The retirement came the way everything else did in Shaquille O’Neal’s career, with a smile and a wink, another reminder that sports is supposed to be fun and athletes who embody that will be loved and cherished, no matter how many free throws they clank off the rim.
O’Neal’s announcement came ’via a social media video, posted on the new site Tout, and” via Twitter. It was fitting because O’Neal was the original Twitter athlete, the first to embrace the chance to reach people directly, in his own quirky way. He gave away tickets on Twitter, once promising four to a Memphis-Phoenix game to the first people to find him at Graceland (it took nine minutes). For all O’Neal’s strengths, his best was connecting with fans, writes Peter Schrager on Foxsports.com. Who else could stage ’an impromptu dance contest with LeBron James and Dwight Howard at an All-Star weekend and steal the show?
So, in the career retrospectives, everyone seized on the fun that O’Neal brought to the game, from Michael Wilbon of ESPN.com to Mark Heisler of The Los Angeles Times. He was, as George Diaz writes in The Orlando Sentinel, a kid trapped in a giant’s body. His genius, as Jack McCallum writes on SI.com, was that he made America root for Goliath.
(Personal interlude: The first time I ever saw O’Neal was his freshman season at L.S.U., when I walked into an arena from behind the basket and saw O’Neal and Stanley Roberts, a few inches shorter but much wider, flanking the lane rebounding free throws during warmups. The sight stopped me in my tracks.)
Sure, O’Neal had his maddening side, as Zach Lowe writes on SI.com, and Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo.com was first in line to predict O’Neal will miss the attention and un-retire. If so, stay tuned on Twitter.
It was sporting of O’Neal to announce this on an off day in the N.B.A. finals, a day that would have otherwise been occupied with endless musings on Dirk Nowitzki’s finger tendon. In Boston, his last N.B.A. city, he did horn in on the Bruins’ debut in the Stanley Cup finals, but considering they lost in heartbreaking fashion in the final minute, the Bruins might not mind.
Everything was going right for Boston in that game — played in a defensive style, with Vancouver’s prodigious offense kept in check, goalie Tim Thomas playing the role of superman — until the final second when one mistake turned into Raffi Torres’s goal. Scott Burnside writes on ESPN.com that should the Bruins lose this series, they will look back at this game as the big one that got away. It does, however, fit perfectly into the Bruins’ gut-wrenching playoff history, writes Dan Shaughnessy in The Boston Globe, and owed much to the fact that the Bruins’ power play is completely powerless, writes A.J. Perez on CBSSports.com.
But what everyone will talk about until Saturday’s Game 2 will be the bite. Yes, in the first period, Vancouver’s Alex Burrows ’decided to have a snack when the finger of Boston’s Patrice Bergeron came in the vicinity of his mouth. The Boston Globe included it in the litany of famous sports bites, but even if Burrows gets suspended for a game it’s doubtful to have much staying power in the neighborhood of Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield. AndCam Cole writes in The Vancouver Sun that everyone should just get over it already.
There is plenty of other unexpected happenings in sports that don’t involve teeth. The most alarming was the Angels’ charter plane being forced to make an emergency landing in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, or perhaps that the former N.F.L. quarterback/draft bust ’Ryan Leaf is recovering from surgery to remove a non-malignant brain tumor. On the pleasantly surprising front, there is the news that a 10-year-old American boy has beensigned by Barcelona’s famed soccer academy.
On the absurd side, you have South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier sketching out a plan to have coaches pay players out of their own pocket, which as Jeff Schultz of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes, is completely off the wall but should at least get people talking more seriously about the unfairness built into the college system.
They might do that, right after they get done talking about Shaquille O’Neal’s exit from the N.B.A., and longing for more of his brand of fun in every sport.
O’Neal’s announcement came ’via a social media video, posted on the new site Tout, and” via Twitter. It was fitting because O’Neal was the original Twitter athlete, the first to embrace the chance to reach people directly, in his own quirky way. He gave away tickets on Twitter, once promising four to a Memphis-Phoenix game to the first people to find him at Graceland (it took nine minutes). For all O’Neal’s strengths, his best was connecting with fans, writes Peter Schrager on Foxsports.com. Who else could stage ’an impromptu dance contest with LeBron James and Dwight Howard at an All-Star weekend and steal the show?
So, in the career retrospectives, everyone seized on the fun that O’Neal brought to the game, from Michael Wilbon of ESPN.com to Mark Heisler of The Los Angeles Times. He was, as George Diaz writes in The Orlando Sentinel, a kid trapped in a giant’s body. His genius, as Jack McCallum writes on SI.com, was that he made America root for Goliath.
(Personal interlude: The first time I ever saw O’Neal was his freshman season at L.S.U., when I walked into an arena from behind the basket and saw O’Neal and Stanley Roberts, a few inches shorter but much wider, flanking the lane rebounding free throws during warmups. The sight stopped me in my tracks.)
Sure, O’Neal had his maddening side, as Zach Lowe writes on SI.com, and Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo.com was first in line to predict O’Neal will miss the attention and un-retire. If so, stay tuned on Twitter.
It was sporting of O’Neal to announce this on an off day in the N.B.A. finals, a day that would have otherwise been occupied with endless musings on Dirk Nowitzki’s finger tendon. In Boston, his last N.B.A. city, he did horn in on the Bruins’ debut in the Stanley Cup finals, but considering they lost in heartbreaking fashion in the final minute, the Bruins might not mind.
Everything was going right for Boston in that game — played in a defensive style, with Vancouver’s prodigious offense kept in check, goalie Tim Thomas playing the role of superman — until the final second when one mistake turned into Raffi Torres’s goal. Scott Burnside writes on ESPN.com that should the Bruins lose this series, they will look back at this game as the big one that got away. It does, however, fit perfectly into the Bruins’ gut-wrenching playoff history, writes Dan Shaughnessy in The Boston Globe, and owed much to the fact that the Bruins’ power play is completely powerless, writes A.J. Perez on CBSSports.com.
There is plenty of other unexpected happenings in sports that don’t involve teeth. The most alarming was the Angels’ charter plane being forced to make an emergency landing in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, or perhaps that the former N.F.L. quarterback/draft bust ’Ryan Leaf is recovering from surgery to remove a non-malignant brain tumor. On the pleasantly surprising front, there is the news that a 10-year-old American boy has beensigned by Barcelona’s famed soccer academy.
On the absurd side, you have South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier sketching out a plan to have coaches pay players out of their own pocket, which as Jeff Schultz of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes, is completely off the wall but should at least get people talking more seriously about the unfairness built into the college system.
They might do that, right after they get done talking about Shaquille O’Neal’s exit from the N.B.A., and longing for more of his brand of fun in every sport.
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