Dwyane Wade was in the hospital, and Shaunie O'Neal was rightly concerned.
The biggest game of the Miami Heat's season -- maybe the biggest in franchise history -- was only hours away. Wade, the team's leading scorer, had IVs pumping fluids into his body, the Detroit Pistons' confidence was growing by the second, and memories of Miami's missed chance in 2005 crept into her head.
With a kiss, her husband assured her everything would be fine.
"It's done," Shaquille O'Neal told his wife. Sure enough, his dominant 28-point, 16-rebound, five-block effort fueled Miami's 95-78 win over the Pistons on Friday, and carried the Heat to the NBA's championship round for the first time.
Looking every bit like a three-time MVP of the NBA finals, O'Neal promised his team before the sixth game of the Eastern Conference title series that if he got the ball, good things would happen.
That promise was kept, as O'Neal controlled the game throughout, hitting 12 of his 14 shots.
Now, he's four wins from keeping another promise -- the one he made at his welcome party two summers ago, when he told thousands of Heat fans he would bring a championship to Miami.
"We've just got to keep hope alive," O'Neal said. "We don't want to just get to the finals. We want to win the whole thing. ... Now we have the opportunity to do that."
And Heat center Alonzo Mourning, a longtime adversary before becoming O'Neal's teammate and eventual close friend, said Miami intends to ride Shaq's shoulders to that title.
"We went into the season, we started this season, with one goal and that's a championship goal," said Mourning, a 13-year veteran now headed to his first finals. "Not an Eastern Conference goal. A championship goal. And we are going to work very hard to prepare ourselves for whoever comes out of the West."
The work resumes Sunday. Miami took Saturday off to rest and recover from the Detroit series, giving Wade another day to battle the flu-like virus that ravaged him so badly Friday that he spent seven hours in a South Florida hospital getting treatment.
The Heat are expected to practice at home through Tuesday, then fly to whichever West city -- Dallas or Phoenix -- emerges as that conference's champion. The finals start out West on Thursday night.
"We've had a lot of near misses, unlucky bounces, suspensions," Heat coach Pat Riley said. "We've had very good teams that I thought were championship contenders. ... But ever since Shaquille O'Neal showed up on the scene, this team has been a legitimate contender, and we have put pieces around him."
With Wade hurting, those pieces came through Friday in fine fashion. And while Riley gets much of the credit for making those moves, many of them probably couldn't have happened without a major O'Neal sacrifice.
He could have made US$30.6 million this season, and commanded more in a long-term deal with the Heat. Instead, he opted out of his existing contract, agreeing to play for US$20 million a year for five seasons -- and freeing up a ton of payroll room for Miami to start dealing.
"Shaquille can name his price," his agent, Perry Rogers, said at the time. ``And the price he named was winning.''
Jason Williams was one of the new faces that O'Neal wanted and Riley could afford to acquire; he had 21 points in the Game 6 clincher on 10-for-12 shooting (after a 10-for-10 start) and six assists.
RSS