to a red welt on his shoulder. "That one was from his head, I think," Divac says. He pointed to another, close to his chest. "His elbow, here. I know he can't feel it, but I can."
But though his bull elephant size is O'Neal's blessing, it is also his curse, and that became more evident as the tightly contested Western Conference finals wore on. Divac did what he could, including committing hard fouls on O'Neal when necessary and hitting the deck with a flourish to extract whistles from referees. It worked, as the Kings got the O'Neal into foul trouble in games 2 and 3 and won both. O'Neal, frustrated, said of Divac's combination of physical play and acting, "If the outcome is going to be predicted WWF-style, let me know so I'm not out there busting my butt for nothing."
The extremes the Kings have gone to in defending O'Neal are a consequence of his extreme size. In a way, those extremes are an acknowledgment of O'Neal's dominance, a team admitting that since O'Neal bends the rules of metabolism and body types, the rules of professional basketball must be bent in response. Nearly every time O'Neal touches the ball, a referee could find a foul to call on the defender. The same referee probably could find an offensive foul to call on O'Neal, as well. The key for opponents is to make the second option happen five or six times in a game, giving O'Neal something to worry about. When refs' decisions are made, O'Neal usually is not the sympathetic figure. As Chamberlain used to say, nobody roots for Goliath.
That's not to say the Kings had no hand in slowing O'Neal ...Divac and Pollard anticipated O'Neal's moves to his favored spots and got there before him, exaggerating contact in hopes of getting favorable whistles. When they did not, the Kings needled the referees.
In one exchange in the second quarter of Game 3, O'Neal backed into Pollard, sending Pollard a foot backward, as if he had taken a cannonball in the gut. O'Neal pushed into Pollard again before getting off a shot. During a timeout a few minutes later, Kings coach Rick Adelman assailed referee Steve Javie about the lack of a whistle. Javie admitted to Adelman that the call should have been made. On the Lakers' next trip down the floor, O'Neal was whistled--on the first bump--when he began backing in on Divac. "I would not want to be a referee," Divac says. "They call it different for him than for me, because they have to. He's so big. We just have to make sure they know what is going on, on both sides."
Rather than be intimidated by O'Neal's outlandish size, the Kings have used it against him. The conventional game plan for O'Neal calls for making him work on defense, setting him up in pick-and-rolls and making him run the floor. Sacramento worried less about those things than simply trying to draw fouls and throw O'Neal off his game mentally. O'Neal blasted the Kings' ref-baiting flops as unmanly, saying of Divac, "It would be a shame if he were the first center who got (a tide) by doing it that way. I wouldn't do that." Manly or not, the immediate result was a Shaq who was less certain of himself and more willing to settle for a hook shot over a drive to the rim.
From an article during the 2002 playoffs http://www.usatoday.com/sports/nba/02playoffs/bonus-shaq.htm:
"I never get tired. I get beat up," O'Neal says of the multitude of strategies against him. One of the best at guarding O'Neal is 6-7, 255 pound Spurs reserve Malik Rose, who bodies up well and is just basically annoying. "You can't be afraid of him, that's the first rule," Rose says.
Even teammate Kobe Bryant has noticed that O'Neal has had to adjust his game this season because he is getting called for more offensive fouls as more defenders play the flop defense. "I think he was kind of tentative to back players down, because every time he does they call an offensive foul," Bryant says. "As a consequence, he has to shoot turnaround jump shots or shoot a hook shot going into the lane."
Said Indiana center Brad Miller, "He can still put his forearm in your chest. He can still put his elbow in your chest. He still has those moves." Miller, while with Chicago in January, sparked a melee, and some wild punches from O'Neal, with hard fouls. The incident led to a three-game suspension for O'Neal.
From an article during the 2006 playoffs http://hoopshype.com/columns/flop_hans.htm:
Miami coach Pat Riley, upset over the increasing number of offensive fouls called against his center, Shaquille O’Neal, lashed out at foreigners for bringing the flop to the NBA. “In this league,” he said, “it's become an art form, brought, by the way, by the Europeans.” (Sound familiar?)[[/I]...Alas, not only does Riley sound like the stereotypical “ugly American” with that comment, he’s dead wrong. The flop is as American as Kentucky bluegrass. Maybe Vlade Divac brought a European flair to the stunt when he joined the Lakers – Pat Riley’s Lakers – in 1989, but U.S.-born hoopsters had already been taking dives for decades.[/I]
From an article during the 2001 playoffs http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/nba/2001/playoffs/news/2001/06/11/shaq_lakers_ap/:
A day after accusing Dikembe Mutombo of "flopping and crying every time I back him down," Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal issued that concise message to his Philadelphia counterpart. O'Neal was ready Monday when the subject of Mutombo, the NBA's defensive player of the year this season, was broached by reporters. "Good, I don't have to repeat myself," O'Neal said when told Mutombo had taken his remarks following Game 3 of the NBA Finals as a challenge. "I said what I said, and I meant what I said. So, hey, good.
"Challenge me. Treat me like a game of checkers and play me. I'm allowed to pivot, I'm allowed to play strong, I'm allowed to be powerful. That's what I've been doing my whole career and I'm not going to change. "So, you know, just play me. Treat me like Sega and play me."
With the Lakers leading 86-84 Sunday night, O'Neal was called for an offensive foul on Mutombo, his sixth, to put him on the bench with 2:21 remaining... O'Neal also committed an offensive foul against Mutombo in the third quarter, his fourth, just 15 seconds after he was called for a loose ball foul against the Philadelphia center.
