Suns' Shaquille O'Neal shows he is still a force

Shaquille O'Neal came to Phoenix last March with a painful hip, a bruised ego and a vision of his playing future that came with a rapidly approaching expiration date.

His time as a dominant center was past. After 14 straight All-Star Game appearances, it was time for the next generation. He was here to mentor Amare Stoudemire, to fit in with a team that ran first, to be a puzzle piece to one more championship run.

Almost a year later, the game has changed. O'Neal is in the midst of a renaissance season. The Suns' medical staff has relieved the pain in his hip, nursed him through a sore knee that hampered him in early December and has him feeling powerful again.

The daily update no longer includes a countdown to retirement — it's now all about how many touches he needs to guide the Suns where he is beginning to believe they can go.

"I'm feeling good. I wasn't sure if I would ever feel like this again. But now that I do, let's not waste it," O'Neal said. "My career has always been plagued by knickknack injuries, but now I have a young, unorthodox [training] staff here ... there might be a little pain, but they fix it right away. As long as I stay away from the fiddling, I'll be fine."

The Suns can't argue with the results. With a few nights off here and there for maintenance, O'Neal is averaging 17.2 points and nearly nine rebounds in just shy of 30 minutes a game. He's second in the league in field-goal percentage (.591) and is making more than 60 percent of his free throws for the season after making nearly two out of every three (51 for 79) over the past seven games.

With Steve Nash out with an injury and Stoudemire self-destructing due to foul trouble on a recent road trip, O'Neal picked up the slack with double-doubles on back-to-back nights as the Suns won in Oklahoma City and Memphis.

"He's been amazing," Suns coach Terry Porter said. "We've done a good job of getting him the ball, and he's done a good job of being aggressive when he's down there. Making free throws is a part of it."

It's a big part. Instead of benefiting from sending Shaq to the line, opponents are feeling the repercussions — getting their big men in foul trouble, putting the Suns in the bonus early, etc. The Suns still have to make it pay off against elite teams, but if they can mix and match with their running game, they will become a much less predictable team, especially down the stretch in close games.

"We don't want to just walk it down and throw it in on every possession, and we do go through [stints] at times where we stand around a little too much," Porter said. "But we have the best of both worlds at other times, and we want to keep working for that."

Porter showed his players one piece of tape from the trip in which the Suns locked down on defense and forced a missed shot. O'Neal grabbed the rebound and found Jason Richardson alone ahead of the defense for a 360-degree dunk.

"It was the perfect sequence," he said. "We did a good job defensively, finished with a rebound and got out and ran."

O'Neal ranks second among Western Conference centers in All-Star voting, although his 728,000 votes is just a little more than half the total compiled by Houston's Yao Ming due to his legion of loyal Chinese voters online. But he's making a case to be included on the team, something he admits would be special after his streak was snapped last year.