People's Basketball Hall of Fame: Shaquille O'Neal

Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq Diesel, The Big Aristotle, Most Dominant Ever, Superman, and there's probably a couple hundred other nicknames he came up with. Sometimes, certain peoples' personalities match some other characteristic of themselves. In Shaq's case, he's a big man with a personality to match. In my lifetime, I cannot think of a player who was just as entertaining off the court as he was on it. In fact, you could argue he was more entertaining off the court. It seemed destined from the beginning that Shaquille O'Neal would set the basketball world on fire and turn it upside down. He did it in high school in Texas, and did it again at LSU. He hadn't even played a minute of NBA ball and was already doing things many pros couldn't do. After being drafted #1 overall by Orlando in 1992, he continued his dominance, taking the Magic to the NBA Finals in year 3 after teaming with Penny Hardaway. The following year, after losing to the 72-10 Bulls and while competing in the Olympics for Team USA, Shaq became a Laker in one of the biggest free agent signings in sports history. What happened? Only 3 straight titles, 3 straight Finals MVPs, a regular season MVP award in 2000, and probably the most dominant era of basketball by someone not named Jordan. After things didn't work out with Kobe and the Laker organization, he moved to Miami where he won another title with D Wade, then went between the Suns, Cavs, and Celtics (that never happened) over the last few years of his career. Never have I seen anyone who had more fun playing the game, and I probably won't ever again.