Mike D’Antoni and his “seven seconds or less” Phoenix Suns revolutionized the NBA and laid the framework for how the game is played today. Those Suns helped kickstart the three-point revolution, and D’Antoni revealed on the On Point podcast how Shaquille O’Neal was responsible for him shaping that offense and changing the NBA.
“A big driving force was Shaquille O’Neal was the center in Los Angeles, which is in our division,” D’Antoni said. “And we always said among ourselves, you can’t out Shaq Shaq. You can’t just trot somebody out there and think you’re gonna get the best of Shaq.
“So we had to figure out a way to beat him,” D’Antoni continued. “And that was to speed the game up, take more 3s and spread them out, and then they give us a chance to win.”
Host Meghna Chakrabarti was surprised that O’Neal was so influential that he shaped how other teams played.
“Yeah, he is actually the cause of the 3-point shot,” D’Antoni stated.
The run-and-gun offense wasn’t anything new in the NBA, but D’Antoni took it to the extreme back then. He thought that was the best solution to the Shaquille O’Neal problem.
O’Neal was the dominant force in the NBA when D’Antoni returned to the league as an assistant coach for the Suns in 2002. He had led the Los Angeles Lakers to a historic three-peat from 2000 to 2002, and if you wanted to win the title, you had to find a way to beat his team.
As D’Antoni stated, trying to get the better of O’Neal in the traditional way was a waste of time. He was simply unstoppable back then. O’Neal averaged 35.9 points on 59.5% shooting in those three Finals series, and you just could not fight fire with fire.
You had to find another way, and that led to D’Antoni putting together that Suns offense. Interestingly, though, they never really had to deal with him in the playoffs.
The Lakers traded O’Neal to the Miami Heat in 2004, and he wasn’t at his peak for too much longer. He didn’t really take care of his body, and one wonders what might have been had he done so.
While D’Antoni’s Suns didn’t run into O’Neal, there was another legendary big man standing in their way. Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs would prove to be their nemesis, knocking them out of the playoffs in 2005, 2007, and 2008.
Richard Jefferson Revealed Shaquille O’Neal’s Impact On Roster Construction
Making D’Antoni shape an offense to beat him wasn’t the only time that O’Neal had influenced his opponents. Richard Jefferson called O’Neal the most dominant player in NBA history and revealed how he changed the way teams constructed their roster.
“They (Shaq’s Lakers) changed how you had to construct your roster,” Jefferson said. “You had to have two or three bigs just for f***ing fouls. Not like good bigs, we just need bigs there, we need big bodies.”
“He has been the most dominant player in the history of the game of basketball, period. Not LeBron (James), not Steph (Curry), not Magic (Johnson), MJ (Michael Jordan). Shaq physically was the most dominant player we have ever seen and maybe will ever see because of his sheer size, athleticism, skill, footwork, hands, everything. There was no guarding him… There’s no other player that I can think of in recent history that has that type of strength and power.”
O’Neal may not be in the conversation for greatest player of all time, but he is certainly in it when it comes to most dominant. He was a force of nature on the court, and teams simply had no answer for him at his best.