Mutombo seemed hurt by O'Neal's comments immediately after Game 3, calling O'Neal a good friend and saying he didn't know how to respond. A day later, Mutombo took the offensive. "When he says that, it's related to what? Him fouling out? Am I the referee?" Mutombo said. "These are the Finals; these are the NBA championships. Nobody let me drive on the freeway to get to where I am today. It doesn't make sense at all for an intelligent person to say that."... "How am I going to flop if I have stitches in my mouth? That sounds so stupid. I hope he didn't mean that. I don't give a damn whatever the guy is saying about me... Sometimes you lose your friends in the middle of a battle. We don't play for the same organization. Right now, we just want to win a ring."
From an article during the 2002 playoffs http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-95765217.html
Being a big guy in a skinny guy's game creates problems, most obviously for the opposing team. When O'Neal wants to enter the lane, he simply can bull through his defender, who can do little except absorb the blow and try to keep his feet. Sitting in front of his locker after a battle with O'Neal last week, Kings center Vlade Divac pointed to a red welt on his shoulder. "That one was from his head, I think," Divac says. He pointed to another, close to his chest. "His elbow, here. I know he can't feel it, but I can."
But though his bull elephant size is O'Neal's blessing, it is also his curse, and that became more evident as the tightly contested Western Conference finals wore on. Divac did what he could, including committing hard fouls on O'Neal when necessary and hitting the deck with a flourish to extract whistles from referees. It worked, as the Kings got the O'Neal into foul trouble in games 2 and 3 and won both. O'Neal, frustrated, said of Divac's combination of physical play and acting, "If the outcome is going to be predicted WWF-style, let me know so I'm not out there busting my butt for nothing."
The extremes the Kings have gone to in defending O'Neal are a consequence of his extreme size. In a way, those extremes are an acknowledgment of O'Neal's dominance, a team admitting that since O'Neal bends the rules of metabolism and body types, the rules of professional basketball must be bent in response. Nearly every time O'Neal touches the ball, a referee could find a foul to call on the defender. The same referee probably could find an offensive foul to call on O'Neal, as well. The key for opponents is to make the second option happen five or six times in a game, giving O'Neal something to worry about. When refs' decisions are made, O'Neal usually is not the sympathetic figure. As Chamberlain used to say, nobody roots for Goliath.
That's not to say the Kings had no hand in slowing O'Neal ...Divac and Pollard anticipated O'Neal's moves to his favored spots and got there before him, exaggerating contact in hopes of getting favorable whistles. When they did not, the Kings needled the referees.
In one exchange in the second quarter of Game 3, O'Neal backed into Pollard, sending Pollard a foot backward, as if he had taken a cannonball in the gut. O'Neal pushed into Pollard again before getting off a shot. During a timeout a few minutes later, Kings coach Rick Adelman assailed referee Steve Javie about the lack of a whistle. Javie admitted to Adelman that the call should have been made. On the Lakers' next trip down the floor, O'Neal was whistled--on the first bump--when he began backing in on Divac. "I would not want to be a referee," Divac says. "They call it different for him than for me, because they have to. He's so big. We just have to make sure they know what is going on, on both sides."
Rather than be intimidated by O'Neal's outlandish size, the Kings have used it against him. The conventional game plan for O'Neal calls for making him work on defense, setting him up in pick-and-rolls and making him run the floor. Sacramento worried less about those things than simply trying to draw fouls and throw O'Neal off his game mentally. O'Neal blasted the Kings' ref-baiting flops as unmanly, saying of Divac, "It would be a shame if he were the first center who got (a tide) by doing it that way. I wouldn't do that." Manly or not, the immediate result was a Shaq who was less certain of himself and more willing to settle for a hook shot over a drive to the rim.
From an article during the 2002 playoffs http://www.usatoday.com/sports/nba/02playoffs/bonus-shaq.htm:
"I never get tired. I get beat up," O'Neal says of the multitude of strategies against him. One of the best at guarding O'Neal is 6-7, 255 pound Spurs reserve Malik Rose, who bodies up well and is just basically annoying. "You can't be afraid of him, that's the first rule," Rose says.
Even teammate Kobe Bryant has noticed that O'Neal has had to adjust his game this season because he is getting called for more offensive fouls as more defenders play the flop defense. "I think he was kind of tentative to back players down, because every time he does they call an offensive foul," Bryant says. "As a consequence, he has to shoot turnaround jump shots or shoot a hook shot going into the lane."
Said Indiana center Brad Miller, "He can still put his forearm in your chest. He can still put his elbow in your chest. He still has those moves." Miller, while with Chicago in January, sparked a melee, and some wild punches from O'Neal, with hard fouls. The incident led to a three-game suspension for O'Neal.
From an article during the 2006 playoffs http://hoopshype.com/columns/flop_hans.htm:
Miami coach Pat Riley, upset over the increasing number of offensive fouls called against his center, Shaquille O’Neal, lashed out at foreigners for bringing the flop to the NBA. “In this league,” he said, “it's become an art form, brought, by the way, by the Europeans.” (Sound familiar?)[[/I]...Alas, not only does Riley sound like the stereotypical “ugly American” with that comment, he’s dead wrong. The flop is as American as Kentucky bluegrass. Maybe Vlade Divac brought a European flair to the stunt when he joined the Lakers – Pat Riley’s Lakers – in 1989, but U.S.-born hoopsters had already been taking dives for decades.[/I]