All things considered, the Celtics didn't do horribly in acquiring Jermaine O'Neal for two years at $6 million per season. Chances are, however, that the slogan "We didn't do horribly this summer!" won't have fans making reservations in Los Angeles-area hotels for next June.
In picking up O'Neal, the Celtics add a man who has possessed perhaps the most ludicrous contracts in all of sports over the past seven years, one that paid him an average of $18 million per season. You can't exactly fault a man for signing on the dotted line, even if he's not worthy of the money, but you'd hope he'd take that contract as motivation to prove he's worth that much cash. Since 2003, O'Neal has had the chance to show the world that he deserves to be among the highest-paid players in basketball; suffice it to say, he's fallen more than a bit short.
Part of that has been because he's been unable to stay on the court. He played in 78 games in the season after signing the megadeal, but in the four following seasons, he missed an average of 31 games. The missed time was mostly due to injuries, but 15 games were lost in 2004-05 due to that little-known incident involving Ron Artest and the fine folks of Detroit.
Injuries, of course, happen, but when you read about his training habits in Toronto (where he was shipped in '08), you start to see that maybe all those injuries weren't a series of coincidences.
An article from The Toronto Star in January 2009 details O'Neal's workout regimen, which included a heavy focus on sculpting his biceps. While bulking up his arms was a priority, it was not one of the team, which would have preferred its players to focus on building strength in more appropriate areas.
"The biceps curl is the most pointless exercise in the world," Keith D'Amelio, the Raptors' strength and conditioning coach, told the Star. "It's vanity. It's guys wanting to look tough. I guess that's what they equate toughness with."
"The teams that either don't value strength training, or they're stuck back in the Dark Ages, they lead the league in injuries every year," he added. "Every year."
One of O'Neal's teammates at the time was Chris Bosh, another big man poised to make a killing in the next couple of days with his new contract with the Miami Heat. Bosh bought into the training method.
"It's about preventing injuries, not looking good," Bosh said in the story. "I don't want to get bigger, necessarily. I want to get stronger and feel better."
It might be a stretch to point to that diverging pattern of thought to explain why the 6-foot-10, 228-pound Bosh is considered an elite big man while the 6-foot-11, 226-pound O'Neal is not … but it's probably not.
O'Neal's been labeled an underachiever for most of his career. Then again, Rasheed Wallace and Stephon Marbury had the same tag on them when Danny Ainge brought them to Boston, so it shouldn't be a complete stunner that he went after O'Neal. It should be noted, though, that neither Marbury's squad last year or 'Sheed's crew this year was able to secure banner No. 18.
Now, the Celtics are hoping O'Neal's a touch better than those other veteran acquisitions, and O'Neal might be — if he wants to. He has the tools to be a top-notch player, and he has the salary to go with it, but the best players in the game generally don't play for four teams in four years.
What O'Neal will have in Boston is a chance. He'll have a chance to win a title, a chance to prove he can play, a chance to learn from Kevin Garnett, a chance to play in front of one of the loudest crowds in the NBA instead of one of the quietest, a chance to plug a major hole in Kendrick Perkins' absence, a chance to teach Glen Davis how to win a shoving match in a postseason scrum (fast-forward to the 17-second mark of that video to see the biceps in action).
But that's all it is — a chance. What O'Neal does with it is anyone's guess, but there aren't many who believe he'll be making the most of it.
