I'm Learning, Man. That's My Horse Tutor.

Dear Shaq,

When I first heard you'd signed with TNT, I was happy for you, happy you wouldn't end up in the purgatory that is ESPN's NBA coverage, and excited for the basketball-and-humor-loving public that you'd be joining the already glorious Inside the NBA crew. Then, over the holidays at my folks' house, my brother and I watched a few episodes of a show on NBA TV called Open Court, where a bunch of TNT-affiliated former NBA guys--you, Chuck, Kenny, Reggie, Kerr, Steve Smith, C-Webb—just sit in a room and tell stories. The show was great, but you were by far the least entertaining person in the room. Even though Reggie Miller was at one time my favorite non-Houston basketball player, I only find Reggie-the-analyst entertaining when he's announcing a game and uses the term "a long deuce." But even he was more interesting than you. Suddenly I worried that you might ruin Inside the NBA. Then the season started: I caught a few minutes here and there of you at halftime, and what I saw was pretty bad, Shaq. Your voice was often so low as to be nearly inaudible, you made too many sound effects, laughed at your own jokes without making your co-hosts laugh, and when called upon to talk about the games, you seemed stuck in athlete-trying-not-to-say-anything-interesting mode. Admittedly, I only had a small sample size of your performances, but people were hammering you on Twitter, too: Shaq is boring! Shaq makes Kevin McHale seem entertaining! Shaq just said Rudy Gay could be as good as Lebron and Wade! Shaq just called Ricky Rubio the Italian Pete Maravich! Suddenly I couldn't remember: Were you ever that interesting? Or was the pressure making you uninteresting? I hoped it was the latter. It was like someone had brought you to a great party and said, "Hey, everybody, listen up. This is my friend Shaq. He's really hilarious," and because of this introduction you froze up and every prosaic thing you said disappointed the attendees and the vibe of the party was ruined.

Being someone who has frozen under pressure in many different pursuits, I felt like I could explain the problem: You hadn't found your freedom. I don't know if you ever listen to NPR, Shaq, but here's Philip Roth from an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air a few years back, talking about his novel The Human Stain and its narrator: