Look at Doc Rivers face right there. That is not the face of a man thinking "Hell yeah, I just got a legend and on of the best centers of all time in my roster. We are going to be DYN-O-MITE!!" No. That is the face of man thinking: "I cannot f(&@#$ believe that Danny saddled me with this motherf*^#@$!" That is a man who was on his knees thanking Jesus, Buddha and Allah when he realized that Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnet not only got along on court, but actually seemed to like each other. It made his job 1 billion times easier! And after a trip to the finals (where yes, they essentially hurled victory from them with great force) he was looking into the next season with two of the most promising and electrifying point guards in the game today chomping at the bit. He had some of the most seasoned veterans to ever play the game, long in the tooth though the have become These two had made it to the championship in what can only be described as the playoff equivalent of a a Fight Club style bare knuckle brawl beating the best teams in the league. They had come so close, so very close. If you think two guys like Rajon Rando and Nate Robinson are going to kick back after having almost had their hands on the trophy, you are fucking bananas.
Then this happened.
Yes Shaq is the best center to have ever played the game. Yes he has a wealth of experience, having played with Wade, Lebron, Kobe, Nash and a host of other top notch ballers. He has a fist of rings which render his credentials unimpeachable. He is charming, self effacing and by all accounts a funny dude. He is also, a goddamn liability. If you have been following basketball for any amount of time in the last ten years, then you must know this: Shaq has to be king. He will tolerate no threat to his status or ego. The Shaq/Kobe era in LA should have removed any doubt from any mind. Yes Kobe is a sonovabitch too, but that was a war that started by two equally mountainous egos crashing against one another. No matter where he went after leaving the Lakers, Shaq's trail was littered with broken teams. Miami is just recovering, who knows when Phoenix will and we all know what happened to Cleveland. This is cold, hard speculation, but it would in no way surprise me if Lebron and Wade opened up a gentleman's club together where they could vent freely about The Diesel.
Thing is, the Celtics are a very different team from the ones Shaq has been to. There is no star player, no "Great One" in their ranks. There are the "Big Three", a concept which is fundamentally more egalitarian than we usually see in professional basketball. Not only that, the "Big Three" were joined by a Fourth (an another half), who carried them when they slipped. There is no stand out personality here, no glittering God who leads his chosen through a mist of powdered sugar to the sound of Lil Wayne lyrics. They conjure up the term Arbeiterverein, German for workers team, a concept long dead in the soul crushing crystal spheres of reality. But every once in a while a team comes along that revives this concept, that is motivated by something like a communal will, rather than the single personality. Shaquielle O'Neal belongs nowhere near an environment like that. Yes, yes much has been made about how his role will be different, how he is getting the league minimum and how he will shuffle himself into a already well oiled (nee at the this point creaking with age) machine for the sake of victory. Simmons entire article is one long justification of this mindset. Because this will be his last chance. Because he wants to get even with Kobe, his arch-nemesis who supposedly dissed him furiously in the Lakers locker room after Game 7 last season. Blah blah blah. I don't buy these excuses for a second.
I agree, with one point Simmons makes. Shaq wants to crush Kobe. It is his sole overriding motivation and he will grind anyone beneath his size +1000 size Reeboks who he believes is getting in the way of that goal. He will not accept that he is too broken to lead the charge. He will not take the back seat to young bucks who are coming into their own. He will sit on the bench, a literal 350 pound gorilla, and turn morale into a vat of sewage if he does not believe that the Celtics can make it to the championship. He will turn the Celtics into "The Broken" if not appeased. That is why Doc Rivers has that look on his face. Say what you want about the mans coaching abilities and his luck with the Kevin Garnett trade. He knows the league, he knows the players and he knows the one essential truth: where Shaq goes with a grudge, desolation follows.
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