Thread Tools

Display Modes

Pacers Fan · 09-24-2005, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Last things first. “I’m gonna tell you the truth: This team has one major chip on our shoulder. Not because the suspensions and what people said about us—it’s because we believe that we wasted two years. We believe we should be champions now.” The ’05-06 season doesn’t tip for another two months, and Jermaine O’Neal is a thousand miles from Indianapolis, sitting in a hotel lobby in the Bahamas. His wedding is two days away, and his words are interrupted frequently by greetings to relatives and friends. But his focus never wavers. “We’re going to come in and do whatever’s necessary to win the championship. The chip is just basically us not being champions. That’s just the bottom line.”

Let’s go back to those two wasted years. Last year—well, you know what happened. But two years ago? In case you forgot, the Pacers finished the regular season with the L’s best record, and JO was third in the MVP voting. For the second straight season, he was the only player in the Eastern Conference to average 20 and 10. The playoffs started well enough: a sweep of the Celtics and a 4-2 win over the Heat. It’s hard to find fault with the way they went out, a hard-fought six-game series with the eventual champion Pistons. O’Neal suffered a sprained knee in the first quarter of Game 4, which was the last game the Pacers would win.

This is going to be Jermaine O’Neal’s 10th NBA season, his sixth since coming to Indy and becoming a regular starter. Hard as it is to believe, the one-time youngest NBA player ever turns 27 this year. “Every year he takes more responsibility for being the best player on the team,” says Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, “being the guy our franchise can lean on and the guy his teammates can count on.” With Reggie gone to join his sister in the broadcast booth, the pressure will only increase. In his end-of-year address, Larry Bird told the Indianapolis Star as much. “We’ll find out right away whether he can handle it or not. If he can’t, we’ll have to find somebody else. But I’m very confident that Jermaine, every year, matures more and more. Some can’t handle it. I really feel Jermaine can handle it. If he can, we’ll be better from it.”

The important thing, of course, is whether Jermaine believes he can handle it. “It’s funny, because people keep saying, ‘This is the year Jermaine gets to be the leader,’” he says. “I’ve been the leader. In meetings, I’ve been the guy talking, I’ve been the one to discipline guys. What I’m doing next year is gonna be natural.”

When last season ended—once again at the hands of the Pistons—O’Neal got out of Dodge. He flew to Brazil, far from the headlines and the what-ifs. But he didn’t stay long. “I took a month off, if that,” he says. “And I just got right back at it. Doing Pilates, doing rehab on my shoulder, liftin’ a lot of weights, shootin’ a lot, going back and working on some of the stuff that I worked on in high school—pivots and post moves, just to give myself the ability to have more moves.”

Um, Pilates?

“I started doing Pilates this year,” he says. “So late in the game, when I get tired, I won’t get pushed out of my comfort zone. That’s what I felt my weakest point was—my core was weak. I made some adjustments just like other guys.”

It takes a strong player to admit weakness. It’s something O’Neal has done each summer—pick an attribute of his game that needs work, and actually work at it. He continues to work with George Glymph, who coached him at Eau Claire (SC) High, and is now an assistant with the Knicks. But this summer was different. “I just told [Glymph] I need to take it back to stage one,” O’Neal says. “Last year I had a good year numbers-wise, but I felt like it was a down year collectively for me, as far as being able to lead my team, do what I do out there, and get wins.”

This is the most important thing to know about Jermaine O’Neal: Winning is everything. The cliché happens to ring true. “The one thing that I love about Jermaine more than anything is that on the court he plays with a pure heart,” Carlisle says. “He’s completely unselfish and is really only interested in winning.”

O’Neal puts the same thought differently. “I only consider superstars guys that can win the championship,” he says. “Everybody else is just All-Stars and good players. I look at Tim Duncan, he’s a superstar. He’s gonna get big numbers and have his team win championships. That’s what makes you a superstar.”

Jermaine’s already paid like a superstar. That seven-year, $126 million-dollar extension he signed back in ’03 gave him Shaquille money and Shaquille expectations. That kind of money is why Bird can say the things he did, why anything less than a title should be unacceptable. Conscious of all that, Jermaine approaches things the right way: While he may not be a true center at 6-11, 240-ish, he isn’t afraid to play like one. He gets to the free-throw line a lot and makes teams pay—witness the double nickel he dropped on Milwaukee in January, with 19 of those points coming on 25 trips to the line. And that was just his fifth game back following the suspension.

The suspension. Well, we had to talk about it eventually. No one is worried about a repeat or trying to get JO into anger management classes. Unlike Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson, O’Neal never ventured into the crowd. He was only, like it or not, defending his turf. But his suspension—despite being reduced from 25 games to 15—was only the beginning of what would be a very strange season. There was the uproar over his insightful comments about the NBA’s proposed age minimum being racially motivated, then a dislocated shoulder that sidelined him for over a month. He wound up missing 38 games over the course of the season, and the Pacers were never able to use their projected starting five together. “I think everything that could have gone wrong with a team went wrong with our team last year,” he says. “It was one of the damndest things I’ve seen in my life. But it taught us to be together.”

And that lesson carried over through the summer, as O’Neal communicated with his teammates like never before. “That’s the most impressive thing,” he says, “because the last couple years we just went our separate ways.” O’Neal rattles off his teammates’ offseason regimens, from Jackson staying in Indy to Freddie Jones doing football drills to Artest and David Harrison playing in the summer league.

It should please Bird to no end that his best player is taking the role of leader seriously.

For more on Jermaine O'Neal, pick up SLAM 92

http://www.slamonline.com/magazine/f...o92/index.html

**PaCeRhOLiC** · 09-24-2005, 12:09 PM

Great article, and nice pics, thanxs Pacers Fan....

Go PaCeRs!!!!!

Pacersthebest · 09-24-2005, 01:54 PM

Thanks for the article, nice to read because I never see this things in Holland.

jermaine7fan · 09-25-2005, 12:31 PM

SLAM is the best basketball mag on the market... they seem to cover more players from more leagues in the world than any other basketball mag. It is a little racially biased at times... but over all the writing is very solid... you could probably order the mag over the internet... I know you can sign up to get it on their site... that is how my friend did it... my first copy should be coming in the mail this month... I have read slam since issue 2 or so... but I just now finally ordered it to my house (after 4 or so years buying it off the stands).

Thread Tools Display Modes

Thread Tools

Display Modes