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 Taking it to Shaq
Posted: Friday March 26, 1999 04:21 PM
This morning, under a dank, dreary sky, out on the windswept cement court in front of my house, I kicked Shaq's ass. Well, fine, if you want to get all technical on me, Shaquille O'Neal was actually asleep 3,000 miles away, resting up before facing Sacramento Friday night at the Great Western Forum. But we did indeed face off. This morning I nearly spit out my orange juice (Mountain Dew), Wheaties (Fruity Pebbles) and PowerBar (Pop Tart) all over the kitchen when I read that Shaq is mad because he doesn't get enough respect from the NBA and in protest has decided to boycott the 2000 Olympics. I'm just so tired of this crap. SHAQ, IF YOU'D LIKE MORE RESPECT, TRY MAKING THE NBA FINALS INSTEAD OF ANOTHER GAWD-AWFUL MOVIE or, better yet, try hitting a damn free throw once in a while, big guy. Shaq, I noticed, is shooting 54.8% from the foul line this year. But with what the Lakers are paying him they're hardly "free" throws. More like free trowels. "Hell," I yelled as my dog Scoop hid under the kitchen table, knowing what was about to come, "I could make more free throws than that." And so out I went to put a hurtin' on that sad sack Shaq. A hundred shots. Hoisted in bricks of 10, so to speak. And all I needed was 56 buckets. Piece of cake. My own somewhat limited basketball background (once while playing in a pickup game a 5'8", 250-pound guy named "Skinny" handed me the ball back after a miss and begged me to set my "damn feet" before shooting) along with the elements outside made my homecourt advantage negligible. Winds were around 15 mph out of the north-northwest and the temp hovered around 48 degrees. The forecast was for sleet. So I wore shorts. TV weather dorks are off the mark more often than Shaq. What's more, I had to use a gnarly giveaway basketball, painted teal and black and purple. And I had to shag my own rebounds, knowing that if I missed badly to the left the ball would roll down a hill and into the area of my yard Scoop uses for a bathroom. This is what you call pressure. Or just a really crappy shot. Anyway, I started 0-for-5, but when competing against Shaq in a free-throw shooting contest, this just means you're tied with the big fella. After fully gauging the wind (the net on my hoop, no kiddin', was almost parallel to the ground) I got hot, hit my next eight in a row, and ended up 11-for-20. I hovered around my goal of 6-for-10 (how sad is it when your own goals on the basketball court supercede that of the game's biggest star?). After 40 shots I had made 23. Knowing that I needed to make 7 of my next 10 to stay on pace for 60% is when that little thing we call pressure kicked in. It's the one thing I am convinced we will never truly understand from the sideline, and it's why to this day nailing clutch free throws to win a game is still one of the greatest feats in sports. Me? I was choking on that big Granny Smith pressure apple so bad I could barely breathe. At one point I noticed the rotation on my ball was sideways. That's a bad sign, right? I went 2-for-10, banking in big No. 2, to finish 25-for-50. Until today, I had no idea how many ways there are to miss a shot. Let me tell you, it's a bit hard to get in a groove when you can actually consider jumping in your car to chase down a rebound. Line drives off the front of the rim, thuds against the back of the iron, airballs, clankers, bankers, shankers and tankers and my own personal trademark, the "swirly" -- the shot that tantalizingly circles around the rim eight times before skipping out at the last second, causing me to scream "arrrggghhh" loud enough to scare the neighbors into dialing six of the seven numbers of the local authorities. Bend the knees, follow through, elbow in front of your nose, lock in on the rim and snap it. Remember Skinny. Set your feet. Pressure affects everyone. Hey, Shaq barely made 50% in the playoffs last year. Chuckling at that thought, with a tinge of frostbite numbing my finger tips (this, I think, helped) I rolled through the next 30 shots, making 22. Forty-seven-of-80. I only needed to make eight more shots to beat Shaq. And I got halfway there in my next set of 10, finally catching a break when No. 4 skipped over the front of the rim, hit the back iron, bounced straight up in the air to the top of the backboard, hung there for a second, and then came straight back down, snapping the net like a whip. That's right, I'm bad. You want some of this? I had just hit 4-of-10 shots and I was celebrating like Rumeal Robinson. I don't know what came over me -- maybe it was six months of suffering through these silly participatory Flem files and never actually coming out on top -- but I put Shaq away in five shots. Meet your new national spokesman for Taco Bell and the new star of Blue Chips II. I went 4-for-5 to get 56 buckets and finished the last set 6-for-10. If the USOC needs a replacement for Shaq Weasel at the 2000 Olympics -- or if they just want to give me some of that free stuff they seem to hand out to everyone else -- I believe you all know where I stand. Flem 57, Shaq 55. Sports Illustrated staff writer David Fleming explores the sometimes weird and wacky side of sports every Thursday. Click here to send an e-mail to Flem, or address it yourself: flemfile@aol.com.
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