Shaq Attack

If you'll remember, NBA behemoth Shaquille O'Neal was involved in a botched SWAT raid last month, in which members of the local sheriff's department teamed up with the federal Marshal Service's "Blue Ridge Thunder" anti-child porn task force to terrorize a rural Virginia couple and their kids.  Turns out, the team had the wrong address.  They'd been given an IP address by the local ISP, and rather foolishly traced the address to the innocent family's home, apparently under the assumption that all IP addresses are static.

Shaq discussed the incident in last week's Time magazine:

Because I was there, everybody wants to make a big story about it. It ain't no story. We did everything right, went to the judge, got a warrant. You know, they make it seem like we beat him up, and that never happened. We went in, talked to him, took some stuff, returned it--bada bam, bada bing.

You'd think the big lug would have a little sympathy for the family.  Good to know those police classes he's taking don't skip the lessons in classic LEO ass-covery. 

My favorite all-time quote from the Big Aristotle came in an interview he gave just before the 2000 NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Pacers.  Shaq was dominant that year, and coaches in the early rounds of the playoffs couldn't come up with a defensive scheme to stop him.  So many resorted to the "hack-a-Shaq" strategy, preferring to take their chances with O'Neal's awful free throw shooting than letting him score in the paint (one hopes Diesel will be a bit more accurate with his MP5). 

So Storm asked O'Neal, "How would you guard  Shaquille O'Neal?"

O'Neal's face twisted into confused knot as he contemplated the physics of the premise.  You could almost see his brain hurting.  His reply:  "Well now that's an unexplained question."