When Michael Jordan was ruling the National Basketball Association, everybody wanted to be like Mike. He was larger than life but not bigger than our imagination. Most ordinary humans can't dunk from the foul line or do what M.J. did against the Utah Jazz in Game 6 of the 1998 finals, faking his defender, stopping at the top of the key, 5.2 seconds on the clock, firing off a shot--swish!--holding the pose, wrist cocked, end of game, end of career. No one has his exact gifts, but we can all imagine being like him. The famous silhouette of M.J. soaring for a one-handed slam is somehow the right size and shape for us to slide our own image into.
But it's hard to imagine being like 28-year-old Shaquille O'Neal. At 7 ft. 1 in. and 320 lbs., he is IMAX big, a human order of supersize fries, a skyscraper in size-22 sneakers. NBA stars, of course, tend to be tall, but there's usually a sense of elongation, of a body stretched, like gum, until it is long and thin. O'Neal seems like a man who has been magnified. He is not just tall; he is massive.
Shaq's size-22s seem too big for even imagination to fill. What playground b-baller dreams of using his rear end to back down Arvydas Sabonis for a 5-ft. jump hook? Sports fantasies are spun of finer threads of memory and desire--Magic's no-look passes, Dr. J's finger rolls, Larry Bird sinking shot after shot. "People dream of doing what Kobe Bryant does more than they dream of doing what Shaq does," says NBC sports commentator Bob Costas of Bryant, O'Neal's telegenic 21-year-old teammate. "It's just human nature. They dream of doing what Michael Jordan did more than they dream of doing what Wilt Chamberlain did."
That may change, because this year O'Neal is crashing his way into a lot of dreams. He has dominated basketball like no other player since Jordan. It's a wonder the league hasn't been renamed the O'NBA. During the 1999-2000 season, he led his team, the Los Angeles Lakers, to the league's best regular-season record while also winning the scoring title; so far in the playoffs, he's the leader in both scoring and rebounding. He was voted MVP in the biggest landslide in league history.
Now O'Neal and his Lakers are up 2-0 in the best-of-seven championship series against the Larry Bird-coached Indiana Pacers. If the Lakers win, it will be the first title of O'Neal's career and the first for the Lakers since 1988 and the "Showtime" glory days of Magic and Kareem. Says Hall of Fame center Bill Walton, no easy grader: "This season he's performing at his highest level by far, at a level few players in the NBA have achieved. He rivals Jordan, Jabbar, Magic, Bill Russell; he's come into the absolute elite of the NBA."
If Jordan was Lord of the Air, O'Neal is King of the Mountain; if Jordan played like musical fusion, combining Dr. J's jazzy, improvisational style with a rock-'n'-rolling, aggressive athleticism, O'Neal is pure hip-hop. "I love hip-hop to death," says O'Neal, who has recorded several rap CDs. "I live for the beats. In order to hang with the fellas, you gotta have rhythm. And I got rhythm when I'm on the court."