Melee Day for Lakers

CHICAGO — Shaquille O’Neal retaliated, finally, with a ferocious overhand right that grazed the left ear of Chicago Bull center Brad Miller.

Enraged, apparently, over the hard and calculated fouls that accumulated over a game, and perhaps over a career, of being the biggest target in the NBA, O’Neal threw the punch he hoped never to throw.

Set against the Lakers’ unlikely 106-104 overtime loss to the Bulls, the worst team in the league, on Saturday night, O’Neal’s fourth-quarter attack on Miller comes with an automatic one-game suspension without pay. NBA Vice President Stu Jackson will review tapes and referees’ accounts of the incident, which occurred with 2:44 left in regulation, and consider further punishment.

O’Neal refused comment as he stalked to the team bus, other than to say, several times, “Get out of my face.” He did claim not to have been hurt in the melee, which landed, eventually, in a pile to the side of the Bulls’ bench.

“We warned the officials during the course of the game ... that it was getting too rough out there,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “Shaq takes a beating every single night he goes out there and plays. I’m surprised he doesn’t let it go more often than that.

“I’m sure that’s going to suspend him and probably rightly so, because you can’t attack anybody with a fist in this game, but yet I hold those officials responsible for not taking care of the ballgame earlier than that.”

The Lakers led, 87-84, when O’Neal took a pass beneath his basket. As he gathered himself for a shot, he was fouled hard across the face and neck by Charles Oakley and Miller. Miller stumbled away toward the baseline, and O’Neal approached him from behind, his right fist balled behind him. He hesitated once and then tried to strike Miller in the back of the head.

The veteran Oakley and Ron Artest then charged in from behind, bowling over O’Neal and Miller, and players and referees joined in.

“I was trying to break it up,” Oakley said. “He swung at one of my teammates, in the back of the head.”

When it was done, O’Neal, Oakley and Miller were ejected. Laker forward Rick Fox was ejected later for arguing over the incident at midcourt with the referees. Fox also left without comment. Miller was charged with a flagrant foul, and he left the floor with a smirk on his face, and without his jersey.

“Anybody who comes after you from behind,” Miller said, “you have to wonder about anyway.”

Brian Shaw, who played with O’Neal in Orlando before joining him with the Lakers, said he had seen O’Neal fight on the floor only twice before, with Eric Montross and Charles Barkley.

Shaw, like most of the Lakers, blamed the referees for allowing the Bulls to so recklessly attack O’Neal. Kobe Bryant said O’Neal told him in the fourth quarter he was becoming frustrated and angry by the lack of protection by referees Dan Crawford, Michael Smith and Derrick Stafford, and that he mentioned it to one of the officials.

“Shaq gets hammered every time,” Shaw said, “and not just touch fouls. They have to always put a little extra into it every time they foul him.

“They hold him down, they come down on him hard. It’s going to frustrate him after a while and he’s going to protect himself. We were saying to the referees all game long that it’s going to get out of control. It’s going to get ugly because of the way they were fouling him. And Oakley’s a savvy vet. He knew what he was doing every time. He was the main culprit. Every time Shaq made a move, he was trying to foul him, trying to throw him to the ground and send him to the free-throw line.

“At that point, Shaq’s going to say, ‘Hey, I’ll sacrifice a couple of games and however much money it is, but you guys aren’t going to keep on taking free shots at me.’”

O’Neal often has said that he is held to a different standard by referees who believe his stature allows him to be fouled harder than others, an opinion shared by his coaches and teammates. They often marvel at his ability to restrain himself.

“Shaq is always in control and I’m surprised he doesn’t do this more often,” Jackson said. “I know that many people couldn’t take that kind of punishment and not have some kind of anger about it. But he does a good job of it most of the time.

“He wasn’t to be stopped. He was very intense.”

Referees saw only the one punch from O’Neal, and then it got messy.

“I was actually on the back of Oakley,” Crawford said, “so I can’t tell you who else participated.

“If [O’Neal] threw a second blow, I did not see it. ... Charles Oakley jumped into the pack not as a peacemaker but as a participant and dove on Shaq’s back.”

Crawford said he did not believe early fouls on O’Neal were excessive.

“Shaq is going to get fouled out there,” he said. “They foul him and send him to the free-throw line.”