After His Retirement Announcement, We Should Expect Less Motivation From Shaq, Not More

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↵Yesterday, Shaquille O’Neal rocked the basketball world by announcing that his retirement was visible from a slight distance. It was especially strange to us outsiders that he let it slip to a television station, not a major paper.↵
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↵How silly of us to treat this like news. According to the East Valley Tribune, this has been common knowledge as far back as Shaq’s Miami days: “Shaq has been counting down the days to retirement ... since his days with the Miami Heat, and made the countdown part of almost every interview since slipping on a Suns uniform.” So yeah, shame on Hoopshype.↵
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↵What’s more, there’s even an attempt to spin Shaq’s sell-by date into something positive. Because, you know, having one foot out the door means O’Neal’s bound to maximize his remaining days in Phoenix:↵↵⇥The important news to Suns fans is that O’Neal has been, according to a Suns insider, “fairly diligent” with his off-season conditioning, and as of late August was only 8-10 pounds heavier that what the team would like to see him at by the Oct. 30 season opener in San Antonio. That might go a long way toward cutting down the number of games he might miss during the regular season, although Phoenix is heading into training camp figuring he could miss up to a third of the games if his recent track record is any indication.↵↵Granted, I’m connecting some dots here, so I apologize in advance to Jerry Brown if these liberties offend him. But I can’t help but see this as “Hey, Shaq, never known for his motivation, is now making even more of a point of saying he’s leaving. But this can only increase the effort and energy he puts into the time he’d got left, as evidenced by this off-season, and this means he’ll be the most he can be going forward.” Like when he came over from Miami, and more or less acknowledged that he’d lost a step, but vowed to actually try with what we had.↵
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↵Right, since that’s how players counting down the days to retirement think. Shaq’s motivation was bound up in bringing a ring to Phoenix. Does anyone really expect that, when this team is solidly middle-of-the-pack, he’s going to be the one to step up and lead, or make a difference, or do anything other than coast along until he finds himself in a position to show how valuable he still is? A renewed commitment, or last dash into the sunset, requires the kind of unconditional resolve that Shaq’s just never had.↵