There are a lot of fantasy owners who hate Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq aka “The Big Aristotle”, “The Diesel”, “Superman” amongst other names was the 50th player chosen in this draft?!?! Shaq is the most dominant center in this era and a future Hall of Famer, as well as being named one of the Top 50 players ever while he was still in the middle of his career. For Pete’s sake, Chris Kaman was chosen before Shaq?! Sure Shaq’s free throw percentage is crap (career 52.8 FT%) and he misses a few games (he has missed an average of 15 games in the last 5 years), but does he truly deserve all this hate to be chosen behind Chris Kaman? 

Chris Kaman?!?!

Round 5, Pick 2: Shaquille O’Neal, C, Miami Heat

Let’s do some more analysis and use last season’s averages for Shaq and Kaman to calculate their totals for points, rebounds and blocks.

Shaquille O’Neal averaged 20.0 points, 9.2 rebounds, and 1.8 blocks.
Chris Kaman averaged 12.0 points, 9.6 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks.

Let’s assume that Kaman will play 80 games and Shaq will miss his average 15 games and play in 67 games and look into their totals:

Shaquille O’Neal: 1340 points, 616 rebounds, and 121 blocks.
Chris Kaman: 960 points, 768 rebounds, and 112 blocks.

Shaq still has an edge in points and blocks over Kaman even with fewer games played.

If your league has FG% as a category then Shaq is your man. Shaq led the league in FG% last year with a rim rocking 60%. Last year, Chris Kaman was 12th in the league in FG% with 52.3%.  Last year was the first year in which Shaq averaged less than 2 blocks/game with 1.8 blocks. Father Time is catching up to Shaq and the legs do not have the spring they used to, so expect his blocks to hover below 2 per game again this season.

H2H owners will still be able to prosper with Shaq’s free-throw shortcomings by dominating other categories like points, rebounds, blocks and FG%. Roto-owners should not banish Shaq from their rosters. I will concede that roto owners of Shaq will not be at the top of their league in FT%, but with some management you can still reap the benefits of Shaq with points, rebounds and blocks. There are not a lot of 20 ppg, 9 rpg, and 1.8 bpg centers available in the fantasy world.

Other team members:

1.2. Dirk Nowitzki, PF, Dallas Mavericks
2.11. Chauncey Billups, PG, Detroit Pistons
3.2. Tracy McGrady, SG/SF, Houston Rockets
4.11. Antawn Jamison, SF/PF, Washington Wizards