Quite an attraction in the center ring

August 05, 2010|Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist

Shaq, too?

Let the jokes begin.

Instead of a bench, the Celtics will have a couch. No, make that easy chairs and hassocks. All team meals will be Early Bird Specials. A typical player anecdote begins, “So I said to Dr. Naismith . . .’’

The 2010-11 Boston Celtics won’t be a basketball team. They will be a walking hoop museum. Among them, Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and Jermaine O’Neal have a combined total of 71 years of service, good for 5,655 regular-season and playoff games and 200,371 minutes. They have combined for 51 All-Star Game appearances. They have 10 All-NBA third-team selections, eight second-team selections, and 12 first-team selections. If honors and plaques were all that mattered, we could book the parade right now, Miami Heat or no Miami Heat.

It goes without saying, of course, that they also lead the league in O’Neals.

But seriously, folks . . .

Danny Ainge certainly has guts and imagination. What if someone had told you at the conclusion of the 2006-07 season that, by the summer of 2010, among the people they’d have seen wearing a Celtics uniform would be Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Sam Cassell, Rasheed Wallace, Jermaine O’Neal, Shaquille O’Neal, and let’s not forget Nate Robinson? I know I would have said something like, “Sure, and the next thing you’ll tell me is that LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh will all be playing for the same team.’’

But how many times must I remind you that in the matter of Truth vs. Fiction, you’d always be wise to take Truth, plus the points, every time? Those two highly unlikely scenarios have indeed come to pass.

Yup, Shaq is now ours for two seasons. If the Heat didn’t exist in their current form, the Celtics would be the most talked-about team in the league.

What the Celtics are getting is a 38-year-old, 7-foot-1-inch, 300-and-whatever-pound guy who still commands a great deal of attention once he is passed the basketball in the low post. That’s where he operates, and don’t you forget it.

Shaq never got the memo that seems to have been passed around to just about every other big man, be he domestic or foreign, during the past 20-some years, said memo informing those large fellows that it was no longer necessary to perform with one’s back to the basket. Hence the onslaught of 7-foot jump shooters with zero pivot moves.