OT: Was Phil Jackson Shaq's downfall?
Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:56 pm
This is fairly old subject matter, so sorry if it has been discussed before.
I was watching NBA TV today (or Raptors TV, since that is what we get up here), and they were showing the season reviews of the Lakers' championship runs of the early 2000s. At the start of the second winning year, they discussed how Shaq basically turned up for training camp overweight and out of shape, but also that he had done it with Jackson's blessing (almost his orders). After the first win, Jackson told Shaq to take the summer off, rest and recuperate, and he took that to the maximum, barely working out at all until the first day of training camp.
That season, O'Neal missed 8 games, but was generally still quite dominant - he was, however, bigger than he'd ever been up to that point and struggled with nagging injuries. The Lakers still won, Shaq was still the man, and he basically has taken every summer off since then.
It's just made me wonder, was that the point at which the scales tipped (pun intended) and O'Neal began to think that he didn't need to work out at all in the offseason? He's rarely been in shape since, and although 75% of Shaq is better than 100% of most other players in the league, his decline has been pretty rapid since the final championship run. He's only played more than 70 games once in the last 7 years, has been consistently overweight, injured, and can't even manage a double-double any more. At a period in his career - over the age of thirty - that O'Neal should have been working harder than ever to stay in shape, he seemed less and less interested in it, certain that he could produce when it mattered most. We kept (keep) hearing from the man himself that he would round into shape as the season progressed, and would be ready come playoff time, and for the first couple of years that was true, but the last couple it has been hot air.
So does Jackson's (and Riley, to some extent) notoriously long leash when it comes to his superstars shoulder some of the blame for O'Neal's latter-day struggles, or can O'Neal himself be the only one to blame?
I was watching NBA TV today (or Raptors TV, since that is what we get up here), and they were showing the season reviews of the Lakers' championship runs of the early 2000s. At the start of the second winning year, they discussed how Shaq basically turned up for training camp overweight and out of shape, but also that he had done it with Jackson's blessing (almost his orders). After the first win, Jackson told Shaq to take the summer off, rest and recuperate, and he took that to the maximum, barely working out at all until the first day of training camp.
That season, O'Neal missed 8 games, but was generally still quite dominant - he was, however, bigger than he'd ever been up to that point and struggled with nagging injuries. The Lakers still won, Shaq was still the man, and he basically has taken every summer off since then.
It's just made me wonder, was that the point at which the scales tipped (pun intended) and O'Neal began to think that he didn't need to work out at all in the offseason? He's rarely been in shape since, and although 75% of Shaq is better than 100% of most other players in the league, his decline has been pretty rapid since the final championship run. He's only played more than 70 games once in the last 7 years, has been consistently overweight, injured, and can't even manage a double-double any more. At a period in his career - over the age of thirty - that O'Neal should have been working harder than ever to stay in shape, he seemed less and less interested in it, certain that he could produce when it mattered most. We kept (keep) hearing from the man himself that he would round into shape as the season progressed, and would be ready come playoff time, and for the first couple of years that was true, but the last couple it has been hot air.
So does Jackson's (and Riley, to some extent) notoriously long leash when it comes to his superstars shoulder some of the blame for O'Neal's latter-day struggles, or can O'Neal himself be the only one to blame?