"Shaq Daddy Magic..." (April 30, 1998)

The first weekend of the playoffs is over. I love it. This is the first year that I went into information overload. I got to watch four ball games a night, two on TNT and two on TBS. The NBA on TV, it's fantastic. I watched a few games, but I want to talk about the Lakers-Blazers matchup. Without a doubt, Shaquille O'Neal is awesome. In two games, I've seen him do two awesome moves, but both so different that you've got to wonder if he's human or not. In the first game, in the third quarter, Shaq was fed a lob pass, when he was cutting to the hoop, as a trailer. The pass was too high and Shaq had to jump for it, with one hand he caught it, landed and off one hoop jumped towards the net. Now keep this in mind that he was standing about one foot in from the free throw line, and then dunked the ball over the Blazers center. It was a serious facial. It was awesome. I couldn't believe that. The next game, Shaq pulled down a rebound, looked up court and started dribbling. He was leading the break. This gargantuan man, this 7'1", 315 pound man was leading the break like a point guard. He pushed it up court, took the ball down low, put on a spin move about 8 feet away from the basket and put up a hook-shot. I haven't seen that kind of display, since Shaq did that at LSU. It was mighty impressive. I still think it will be the Lakers in 3. They are that good.