TNT has made it official: Shaq will be joining Ernie, Chuck and Kenny on the stalwart program that is "Inside the NBA." Which is a relief to us since we thought Shaq was as dead as Laura Palmer. (We're still not really sure where most NBA players go when they retire, so we just assume they're in a morgue somewhere.)
But still, we're all pretty sad about his retirement. Not so much because he's been a contributing member to an NBA team any time recently, but more because watching a childhood behemoth age, crumble, then disappear is a stiff drink of mortality. Thus, we've turned to some of our favorite musicians as a coping mechanism.
The songs are also here to help us parse our own feeling about the Diesel, because he was a much more complicated dude than he let on. The gregarious giant crashed into the NBA like a diabolical hurricane on laughing gas, then was easily the best and most entertaining player in the league for about seven years in the middle of his career.
But around the time his brief tenure with Phoenix ended, it started to bubble up that the spat with Kobe (that broke up what could have been a six-year championship run) was more likely the doing of O'Neal, not Bryant. When coupled with the fact that he was about to leave yet another team on not-great terms, and the fairly nasty rumor that he stole Steve Nash's idea for a television show and turned it into "Shaq Vs.", the Big Nickname's reputation as all around fun dude began to rust a bit. Even during the epoch when he ruled the league, he was criticized for lazing through the regular season and never working hard enough to improve his free throw shooting (the one dim bulb in his trillion-watt repertoire).
But we're pretty sure all the cheer and mayhem he unloaded during his Hall of Fame career outweigh these unfortunate character tics. He won three Finals MVP awards and was named to 15 All Star teams! He starred in two really silly movies! He was a pretty good rapper! He had no regard for backboards! He's one of the few players easily identifiable only from a silhouette! He was incredibly generous with his time and money! He turned the grumpy Celtics from curmudgeons to clowns! He danced with LeBron! He said so many funny things and gave himself so many funny nicknames!
Clearly it's been a road trip filled with both fun and folly. As O'Neal ends his playing career, we wonder which Shaq was the real one, and which one he'll be remembered as. Oddly, his performance on TNT will play a very large role in pinpointing his character and cementing his legacy. Hopefully he'll bump this mixtape in whatever over-sized car he's riding these days and reflect a little bit on himself before he embarks on phase two of his time in the public eye, because we're still rooting for him.
Tracklist after the jump.
