There Always Seems to Be a Way to Ask More of O’Neal

Just like that, conversation at the NBA Finals turned from the Lakers’ flaws to Shaq’s drawers.

You thought the Lakers were over-analyzed before? We officially reached the Too Much Information phase Monday.

“We know what we have to do as a team, and we just have to go out and do it,” Shaquille O’Neal said. “It’s not time to be, ‘You need to do this, you need to do that.’ We know what we have to do. I know I have to get up in the morning and put my underwear on first, and put my pants on. I don’t need people to tell me that.”

He paused for a moment, then answered a question no one was prepared to ask.

“Thongs,” he said.

OK, back to the real matter. Why did the Lakers look so bad Sunday against Detroit, locked into a game that Coach Phil Jackson described as “sodden,” unwilling or unable to execute their offense?

“You probably can blame it on the thong Shaq had on,” Kobe Bryant said. “It kind of traumatized everybody in the locker room.”

Leave it to O’Neal to lighten the mood at the Finals. He always turns them into his personal party. He scored 34 points in the opener, right in line with his career Finals average. And now, the Lakers need even more from O’Neal. They need him to block shots -- he blocked only one Sunday. And if the guards can’t get the Lakers into their offense, the Lakers should run it through O’Neal. It’s difficult for him if the other Piston defenders don’t leave their men to double-team him, but when he’s active and going to the basket, he has a way of attracting defenders. He tried to set up a reluctant Karl Malone twice, passing up shots to get the ball to the wide-open power forward.

He had only one assist all game, on a pass out to Gary Payton for a three-pointer. The Lakers need more plays like that. They’re 5-0 in the playoffs when O’Neal has four or more assists, which usually indicates the ball is moving around.

“It’s not a matter of Shaq getting his points,” Kareem Rush said. “It’s a matter of other guys stepping up, getting eight from here, six from there, six form other guys. The bench didn’t do a good job [Sunday].” In the second quarter, realizing that O’Neal was on his way to a big night, the Lakers practically abandoned the offense and stood around, staring at him.

“I think we were so focused on going in to Shaq because he was doing such a good job of scoring for us that we got into the mind-set that we were going to go to him every time,” Rush said. “Coach always tells us, come back to Shaq on the opposite side, once the ball gets swung.”

That requires O’Neal to be active, willing to bang bodies to reestablish his post position. Will he have the energy? It’s a quick turnaround for Game 2. Rest has been a big factor for him. In three of his four games of 28 or more points, the Lakers have had more than one day off between games, and he’s averaging 24.6 points in those games. On the other hand, six of his seven games of 17 or fewer points followed the short breaks, when he averages 17.6 points.

“I like having rest,” O’Neal said.

One thing he can’t complain about coming off Game 1 was too much work. If anything, the Lakers should have looked for him more often. He and Bryant were the only Lakers who made more than two shots, and O’Neal made his with greater ease than Bryant. It’s June. This is O’Neal’s time. The enduring shots of the Lakers in the Finals are O’Neal’s doing damage in the paint, then bellowing at the rally after the parade.

When it comes to O’Neal, that sure beats any other images that might come to mind.

J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.