Even Shaquille O’Neal wonders, “What if?”
What if, after spending the first four seasons of his NBA career with the Orlando Magic, he hadn’t signed a free-agent deal to join the Los Angeles Lakers in 1996?
“Knowing what I know now, I would’ve stayed,” O’Neal said. “I would’ve stayed and fulfilled my seven years and then looked at it differently after my seventh year.”
O’Neal made his tantalizing comments late Friday afternoon, after the franchise inducted him into the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame.
“It’s the right thing to do because he is one of the most important people in the history of this organization,” Magic CEO Alex Martins said after the ceremony. “He put our organization on the map. He was the first true international superstar that was a part of our team, and he brought international notoriety to our city. So it’s very appropriate that he’s recognized in this way.”
The team also honored the larger-than-life former All-Star between the first and second quarters of its game against the Detroit Pistons on Friday night. The crowd inside the arena greeted him with far more cheers than boos as he stood at midcourt.
Until recently, however, many fans hadn’t forgiven O’Neal for his departure in 1996.
Flanked by Penny Hardaway, Horace Grant, Nick Anderson and Dennis Scott, the mammoth center led Orlando to the 1995 NBA Finals, where the Magic lost to Hakeem Olajuwon’s Houston Rockets in four games.
The next year, the Magic fell to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference finals in four games.
O’Neal never played for the Magic again.
The Magic initially made him a low offer, and the Lakers swooped in with a $121 million offer and the lure of Hollywood.
The Magic eventually offered O’Neal a deal that eclipsed the Lakers’ offer, but it was too late. Restricted free agency didn’t exist in those days, so the Magic were powerless to prevent O’Neal from leaving.
And he left.
“We came back later and beat the Lakers’ offer at the closing minutes,” said Magic co-founder and Magic Hall of Famer Pat Williams. “But, emotionally, Shaq was gone.”
O’Neal was 24 years old when he spurned the Magic in favor of the Lakers.
“It was all business,” O’Neal said. “Do I regret it? I never fully answered. I regret it sometimes. This is where I started, where I should’ve stayed. I actually wish that they [had] made it a law that whoever drafted you, you’ve got to stay there your whole career. No trades. No nothing. No free agency. No anything like that. Do I regret it? I regret it only because the DeVos family, they deserve a couple [of NBA titles].”
As it turned out, he didn’t finally win a title with the Lakers until 2000 — four years after he left the Magic.
“I just wish I would’ve had more patience,” O’Neal revealed. “It was all about I wanted to be protected from the bashing. What I mean by that [is] I wanted to win then. Even when I got there [to L.A.], I still got bashed and it still took four years to win. But I was very impatient. I was very young, and I thought that if I go there with those guys out there, that I could win right away. And that wasn’t the case.
“So now that I’m older now, I wish as a youngster, I wish I had had more patience.”
jrobbins@orlandosentinel.com. Read his blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/magicblog and follow him on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins.
