Top 5 Shaquille O'Neal Lakers Moments
Longtime Los Angeles Lakers great Shaquille O'Neal turns 51 years young today. Let's take a look back at some highlights from his storied eight-year run with Los Angeles, which yielded four NBA Finals appearances, three straight wins and Finals MVP trophies from 2000-2002, and one regular season MVP award.
Obviously this clips will not begin to fully cover the greatness of The Big Diesel, but it provides at least a glimmer into his awesomeness. Full games from his peak Lakers years are available on YouTube and through the NBA App, we suggest you get cracking if you'd like to revisit more.
It's hard to rank this stuff, so we won't. Some of the content is individual moments within a game, some highlights from a particular playoff series. But these are our top choices.
The Birthday Game
On this date in 2000, amidst the season that would net him his first NBA championship and his lone league MVP award, O'Neal dropped a career-high 61 points over the hapless Los Angeles Clippers (featuring future Lakers champ Lamar Odom).
In the 123-103 Lakers win, O'Neal scored his 61 points while shooting 24-of-35 from the floor and 13-of-22 from the charity stripe. He also pulled down 23 rebounds and dished out three dimes.
The Kings Put-Back
LA had numerous postseason battles against the Chris Webber era of the Sacramento Kings, but perhaps the most memorable came in 2002, another seven-game series that the Lakers nearly lost.
The enmity between O'Neal and Bryant was starting show a bit, as both players had begun sniping at each other in the press by this point. But they got it together enough to once again close out the Kings, in Sacramento, in seven games.
This moment is a bit indicative of the strained Kobe-Shaq relationship. Instead of dumping the rock off to O'Neal, Bryant takes it headfirst into traffic, where he's met by four Sacramento defenders. The ball invariably clanks of the rim, where O'Neal rebounds it and gathers, before going up strong for the emphatic put-back play.
The Pacers Finals
O'Neal was on one throughout this series, averaging 38 points on 61.1% field goal shooting and 16.7 rebounds per game, and obliterating the Indiana Pacers' frontcourt combo of Rik Smits, Dale Davis and Sam Perkins.
The Chris Dudley Dunk
One of Shaq's most legendary Lakers-era dunks, of many, came against the New York Knicks, when he posterized big man Chris Dudley and then shoved him backwards while glowering over him. The sheer disrespect was just delicious.
The Alley-Oop Finish In Portland
It's funny, in the early part of the 21st century, the Eastern Conference was historically weak. Meanwhile, the Western Conference was absolutely stacked, featuring a litany of Hall of Famers in their primes. As a consequence, some of the Shaq-Kobe era Lakers' biggest playoff moments actually happened before the NBA Finals. Their seven-game Portland Trail Blazers series was particularly memorable.
LA was trailing by 15 points in the fourth quarter of the series' seventh and final game. Suddenly, the team seemed to remember it had the best two players on the floor, including the single best player in the NBA, and it obliterated the Blazers (led by Rasheed Wallace and Scottie Pippen) down the stretch, outscoring Portland 31-13 (that's not a typo) in the final quarter.
This Kobe-to-Shaq finish to cap off the rally was the main moment many fans recall from the series:
LA would go on to beat the Indiana Pacers in six games in the 2000 NBA Finals, capturing its 12th championship.
Happy birthday, Big Fella. Thanks for the memories.
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