Miami – Shaquille O’Neal’s former coach, Phil Jackson, knows what the veteran center is capable of in the NBA Finals. After all, O’Neal helped Jackson win three championships with the Los Angeles Lakers.
And it’s that familiarity that made the Lakers coach comfortable predicting a return of the old O’Neal in Game 3 of the Finals tonight. The Dallas Mavericks have a 2-0 series lead over O’Neal and the Miami Heat.
“I know he’ll be much better at home,” Jackson said Monday on his Sirius radio show. “I anticipate that Miami will win this next game.”
Miami needs O’Neal to return to his all-NBA form, or the Finals may be over soon. In this best-of-seven series, the 34-year-old O’Neal has looked more like a player showing his age. Consider that O’Neal:
Scored five points Sunday night in Miami’s 99-85 loss at Dallas, the fewest of his 190 career postseason games.
Has averaged just 11.0 points in the Finals. In his previous 24 games in the Finals, he averaged 32.6 points.
Theories abound about why and how Dallas has stymied O’Neal. Jackson has one.
“(Miami players) weren’t able to get the ball to Shaq on the move,” Jackson said. “If he gets the ball on the move, either in the fast break or in a static offense, he’s a 65 percent or better shooter. If he has to get the ball flat-footed and create space or back in or do things, there are problems.
“That’s where offensive fouls and turnovers and three-second violations are created. So, Miami has to find out how they are going to get that accomplished.”
The Heat did not practice Monday and players were not made available to the media. O’Neal did not talk to the media after Sunday’s game and was fined $10,000 by the NBA.
The Mavericks’ strategy has been to smother Shaq with double-team defense as soon as he gets the ball, with 7-foot, 280- pound DeSagana Diop or 6-11, 265-pound Erick Dampier playing behind him and whoever is closest front him. In some cases that is Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki, another 7-footer.
“We’ve got to give (Diop or Dampier) a lot of help,” Mavs coach Avery Johnson said after Game 2. “By no stretch of the imagination are they playing Shaq one-on-one all the time. But they are working hard. And it’s a tough job for tough people, and that’s why we got them.”
When Shaq passes out of the double team, teammates haven’t been able to make Dallas pay for leaving someone open.
“(The Mavericks) know who to stay home on and they know who to leave open,” Riley said Sunday. Miami has averaged just 82.5 points in the Finals.
Said Nowitzki after Game 2: “We’re trying to have our guys on him as soon as we can and just scramble and make things happen on the defensive end.”
The Mavs also have thrown in an occasional zone defense.
Heat forward Antoine Walker expects O’Neal to return to his old form tonight.
“Shaq will be fine,” he said after Game 2. “We have to make adjustments, try to get him on the move a little bit more where he can get involved.”
When O’Neal has had the ball in good position in the post, Dallas resorted to a hard hack-a- Shaq foul. That’s worked, too, with O’Neal missing 14-of-16 free throws in the Finals.
“I stopped even watching it after a while,” Jackson said of O’Neal’s free throws. “I just looked down to the other end of the court and would look up at the scoreboard to see if he made the shot or not. …
“It’s a psychological problem and there are some physical things. You really have to get under your shot as a free-throw shooter, and Shaq has never really accepted the geometry and logic behind all that.”
Heat players repeatedly said during the two days off between Game 1 and Game 2 that O’Neal needed more touches, but he had only five field-goal attempts in Game 2. Afterward, they began vowing to get him more touches in Game 3.
“We’ve got to find a way to get our bigs to be more dominant,” guard Dwyane Wade said. “With the touches that we give him, we have to find a way to make him more efficient.”
Staff writer Marc J. Spears can be reached at 303-820-5449 or mspears@denverpost.com.
