Director Robert Alexander and producer Peter Berg offer the latest glimpse into the career of the basketball star, the rise of the second Lakers dynasty and more.
Because nobody paused and said, "Do we really need this?" there must have been a two- or three-month period in which they were sitting down with a different documentary crew every other day to retell the same stories about the Showtime Lakers, the Buss family and the transition from the '80s Lakers dynasty into the '90s Lakers dynasty led by Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.
A purely practical level - and I'm a practical guy - the four-part Shaq is completely unnecessary. The second and third episodes of Shaq recount the same Lakers saga covered in the middle episodes of Legacy, but with fewer voices and much less candor and depth. Most of the first episode is dedicated to the early chapters of Shaquille O'Neal's life and his tenure with the Orlando Magic, previously chronicled in the middle-tier ESPN 30 for 30 film This Magic Moment.
Only the fourth episode, from his trade to the Heat to his current tenure as a television talking head and relentless commercial pitchman, is "new" and features some of the more emotional elements in the series. But it covers 18 years of terrain in 45 rushed minutes, and its "Hey, Shaq became a businessman!" revelations are near-identical, by design, to the similar chapter in They Call Me Magic. Anyway, it's not like Shaquille.
