Shaq Retires; UTEP Great Recalls Rivalry, Becoming Teammate Of Shaq’s

At 6-foot-11 and 215 pounds, Greg Foster was a pretty good-size player by NBA standards.

But when you’re half the weight of one of the NBA’s greatest centers of all time – Shaquille O’Neal – you have to depend on more than your size to help your team win.

In the mid-’90s, Foster, then with the Utah Jazz, was able to get under the skin of several Lakers during playoff games, with some Lakers openly saying they were going to take revenge on him. Foster was also tasked during those games with guarding O’Neal.

O’Neal announced his retirement Wednesday afternoon. Watch highlights of O’Neal here.

“As a rival, I didn’t like the guy,” said Foster, a former UTEP great who is a graduate assistant coach with the Miners. “I tricked myself into not liking the guy. He’s obviously a formidable opponent. He was twice my size, so I had to outrun the guy, get him up and down the court and get him in a lot of pick and rolls. When I got the chance to play with him with the Lakers, I saw he was a great teammate. All great things come to an end at some point. He had a great career and he will go down as one of the greatest ever.”

O’Neal sent a tweet shortly before 2:45 p.m. EDT Wednesday saying, “im retiring.” It included a link to a 16-second video in which he says, “We did it; 19 years, baby. Thank you very much. That’s why I’m telling you first: I’m about to retire. Love you. Talk to you soon.”

An inveterate pranskter who gave himself a new nickname – or several – in each of his six NBA cities, the Big Shamroq, did not notify his latest team of his plans. O’Neal played just 37 games this year, the first of a two-year deal at the veteran’s minimum salary, making just three brief appearances after Feb. 1.

Foster may have been small compared to O’Neal, but he never backed down from the challenge of guarding the big man. Foster ended up playing with the Lakers for the 2000-’01 season, earning an NBA championship with his former rivals.

“None of them liked me much during the Utah days,” Foster said about O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and the other Lakers. “We all laughed about it (when I joined the team).”

O’Neals skills, along with his size, made guarding him difficult as an opponent and as a teammate during practices.

“When he has the footwork he has and he is as strong as he is, you have to put so much weight leaning on him,” Foster said. “You had to exert so much force.”

Foster said if you leaned in with the right leg, Shaq would go to your left and vice versa. And you wouldn’t dare try to play Shaq straight behind him because he’d back you down.

Foster said the game has changed so much that basketball fans won’t see the likes of O’Neal anytime soon.

“Just look at Dirk Nowitski,” Foster said of the Dallas Mavericks big man with a guard’s shooting touch.

“These kids are working on guard skills,” Foster said. “That 6-foot-10 kid wants to be Kevin Durant as opposed to Dennis Rodman or one of the other dominant big men.”

Of all the amazing plays Foster saw as an opponent and a teammate, he said the one that sticks out the most is when the Lakers were playing Portland and O’Neal scored a monster jam off an alley-oop dunk.

“That was pretty awesome,” Foster said of the dunk. “He always had a smile on his face and he was always was having fun. I had a lot of respect for him.”

Some NBA players have problems leaving the game behind, but Foster doesn’t see that happening to O’Neal.

“A lot of guys have problems with the transition from the NBA,” Foster said. “He’s always shown an interest in law enforcement. Although it won’t be without its challenges, I think he won’t have problems making the transition.”

If he goes, O’Neal retires fifth all-time with 28,596 points, 12th with 13,099 rebounds and a .582 field goal percentage that is second only to Artis Gilmore among players with more than 2,000 baskets. His free throw percentage of .527 – well, now is not the time to dwell on that.

“I’m a little bit sad,” said Pat Riley, the Heat president who was also the coach when O’Neal won a title in Miami. “It’s the end of an absolute 20-year career. Great, great player. … The league’s going to miss Shaq. I’m sure Shaq will do something big and beyond.”

O’Neal’s contributions to basketball went far beyond his presence on the court.

One of the most charismatic players in NBA history, O’Neal was a franchise-saver when the Orlando Magic made him the No. 1 overall pick in the 1992 draft. He took them from the lottery to the playoffs in two years, and then led them to the NBA finals in his third year before they were swept by the Houston Rockets.

O’Neal, 39, signed with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1996 and had his greatest success there, winning three titles alongside Kobe Bryant and coach Phil Jackson. But amid tension between O’Neal and Bryant after a loss to the Detroit Pistons in the finals, O’Neal was traded to the Heat in the summer of 2004.

After 3 years in Miami, a tenure that included his fourth NBA championship, O’Neal became a veteran-for-hire, moving to Phoenix and then Cleveland and finally Boston. But he couldn’t deliver another title for Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire with the Suns, with LeBron James with the Cavaliers or with the Celtics’ Big Three of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen.

“What a career for Shaq Diesel!!” James wrote on Twitter. “The most dominating force to ever play the game. Great person to be around as well. Comedy all the time!!”

At each stop, he endeared himself to the fans and his new teammates with his effervescent smile and playful attitude, including the habit of adopting a new nickname that he felt embodied his role with his new team. In Phoenix he was the “Big Shaqtus”; in Boston, the “Big Shamroq.”

He also embraced social networking, amassing almost 4 million followers on his Twitter account, where fans could find out his next move or even the “random acts of Shaqness” – like sitting in Harvard Square, pretending to be a statue, or going out in drag on Halloween.

But O’Neal’s off-court persona couldn’t disguise the fact that he was getting old, and while he showed he could still play with younger opponents he couldn’t manage to stay on the court with them. He missed a week in November with a bruised right knee, a week in December with a calf injury and another in January with a sore right hip.

He returned for three games – a total of about 34 minutes – before missing the next 27 games with what the team called a sore right leg. Although the injury was originally expected to keep him out just a few games, his absence stretched to more than two months.

He returned to play in one more regular-season game but lasted just 5 minutes, 29 seconds before reinjuring the leg and limping off the court. He missed Boston’s entire first-round series against the New York Knicks and made two appearances against Miami, a total of 12 minutes, and scored two points.

In all, O’Neal averaged just 9.2 points, 4.8 rebounds and 20.3 minutes this season while playing in 37 games – all career lows.