Of course Shaquille O’Neal officially retired from the NBA yesterday. Of course he did. Why wouldn’t the greatest showman in the history of professional sports bow out at the same time as the NBA Finals to steal the thunder from two of his former teammates and a team that he spit on after helping it win its first NBA Championship? Fortunately, Shaq will steal very little attention away with his retirement – as opposed to, say, if he’d done it two years ago – since the Big 2 and Chris Bosh will undoubtedly sweep defeat the Dallas Mavericks, and the media will be more concerned with LeBron James winning his first championship, Dwyane Wade’s brilliance for making sure James never has more rings during their prime, and the debate over whether Bosh looks like an ostrich or a catfish.
But I will give the big man his credit. I live in a city that still loathes and vilifies O’Neal for leaving in 1996 and crippling the Orlando Magic for a decade, while very few people talk about terrible front office management, an in-over-his-head owner and a newspaper that hacked Shaq more than any defenses ever did. So I want to celebrate the guy who has entertained us for so many years – as well as being, you know, the most dominant center in NBA history – by honoring his greatest masterpiece – Shaq Fu. As the once proud owner of a Sega Genesis, I still remember when I traded Streets of Rage 2 to a friend for a few weeks for Shaq Fu, and I also remember him never giving it back. Ah, the youthful lessons of capitalism. Thankfully, Best Week Ever unearthed some screencaps from Shaq Fu and they’ve helped me start plotting revenge remember a time when the NBA was fun and franchises weren’t losing hundreds of millions of dollars and the commissioner wasn’t lying about it. Oh Shaq Fu, where have you gone? (That was rhetorical, please don’t come back.)
