Shaquille O’Neal recently took some time off from ruining TNT’s Inside The NBA to do an interview with VIBE. During the interview he gave himself a C- on his new job and discussed the work ethic his father instilled in him from a young age. Does it matter that the work ethic he constantly talks about flies in the face of how he approached most of his career? Here’s what he had to say about his second season in Miami when Pat Riley started demanding more:

He didn’t want you guys in “chill-out mode.”
Exactly. But I played better in chill-out mode. I don’t like to come into the party with my dick hard all the time. You have to pace yourself. How many times have you seen a team come out 9-0 and then don’t get close to winning a championship? I like to chill and then get into kill mode about 10 games before the Playoffs. It always worked for me, and I wasn’t going to change my method for no one. He wanted me to eat salad. I’m not going to do that.

That’s a beautiful way to think about it. And it sums up everyone’s main complaint about Shaquille O’Neal as a basketball player. Shaq would come into the season and play his way into shape. Instead of doing something in the offseason and not playing up to his potential while fans paid full price to see him, he saw it as being in “chill-out mode.” “Kill mode” = two trips down the court without gasping for air.

Later in the interview, he says he would average 45 points and 19 rebounds against the current crop of NBA centers. I’m not sure if that’s during his 72 games of chill-out mode or 10 games of kill mode. If that 45 and 19 is in chill-out mode then his kill mode today would be insane.

[VIBE Part 1, Part 2]