From the Floor: Move over you wimpy big men, Shaq is back

Yeah, Shaq is back ... back to making big men whimper. I think I saw Pau Gasol's upper lip quiver after Shaq dropped one of those mountainous shoulders into the Spaniard's chest. He lit up Gasol, D.J. Mbenga and any Laker taller than 80 inches for 33 points. A couple days earlier Shaq bullied his way to 45 points against a petrified Raptors squad. He'd bang into Chris Bosh, who'd collapse into a horizontal V, or wheel into the lane and watch cats get out the way.

After the game, Bosh went the buster route and complained about Shaq camping out in the lane. So how did Shaq respond? Diesel called Bosh "the RuPaul of big men." Yes!! Shaq had a day to process what he obviously deemed disrespectful, cowardly hubris and came up with his perfect pop-culture touchstone. In other words, Shaq thinks Bosh is a man acting like a woman when it comes to what goes down in the trenches. Diesel has dropped some priceless gems before, but he might never top that one.

It's what he said next, however, that may be Shaq's most self-aware and deservedly self-reverent statement of his career: "Make 'em quit and complain. It's what I do." Yeah, he does.

Shaq turned a generation of big men into whimpering babies when they played him. ("He keeps dropping his shoulder!" "He keeps initiating contact!" "He's so big what do you want me to do?!" "If I can't foul him, how can I stop him?! This is unfair!") Adonises would get about six minutes of Shaq, throw up their hands and quit. He was more than dominant. He was frightening and demoralizing. In fact, Shaq basically voided the center position for a good 10 years. If Shaq never existed, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Rasheed Wallace, Chris Webber, Zach Randolph, Al Jefferson -- a lot of dudes 6-foot-10 and bigger, probably -- would have played center their whole careers. I've never been able to get a coach or exec to corroborate this theory, but it's true. I know it is. And I'm not the only who believes this to be the case.

My boy Tony first planted this seed in my head a few years ago when, while analyzing why the league had a myriad of game-changing power forwards and then just Shaq and, for the most part, a bunch of stiffs at center, he said: "All these big men play power forward because they don't want it with SHAQ!" Then, several years later, I was at an AAU tournament, talking about the upcoming 2004 Draft class and an NBA scout lamented how Shaq had scared away all the big men. "There's no way that guy should be a power forward." He was talking about Dwight Howard who, if you remember, entered the NBA projected as a four. The Magic had workmen like Kelvin Cato and Tony Battie holding down the middle until Dwight finally decided to take logical ownership of the center position a couple seasons ago.

That was the deal back then. Squads routinely took their stud -- their most gifted, athletic, talented big men -- and made them PFs. The consensus back then was that these new big men shouldn't be imprisoned by "the paint." They saved "the paint" and center position for worker bees, big men that could and should focus on the game's grimier tasks because they weren't capable of the more graceful and dynamic flourishes.

This was half truth and half rhetoric. Underneath all that rationale was a dirty secret. Players, coaches and management wanted to shield their most prized franchise commodities from the physical AND emotional damage that came from not only playing Shaq's position, but having the Shaq Assignment. Why? He'd "make 'em quit."

Back in 1988, Sports Illustrated put an old game photo of Wilt and Russell on its cover with the title "The Vanishing Center." The article ("Where Are They") seems silly in hindsight, now that we know the 90s was a decade of Pat Ewing, The Dream, The Admiral, Dikembe, 'Zo and Shaq. The premature and worrisome doomsday rhetoric of the SI piece was fairly warranted at that time, though. Ewing had yet to develop, Dream had digressed a bit, Ralph Sampson was imploding, David Robinson was still in a Navy uniform and the previous generation of great centers (Mo' Malone, Kareem, The Chief) was getting old. Jack McCallum, one of the great basketball writers of our time, saw changes -- some subtle, some seismic -- that were marginalizing the once epic position. Changes in defense (swarming defenders), changes in players (Be Like Magic) and changes in the game (bigger, better players) were threatening to turn centers into the Ringo Position.

As it happened, the five spot was salvaged and power forwards continued to play the brute role. Charles Oakley, AC Green, Otis Thorpe -- they were the goons. The centers were the stars. And if the 6-foot-10 Hakeem Olajuwon or Alonzo Mourning would have come into the league after Shaq, they'd have been power forwards.

I mean, Shaq came in the league and immediately started abusing his elders. Not stiffs, like Benoit Benjamin, but real dudes. What Shaq used to do to Ewing and Robinson was kinda disrespectful when you look back at it. My Pops used to marvel at how this young 23- or 24-year-old was manhandling men. At some point, defenders literally gave up. I've seen a few -- Dikembe Mutombo comes to mind -- that would actually look up, as if they're asking God for help. ("Help me God, for this angry, behemoth man is shattering me.") Teenagers saw that and probably thought, "I can't cope with that ... I better get an 18-footer."

No player will ever admit this. KG -- no less capable of playing center than Robinson -- would never reveal, "Man, I probably should've been a center, but that was Shaq's position and I ain't Shaq." GMs won't either. And, perhaps, maybe they don't even realize it. Maybe it's one of those shameful admissions that folks want to keep to themselves.

When I talked to an Orlando Magic insider a couple days ago, he said they had to "fool" Dwight into playing center. Curiously, and perhaps advantageously, this was right around the time Diesel started slowing down from older age and nagging injuries. I know you think it seems natural that Dwight and Andrew Bynum and Greg Oden and Hasheem Thabeet are centers but, trust me, they'd have found a way to fashion themselves as power forwards 10 years ago. Shaq was so intimidating and punishing that he scared away rivals.

I'm enjoying this Shaq Revival. With Shaq regaining his mojo, it means he's running his mouth more, which is never a bad thing. Aside from calling cats RuPaul, these days, Shaq likes to refer to opponents as barbecued chicken; severely appropriate, since that's really how he treated everyone -- even his legendary elders -- for a good 12 years. He ate 'em up.

That's going to be Shaq's legacy. Unlike Wilt, he dominated in an era of dominant big men. He dominated so much that he made some change position, others just "quit and complain." It's what he did.

Vincent Thomas writes "The Commish" column for SLAM Magazine and is a contributing commentator for ESPN. His "From The Floor" column appears weekly on NBA.com. Vince invites your feedback at vincethomas79@gmail.com.