Can’t MVPlease Everyone

If Shaquille O’Neal can do it to Greg Ostertag, I can do it to Fred Hickman.

Hey, you, the only dude out of 121 not to vote for Shaq for MVP! I’m calling you out!

Slap! Whump! Ring!

I picked up the battered phone.

It was Hickman, calling me back.

“This was not a vote against Shaq,” the CNN/Sports Illustrated anchorman said pleasantly. “It was a vote for Allen Iverson.”

Come again? The only one of 121 MVP voters to deny Shaq was not going to rip Shaq?

“For me, it’s about what has a guy done to elevate himself and his team, and has he done it better than anybody else?” Hickman said. “Shaq is a tremendous player. But without him, the Lakers still make the playoffs, maybe even win one round. Without Iverson, the 76ers are a lottery team. I won’t lose sleep over this.”

Nor should we lose sleep over Hickman.

The hundreds of experts who have not completely believed in O’Neal since he came to our town four years ago have dwindled to one.

And that one, during his moment of truth, a last chance for one last Shaq-hater rallying cry, wouldn’t do it.

Not once did Hickman mention free throws. Or hard work. Or even a rap song.

“It’s not about Shaq, it’s about where his team would be without him,” Hickman said.

In other words, O’Neal was denied becoming the first unanimous MVP in league history not because of his reputation, but because of the reputation of the great talent around him?

That’s wrong. But it’s fair. And it’s a lot better reason then people used to give.

Even at this picturesque stopping point, it is impossible to properly judge O’Neal’s trip through Laker history without looking at where it started.

Four years ago, the East Coast media would have unanimously elected him nothing more significant than class clown.

Four years ago, my first story about Shaq featured his appearance at a movie theater during “Kazaam.”

Four years ago, an actual on-air, in-game conversation between Chick Hearn and Stu Lantz went like this:

“Shaq O’Neal has a new rap CD out, and it’s pretty good,” Hearn said.

“So do you like rap?” Lantz asked.

“Rat?” Hearn said.

“No, rap.”

“Did you ask if I liked rat?”

Four years ago we were only fooling ourselves.

Shaquille O’Neal came here not as a player, but an entertainer.

He was perfect for Los Angeles not because he would bring us a winner, but another movie star.

His first shot during his first pregame drill before his first exhibition game in town was a dunk.

His first official points as a Laker came on a dunk.

His first two free throws in town were an event, and how we roared when he sank them both. Of course he sank them both.

Then the show was over, he started missing them, and how we groaned.

I wrote about Shaq with children, Shaq with fans, Shaq with that smile, Shaq with that shoot-around slap of Ostertag before the first game of his second season.

I called him a 3-year-old, and there went the smile.

So much was written about Shaq, but so little of it about championship basketball, about hard work, about winning.

How I wrote those free throws. Once, during Casey Martin’s fight with the PGA Tour, I wrote that Shaq couldn’t make a free throw even if they let him use a golf cart.

I’ve never seen O’Neal angrier. I knew then, there was something inside him that hated being the entertainer, that wanted to be the leader, he just didn’t know how to find it.

Then Phil Jackson came to town and showed him.

As O’Neal is welcomed this week into an elite club that previously only saw him as the after-dinner comic, I am struck by two thoughts.

I can’t remember a word from his last rap album.

I can’t remember a thing about his last movie.

This is not only an award for excellence, it’s an award for something far more difficult. This is an award for personal evolution.

O’Neal no longer makes teammates smile, he makes them better. He is no longer only the biggest man on the court in stature, but also in heart.

He is so big now, it’s going to take a lot more than me or you or Fred Hickman to cost him the MVP.

Heck, Hickman didn’t even cost him a place in history. As it is, nobody has received more votes.

Anyway, not being a unanimous choice at this point in his career is not completely a bad thing.

Michael Jordan wasn’t a unanimous choice. Magic Johnson wasn’t a unanimous choice.

Inside O’Neal’s giant clothes is still a video-age child, his hands wrapped around the joystick, always looking for something else to chase.

This gives him something else.

This, and, of course, that NBA championship.

Only with that title will this award become something permanent, something forever. Just ask Karl Malone.

When the trophy is handed over, it should not be on national TV, but at the Lakers’ El Segundo practice facility on a Wednesday night at 9:45.

This is when salesman Steve Moch, recently attending a friend’s hockey game there, noticed a light shining behind the blinds that guard the window on the Laker gym.

Moch walked to the window. He peered through the blinds.

“And there was Shaq, shooting free throws,” he said. “Just Shaq and what looked like a trainer. I couldn’t believe it. At that time of night? Just him? I was amazed.”

Moch called his parents. He called his friends. He sent me an e-mail.

“The town should know this,” he said.

The town does.

Finally, we aren’t the only ones.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.