Missed Practice Costs Shaq

Shaquille O’Neal was fined for missing Wednesday morning’s practice, despite claiming that he stayed home because of a migraine headache and stomach ailment.

Coach Phil Jackson, who issues nominal fines in such circumstances, believed instead that O’Neal was still angry about his ejection the night before, when he was called for a second technical foul after tangling with Utah center Jarron Collins.

That O’Neal attended an affair for Burger King in Las Vegas on Wednesday night would appear to support Jackson’s theory of emotional, rather than physical, distress.

“I take my punishment like a man,” O’Neal said before Thursday night’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. “I got nothing to say.”

Jackson did not seem particularly upset by O’Neal’s absence. In fact, he said he and his center spoke Wednesday and again Thursday, in part discussing the defensive tactics that caused O’Neal to slam his elbow into Collins.

“I didn’t get into it with him about the physical health,” Jackson said. “He missed practice without an excuse.”

O’Neal left Staples Center early Wednesday night, as or before his teammates left the floor, and well before reporters were allowed into the locker room. While Jackson would have preferred O’Neal to have stayed for any postgame instructions, the practice was the greater issue and the cause of the fine.

“The nature of the ejection was something he didn’t want to talk about, because he ... didn’t feel comfortable with what he’d have to say,” Jackson said. “It was obviously something that gets under your skin when players are up underneath you all the time and then you get called for something as incidental as the contact that happened after a foul. I’m sure he would have said some things that would have created difficult things.”

Jackson said he was satisfied that the day off--excused or not--had cleared O’Neal’s head.

“We discussed it [Wednesday],” he said. “We had an opportunity today to talk a little about it and I think he’s in a good mind-set now.”

The last time O’Neal was fined for skipping a practice--that time for the birth of his daughter--he blasted Jackson. “That fine?” he had said. “That [expletive] knows what he can do with that fine.”

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Devean George, who was born and raised in Minneapolis, said he was in high school before he learned the Los Angeles Lakers once played in Minneapolis.

“That was a little before my time,” said George, born 17 years after the Lakers moved away. “The Minnesota team was the Timberwolves. Pooh Richardson and those guys.”

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O’Neal will host a fund-raiser tonight at the new Palm Restaurant in downtown Los Angeles to benefit Kidz Educational Experience, The Odessa Chambliss Foundation and the Staples Center Foundation. Information: (213) 742-7166.