MAILBAG Submit a comment or question for Steve. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Back in November 2004, soon after O'Neal got to Miami, Phil Jackson told me: "Shaq is in the back nine and he knows it. I was able to have a talk with him before he left L.A. and suggested to him that this is a time when he has a chance to step into another championship. ... This is a time for Shaq to again dominate. I think his determination appears to be that way. He's going to be happy there, and it's going to work out to his benefit.''

It certainly did. But that was 3˝ seasons ago. Asked this week what he thought his former center's role would be with Phoenix, Jackson joked, "Taking the ball out of bounds and waiting for the other team to get back.'' Then he offered a more serious view, full of contingencies tied to O'Neal's physical state.

"There are deteriorating returns for a guy who's 7-foot-1, 300-whatever-he-is,'' the Lakers' coach told L.A. reporters. "And when you have multiple problems in your legs, feet, knees, hips -- that's the stability that holds up the frame -- it's real difficult.''

O'Neal and the Suns obviously beg to differ, and the big fella spoke unabashedly and greedily about his ambitions at his Phoenix meet-and-greet news conference. "I need five and six [rings],'' he said. "Nobody is going to surpass Bill Russell, so they're going to say Bill Russell has 11 but there was this other guy named Shaq, he had six. Then Magic [Johnson] had six [five actually]. [Michael] Jordan had six. I'm very selfish to how I want my story written when I'm done playing.''

The best way for O'Neal to take authorship of that, moving forward, is to get or stay in shape, pray that keeps injuries to a minimum and play as unselfishly as necessary on the court. Chamberlain famously transformed his game near the end, boosting his defense, focusing on rebounds and deferring to Jerry West, Gail Goodrich and younger teammates as an offensive threat. Robinson did likewise with San Antonio, averaging 11.9 points over his final three seasons as Duncan emerged. As the Big Complementary to Nash and Stoudemire, O'Neal could do what none of the league's other titans managed: take a fourth franchise to the Finals and win an NBA championship playing for three different clubs.

Joining Phoenix, bogging down its style, plodding around like a late-version Arvydas Sabonis without the jump shot and getting eliminated in the first or second round of the playoffs? That would be a disappointing scenario, yet nowhere near worst-case. Worst-case would be O'Neal sputtering along through an endless string of ailments and injuries, with the Suns stuck with an anticlimax of never pulling this together. That would be far worse than having this Kerr-and-D'Antoni scheme (they claim it was mutual) taken apart on the court by San Antonio, Dallas, Boston or Detroit.

For now, I'm going to take O'Neal at his word that he needed this kick in his sizable rear end and that the skeptics -- armed with their unforgiving calendars and calculators -- simply are providing motivation, by way of anger, free of charge. I'll try to ignore the reality, too, that he wasn't giving Miami his best effort, his best conditioning, his best commitment, his best leadership, his best ... anything, by the end.

O'Neal's personality, sense of humor and self-awareness as an Eighth Wonder in a world that barely can remember the first seven earns him a half-season's worth of goodwill with me, at least.

"You're going to see the joy in my game when I get back on the court,'' O'Neal said Thursday.

Imagine that, the NBA team that already is the most fun to watch getting (as the kids like to say) funner.

Steve Aschburner covered the Minnesota Timberwolves and the NBA for 13 seasons for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He has served as president or vice president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association since 2005.