The Official Site of Jermaine O'Neal

Updates

Thu, Oct 30th 2008, 11:49

JO Silences his critics

Game highlights….

Sitting on the bench during the second quarter of his first game as a Raptor, Jermaine O’Neal was already hearing it from this city’s hecklers.

The 30-year-old veteran, Toronto’s centerpiece off-season acquisition, had just put in an underwhelming first 12 minutes of work for his new squad. He’d missed four of his first six shots. He’d looked at times plodding and indecisive, as though the ominous-looking brace strapped to his surgically repaired left knee was more a millstone than a precautionary measure.

In the City of Brotherly Love, they smelled blood. So the peanut gallery piped up. And O’Neal heard every barbed word.

“They were talking about how I didn’t have it anymore … I wasn’t in the game … I make X amount of money,” said O’Neal, who will make about $21 million (U.S.) this season.

O’Neal didn’t ignore the blather. He turned around and faced the trash talk. “I said to ‘em, ‘Okay, hold on,’” O’Neal would tell it later. “I said, ‘I’ll be in the game in just a second.’”

In just a second, indeed, O’Neal showed his first signs of explosiveness. He drove the lane. He dunked atop Sam Dalembert, the Sixers’ shot-blocking specialist, who fouled O’Neal in the tussle. But before O’Neal stepped to the charity stripe to make his first free throw in a Toronto jersey, he stopped and pointed at his tormentors.

“Three middle-aged guys,” said O’Neal, by way of description. “Like, 27 or 30 (years old). And loud.”

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Comments

Terri | on 4/11/08

It is so awesome to have you as Toronto’s center Big Man! You bring so much to the court, the team, and to Canada! I have been voting for you as an all-star for as long as I can remember, and this year will be no different!! Can’t wait to be sitting at the ACC, cheering in person for the guy I have been watching on TV, admiring his game for sooo long!