So… you’re a coach in the NBA, and you’ve received the gift of having one Shaquille O’Neal on your team. Pretty sweet, right? Here at the offices of the ShaqFu Radio blog, we know that if Shaq is on our team, he’s playing every minute of every game. Yet some coaches – real-life coaches – made different decisions. Thanks to our friends at FadeAwayWorld for info on this story.
Yes, O’Neal was pretty much unstoppable on the hardwood. Many consider him to be the most dominant player in Association history (still, to this day!). Still, a good coach who could see individual players’ strengths and weaknesses could make some interesting decisions. When Shaq played with the Los Angeles Lakers, the team was under the guidance of one of the all-time greats, Phil Jackson.
Jackson had the reputation of coaching like a zen master or chess grandmaster. He was (for the most part) quiet, thoughtful and always on the lookout for how to best make use of his players in specific game and series situations. And when it came to at least one series of the Lakers against their rivals, the Utah Jazz, Jackson made some interesting moves.
On a recent edition of TNT Tuesday – the network’s in-depth coverage of the NBA – Shaq talked about the time Jackson told him he was going to sit out two entire games against the Jazz. Why? Jackson said the Jazz were a “bad matchup” against him.
On the show, Shaq and other guests talked about exactly that – how some players match up against others… and how sometimes matching up different skills and abilities produced predictable results. Jackson must have seen something that made him think O’Neal would be better sitting against the Jazz. Still, that didn’t mean the big man was off the hook after that Jazz series.
Shaq: “I played with a guy in Phil Jackson that did that. He knows how we won all our championships, we never had to play Utah. But when we first got there, he told the team as well. He told me, he pulled me aside, said ‘Shaq take these two games off… And then when you come back I need you to get 40’… The man had a great resume so I listened. For me, it was like getting rest.”
Here’s that video if you’d like to see the original:
So what was the thinking? Hard to say, but Jackson probably figured that John Stockton and Karl Malone’s elite pick-and-roll routine would have overwhelmed Shaq, and didn’t want to risk having his best player lose confidence. True or not? We’ll never know. But Jackson definitely had experience coaching against the Utah Jazz, and knew what they were capable of. While with the Chicago Bulls, Jackson faced the Jazz in consecutive NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998 – and he won them both!
So Shaq most likely figured Phil knew what he was talking about, and he rode the bench for those two games. After all, Jackson had won 6 NBA championships with the Bulls, so he knew how to best manage his players. Obviously, Shaq felt it was the right decision to listen to Jackson.