Shaquille O'Neal: The Ex-Girlfriend

Section 316 is a weekly essay series by TheLakersNation.com Writer Andrew Rafner. Each Friday Andrew will explore a theme relating to the deeper world of Lakers basketball. This week’s essay…

The Ex-Girlfriend

You made a skirt from an old tablecloth,
and I hope your new boyfriend thinks its real cute,
and sometimes I wish that I could just chop off the chunk of my life that I wasted on you
- Paul Baribeau

There are two pretty distinct paths you can choose to travel during the course of a serious breakup.

You can:

A) Let them hang around and sadistically hope their life crumbles to dust before your eyes.

Or

B) Let them simply disappear, allowing for unnerving moments of overwhelming curiosity and discontent.

Granted, there are inherent flaws and variables within these two courses of action, but in reality, it is the best we have done as far as breakups go (Especially in 2009, where, like it or not, you are going to be faced with some stupid mini-feed, status update telling you some nugget of information you wish you had not seen about your scorned lover).

It is easier to let them simply cease to be a part of your world. Let them drift off. Try and forget they ever existed.

Unfortunately, break-ups in the NBA force you into watching your former mates every move… and that is not fun.

Over the last five seasons, this has been the plight of the Lakers, forced to watch their ex-girlfriend Shaquille O’Neal, find the man who is everything they were not, marry him, have kids and move into a quaint suburban home.

The life they expected to live with him.

Except they didn’t.

And just as quickly as it happened, the miracle was over for the ex: divorce, pathetic one-night stands, maybe a bout with alcoholism, and before they knew it, the ex-girlfriend returned with Louis Amundson, Alando Tucker, Goran Dragic and Jared Dudley by his side.

And it was at this moment that I found my closure with the Lakers ex-girlfriend.

It was just sort of… sad.

It didn’t undo the pain of watching him hold the O’Brien Trophy alongside Dwayne effing Wade in Miami and it didn’t make the Tell Me How My Ass Tastes rap any more tolerable. It didn’t make all those pitiful nicknames cute.

It just made me sad, sad that a man who once brought so much joy to the franchise has fallen so far.

I would never wish what has befallen Shaquille O’Neal late in his career on anyone. Not even my ex-girlfriends.