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Mike Monroe
Wednesday, May 10
Shaq's your MVP, easy, just ask Aristotle



Shaquille O'Neal
Shaq dominated the NBA this season, but now he's even matured as a person.
The criteria for the NBA's Most Valuable Player award are strictly subjective and very personal.

You don't need to know much more about quantifying a player's value, though, than the number of wins his team enjoys, and by that singular measure, somebody on the Los Angeles Lakers had to be this season's MVP.

Since Shaquille O'Neal was the Lakers' leading scorer, rebounder and shot blocker, it looks like 121 of the 122 voters got it right.

Someday, O'Neal said at Tuesday's press conference at which his ascendancy as the league's best player was made official, Kobe Bryant will win some MVP awards of his own.

For now, the Lakers have only one MVP, and O'Neal is the man.

You may recall the column in this space several weeks ago in which the contributions of this season's MVP candidates were broken down according to the formula once devised by three-time MVP Larry Bird (points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots; minus missed shots, missed free throws, personal fouls and turnovers). O'Neal was a runaway leader in that mathematical breakdown.

Fact is, O'Neal was most valuable this season for the effect he had on opponents' approach. There is no way to approach the Lakers without first determining some way to deal with the player who now wants to be known as "The Big Aristotle," in honor of the appropriate quote O'Neal used to sum up his approach to the season.

The worst approach, it appears, is the one Phoenix coach Scott Skiles seems intent on pursuing in the Western semifinals. Skiles refused to double team O'Neal in Sunday's Game 1 of a series that doesn't figure to last much more than one more week. Despite missing no fewer than five layins, O'Neal still scored 37 points and grabbed 14 rebounds.

The Suns just don't like to double, Skiles said, and if he is serious then his team is in serious trouble. It was hilarious to hear the Lakers, when asked if they expected the Suns to double O'Neal in Game 2, extolling the virtues of Luc Longley as a defender, as if to encourage Skiles to allow Longley to guard O'Neal by himself.

O'Neal once reacted boorishly to what he believed was disrespect from those who cover the NBA. It is a measure of his growth, both as player and person, that a young man who once visited Greece and thought the Parthenon was a night club Tuesday quoted Aristotle as he received the Most Valuable Player trophy.

It was back in 1994, when O'Neal was a member of the U.S. team playing in the World Championships, in Athens, when he was asked if he had visited the Parthenon and replied that he didn't know the names of the night clubs where he had been taking in Athens night life.

In 2000, O'Neal's acceptance speech on being awarded the MVP Trophy began with a quote from the Greek philosopher about excellence.

"Mark this down:" the 7-foot-1, 335-pound O'Neal said at the ceremony at the Lakers' practice facility in El Segundo. "From this day forward, I want to be known as The Big Aristotle, because it was Aristotle who said, 'Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do.' "

What O'Neal did this season -- repeatedly -- was dominate games as few players in NBA history, a fact reflected by the overwhelming nature of the media vote that resulted in the award. He received 121 first-place votes from the 122 voters.

O'Neal was the NBA's leading scorer (29.7 points per game), its No. 2 rebounder (13.6) its top percentage shooter (54.8), its No. 3 shot blocker (3.03) and No. 4 in average minutes played (40.0).

O'Neal thanked all the voters and said he believed his consistency this season separated it from the first seven seasons of his career.

"This year I just wanted to come out and be very consistent and dominate and play hard," O'Neal said.

A pre-season meeting with new Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who had coached Michael Jordan during his five MVP seasons in Chicago, cemented in O'Neal's mind the need to return to the kind of dominance he had showed in the first four season of his career, with the Orlando Magic.

"I met with Phil at his house in Montana," O'Neal recalled. "I rented a boat and went up to his house. He kept it real simple: He said, 'I want you to dominate; I want you to rebound; I want you to score; I want you to play defense; I want you to get your blocked shots back up.' And I tried to do that."

O'Neal dropped in, unannounced, on Jackson, puttering up to the dock at Jackson's log cabin home on a Montana lake in a motorboat with his uncle, Jerome. As the boat approached the dock, O'Neal noticed a glare coming from a window of Jackson's home.

It was pure inspiration.

"As you pull up on Phil's dock," O'Neal recalled, "Phil has a window and you can see all six of those gold balls (from the replica championship trophies Jackson keeps). And the sun was hitting those gold balls and the 'bling-blinging' was hitting my eyes. It was just an unusual feeling.

"Phil came and told me what was expected of me and said, 'See you later.' "

And the rest is MVP history.

O'Neal's Lakers teammates said they could tell the difference in O'Neal's demeanor and approach from the first day of training camp.

"I think it happened from the first day," said Lakers forward Robert Horry, who played on two championship teams in Houston with MVP center Hakeem Olajuwon. "He came in feeling really good and feeling healthy and feeling inspired. He had a new coach. He had a new system. He was like a little kid on Christmas Day, and everything fell into place for us."

"Here's a guy," said Lakers guard Ron Harper, who won three championships with the Chicago Bulls during some of Jordan's MVP years, "who came in training camp maybe out of shape; worked his way into shape; played all season long and did everything we asked him to do.

"That's how you get MVP. And you lead your team, and he led our team all season long."

Asked to compare O'Neal's contribution to that made by Jordan to the Bulls, Harper demurred.

"These are guys who love this game," Harper said, "and those guys deserve things, I think. Shaq has found that he loves this game, and every day he comes in here he tried hard, and he improved his game."

Mike Monroe, who covers the NBA for the Denver Post, writes a Western Conference column for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him at monroe128@go.com

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