Shaq Won’t Enter Springfield a Perfect Player but as the Player He Wanted to Be

Because he was blessed with something we weren’t, Shaquille O’Neal knew something we didn’t.

In body, he was basketball perfection.

As O’Neal understood, such a blessing is a curse.

Hopes, dreams, expectations and demands for him would never be reasonable—and they never were. People never would and never will ever say he overachieved in his field.

That’s what O’Neal accepted to make enough peace with his potential to accomplish what he did. He was different from the typical nose-to-the-grindstone success story, and he was OK with that. In fact…

In mind, he was basketball imperfection.

He could have used that mind to expand his game, take better care of his body, be a better teammate. He could have tried harder, obviously, to make a few more of the 6,466 (!) free throws he missed in NBA games.

That stuff is grounds for criticism when we want our athletic heroes to be worthy of idolization and imitation. Yet in his own way, that was the right path for O’Neal to find the balance that every life coach or mountaintop guru preaches for us.

O’Neal was one of the greatest players of all time—better than almost everyone he’s joining in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday. Not the best, but one of them because he concentrated on his strengths more than his weaknesses.

The drawbacks of being a perfectionist are real. That may be a shrewd way to characterize yourself when you’re asked about your flaws in a job interview. But the truth, many believe, is that being a perfectionist is linked with heightened anxiety and lowered self-esteem.

O’Neal was not a perfectionist, and that worked for him. With that mentality came a type of freedom that few athletes enjoy.

And he sure enjoyed his career on his terms.

He had a nameplate above his Los Angeles Lakers locker at The Forum and Staples Center that read “IDGAF” rather than “O’NEAL.” He wanted a reminder to be himself rather than what others wanted for him. (He would tell the kids it was an acronym for “I Dominate Games Forever” instead of the alternate truth: “I Don’t Give a F–k.”)

He carved out an attainable definition of greatness that he could easily achieve: being the “most dominant” player rather than the “best.” It was an ideal fit so he could feel good about himself even when he was …

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