He's not still otherworldly, but don't dismiss Shaq yet

Once a consistent force, Shaquille O'Neal's dominant games are few and far between. AP

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The whispers about Shaquille O'Neal have been growing for years now. They began when he and the Lakers were swept out of the Finals by Detroit in 2004. Then came the series a year later when, in his first season with the Heat, he was manhandled by those same Pistons in the conference finals. And then there was the title he helped Miami win in 2006 while being overshadowed by Finals MVP Dwyane Wade.

But as Miami has stumbled to a dismal start this season, that quiet talk about Shaq's effectiveness has reached ear-splitting levels.

Is the game's most dominant player done? Has playing more than 1,100 combined regular-season and playoff games finally caught up with a man who once attributed his size and brute strength to his origins on a planet he didn't know the name of?

Clearly, O'Neal, 35, is not the same player who transformed a 21-win Orlando team into a 50-win playoff club in two seasons with a bench that included the likes of Donald Royal and Anthony Avent. Shaq's scoring average is falling for the third straight season, to a current career-low of 15.3 points, and his shooting percentage and rebounding are dipping for the fourth consecutive season (career worsts of 52.8 percent and 7.3 boards).

Consider his performance last Sunday at New York, where the Heat won 75-72 for their only victory through seven games. Shaq finished with 14 points and nine rebounds, but he had only one fourth-quarter field goal, didn't attempt a single free throw all night and gave way to Alonzo Mourning in the final minute with the game on the line.

"His intensity and focus are not what they used to be," a scout said of Shaq, who has three years and $60 million left on his contract. "He's dominant when he wants to be, but he can only go in spurts. Two years ago, when Miami was really good, he was playing with a lot of energy. So far this year, I haven't seen that. Whether he's pacing himself because he knows it's a long year and he knows D-Wade is out, or whether [he's having difficulty] after a long time of people beating him up, you don't know. But he's a little more content to go to the block and bully people than maybe he was two or three years ago, when he had a little more variety to his game."

Shaq certainly wouldn't be the first player to decline at this stage of his career. As far as elite big men, Bill Russell, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin McHale, Moses Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar all had steady and generally unabated drop-offs in production as they reached their mid-30s. Most of them, though, also found a cruising gear that allowed them to make the transition from focal point to complement.

Shaq has already pronounced that the Heat are Wade's team. In the eyes of opponents, he's playing that way, too.

"He's actually passing it a lot better," said Knicks forward and former longtime Spur Malik Rose, who defended Shaq in his prime during the Spurs-Lakers showdowns of the early 2000s, and is now guarding him in the latter stages of both players' careers, including Sunday night in New York.

"He could always pass it back in his heyday, but I think his eyes were always on the basket more because he was able to jump over people and dunk. Now that he's, I guess, lost half a step, he's looking for other people more. He was always good at spotting double teams and passing out of them, but he's gotten better at that over the years and I think he's had to. Even [Sunday], when a couple of his passes got stolen, they were good looks.

"Maybe he's not the most dominant player in this league anymore, but he can still control a game."

That's become a more difficult proposition at the defensive end, as Eddy Curry showed Sunday in repeatedly going hard at Shaq almost every time the 25-year-old Knicks center touched the ball, despite a weight disadvantage of 40 (listed) pounds. Shaq, of course, doesn't move as easily as he once did. Does anyone move as fluidly at age 35 as they did at age 25? But not all of us spend 30 minutes a night in physical throwdowns with younger athletes. And not many can do that while still putting up 15 and 7 each game, either.

"He's still a viable option in this league," Rose said. "You put him on any team right now and that team would instantly become a second-round, conference-championship-contending team, possibly even a [title-]contending team if you put the right players around him."

That's a far cry from the Shaq of championships past, but it's a Shaq who still has value in the league, even if there are nights that the Heat will have to dig deep in their pockets to find it.

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