Shaquille O'Neal is about to be 37 years old and in the past two games he's scored about 800 points and grabbed 500 rebounds. Have we seen a resurgence of the Diesel? Of course not, because the man is 37 years old and the last time an elite-level athlete fought off Father Time and returned to a prior level of greatness, the world said he was on steroids.
What really happened in these past two games? All I know is that he had a really good two games against a pair of centers that weigh 300 pounds between them. It's not like he played two games against real centers and not tall small forwards masquerading as centers. If this was 1993, neither of these guys would even be centers. Yet, in 2008, I'm supposed to be impressed that Shaq dominated them? It's like Shaq dominating Scottie Pippen: It's what he's supposed to do.
So it's not surprising that he played this way against guys who'd get muscled around trying to stop Arvydas Sabonis. What will be surprising is if he can keep up this level of play until the end of the season. And I don't think he can, unless he's discovered a real-life Lazarus Pit. He's prone to injury right now, because the older you get, the easier it is to break a hip and the alleged steroid use I just made up makes him susceptible to muscle tears and lactation.
Seems to me that he's in a healthy stretch and he's just really good against teams that don't have real centers. And his total domination of Milwaukee's Francisco Elson and Dan Gadzuric (avg. 32 ppg, 9.5 rpg this season) backs that up.
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