Gimme five :: Shaq ready to ring in season as defending champs

MIAMI (AP) -- Shaquille O'Neal slowly extended the digits on his enormous left hand, then flashed a megawatt grin.

"Five," O'Neal said in an interview with The Associated Press. "For me, the motivation's five."

Simple enough.

O'Neal has four championships now, the last coming June 20 when the Miami Heat finished off the Dallas Mavericks in Game 6 of the NBA finals. With the Heat set to open training camp Tuesday, O'Neal believes his team can successfully defend that crown -- getting him ring No. 5.

He promised it during the Heat's victory parade.

"We're going to do it again next year," O'Neal bellowed as 250,000 fans celebrated outside the team's arena on a steamy afternoon three days after the title-clinching win. "We'll see you again next year. Yeah, I said it. Yeah, I said it. We will do it again next year."

At least 13 players from last season's team return for 2006-07; reserve Shandon Anderson remains a free agent, while late-season-acquisition Derek Anderson parted ways with the Heat this summer.

All the key players from last season's playoff run -- finals MVP Dwyane Wade, O'Neal, Udonis Haslem, Antoine Walker, Alonzo Mourning, James Posey, Jason Williams and Gary Payton -- are back.

So while some probable Eastern Conference challengers spent the summer adding pieces -- Chicago got Ben Wallace and P.J. Brown; Detroit signed Nazr Mohammed in Wallace's spot; Indiana reacquired Al Harrington -- the Heat decided to keep what worked.

"We have a formula and we're going to stick to that formula," O'Neal said. "A lot of guys are getting better, but I'm not impressed by what anybody else has done. I've seen it all before. We know what we have to do. We already know teams, when they come play us, they play extra hard. We'll be ready."

O'Neal averaged 20.0 points and 9.2 rebounds last season. On one hand, stellar numbers; on the other, career-lows that prompted talk of how the 34-year-old center is declining.

That conversation resumed during the finals, when O'Neal, by his standards, was almost a statistical nonfactor -- 13.7 points, 29.2 percent shooting from the foul line, a career-playoff-low five points in one loss.

"I don't think there's any doubt that while he might be disappointed, he was anything else other than absolutely happy and euphoric in the whole thing, in winning," Heat coach Pat Riley said. "I think what he should be looking at, instead of his own individual performance ... is he was able to play a different game and win a championship."

It was different. The Diesel was The Decoy.

In the finals, O'Neal -- who averaged 32.6 points and 13.7 rebounds in five previous title-series trips with Orlando and the Los Angeles Lakers -- commanded great defensive attention even with un-Shaq-like numbers.

"If I'm not on the court, none of that goes down," O'Neal said. "If I'm not on the court, guys don't get open shots. So everything happens for a reason."

O'Neal enters this season with the same proclamation he carried into his first two Miami campaigns, insisting that his numbers are inconsequential.

Don't mistake that for indifference, Wade said.

"This is a guy who has nothing else to prove in the game," said Wade, who averaged 34.7 points in the finals. "He can go retire, go off in his big houses, his mansions, and take his four rings and leave the game. But he still wants to make a mark on the game. He still wants to be who he was. I love it."

Wade says there's only one thing O'Neal can't do.

"He's trying to get his abs better than mine," Wade said. "I don't think that's possible."

If O'Neal is throwing around fitness challenges, even tongue-in-cheek ones to the superstar guard who's 100 pounds lighter and 10 years younger, then let that be a sign he's serious about the coming season.

It's all about winning more titles, he says, adding that he'd like to get "at least two" more before retiring.

"The first three championships that I won, I won them. I had big numbers and I won them," O'Neal told the AP. "And last year, the guys won it for me. They won it for the big guy. Numbers are overrated. There's a lot of guys in this league who can say they've got great numbers. But they can't say they've got four rings in the last six years."