And he was working for a franchise with attendance figures that were inflated by an already-inspired fan base.

So, just how has Shaquille O'Neal bullied his way back into relevance? By walking the walk and — according to the blog world — talking the talk.

For those of us who scrutinize the league, Shaq's revival at least keeps any threat of entertainment slippage at bay.

Let's begin with O'Neal's more unexpected walking the walk, which has been enabled by the tactics of first-year Phoenix Suns head coach Terry Porter. Porter hit the desert with the mandate to transform the Suns from an entertaining, regular-season-succeeding enterprise presided over by Mike D'Antoni into something more viable come playoff time.

Porter is attempting to assuage the interests of his employers by emphasizing defense and down-shifting the tempo on offense. It is believed that such plans will help make Phoenix more postseason sturdy. This change of pace greatly involves O'Neal, whose stat line reveals two more field-goal attempts and almost three more points per game than he averaged with the Suns after ditching Miami last season.

This relative numbers spike has been felt by teammates on the perimeter, who — until a recent run against meager teams — offered mild words of concern regarding the Suns' new style of play. Such misgivings were expected from the outside cats, who overwhelmingly endorsed a D'Antoni system that produced contract-boosting offensive lines.

But Porter's commitment to an inside-oriented, half-court offense somehow has managed to trim by three the per-game shot attempts for star power forward Amare Stoudemire. With his touches limited due to a slower pace and an interest in running more of the offense through Shaq, Amare's 13 shots are yielding three fewer points per game (22.2 from 25.2). Included in this conservative approach to working through Stoudemire are three games that offered Amare 10 or fewer field-goal attempts.

In Wednesday's triumph at Minnesota, the Shaq-fest rewarded Porter with 18 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks from O'Neal. The philosophical flip-flop was felt late in the third quarter when five consecutive possessions went through Shaq, produced zero Phoenix points and allowed the Timberwolves to cut their deficit from 15 to 10 points in less than three minutes.

During most of this stagger, O'Neal was defended by 7-foot veteran center Jason Collins while the 6-10 Stoudemire was checked by 6-7 small forward Ryan Gomes.

Although Stoudemire has registered mild public mutterings after a couple of these pedestrian games, future feedback depends on how the Suns fare when the schedule becomes more challenging.

In trotting its way to the second-best record (11-5) in the Western Conference, Phoenix has just four victories over teams with winning records.

It also should be a hoot to see how much O'Neal will be able to give the Suns after five months of activity. Please note that Shaq's workload is being selectively reduced. He has been completely held out of two games thus far, and has played 13 or fewer minutes in two others.

While his minutes have been rationed, Shaq's mouth could be in midseason form.

The quotation barrage began innocently enough this summer, when he celebrated Kobe Bryant's NBA Finals failure in a Grammy-caliber freestyle rap at a New York City club. Shaq waved off the resulting hullabaloo by insisting the insults aimed at his former Los Angeles Lakers teammate were fired in fun.

But he was just warming up.

Once the regular season began, the four-time champion has committed a few verbal salvos and was at least credited with another. One occurred after he was ejected for implementing Porter's no-uncontested-layups doctrine against Rodney Stuckey of the Detroit Pistons.

"The laws of physics say that a body in motion stays in motion," The Big Aristotle said after the Nov. 16 event. "So if you have two objects that meet in the air, the smaller object is going to fall much harder. I've never been the type of player to take anybody out, so I obviously went to the ball. The little guy ran into a brick wall."

Just before making this interesting interpretation of physics, O'Neal allegedly engaged in a bit of revisionist history. And just a smidgen of contradiction.

With the topic of his celebrated contretemps with Bryant on the table, Shaq declared that any Kobe-related disturbance while they worked as Lakers teammates was a media creation. Although their feud was rather fierce and well-documented, The Diesel insisted it never existed.

But just in case we were unconvinced, O'Neal — this time being quoted in a newspaper blog — pointed out that the animosity with Kobe (that didn't really exist in the first place, right?) was massaged into reality by Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

O'Neal didn't exactly endorse the report.

"We won championships," Shaq told reporters, "and it would be idiotic for me to say something bad about him now."

And how.

The blog also credited Shaq with saying he'd be open to a return to the Lakers when his Suns commitment expires in 2010. He said the context of that conjecture was a bit cockeyed, too.

Maybe he really isn't talking the talk as well as in the old days.

But O'Neal preparing to walk the walk at age 37 (in March) is real, for now, and far more interesting because walking is an unfamiliar tactic in Phoenix.

That should make Shaq and his teammates worth watching as the season unfolds.