Virus Is a Shaq Setback

Shaquille O’Neal has returned to Los Angeles, fighting the residue of a virus that is believed to be the final obstacle to the toe surgery that has been debated for more than two months.

The Laker center will undergo a cheilectomy, a procedure doctors believe will ease the pain and increase the mobility in the first joint of his big right toe, as soon as the virus, which caused his temperature to spike Wednesday and also has caused some swelling in his liver, has subsided. More tests are expected today, and the surgery could be done in two weeks, or sooner.

The recovery period will be approximately eight weeks, and so could leak into the regular season. After the surgery, which will be performed by Dr. Robert Mohr, O’Neal will be able to walk immediately and should be able to run in about six weeks.

The process of reaching the verge of surgery from the moment O’Neal limped away from the Lakers’ third consecutive NBA championship was spearheaded by agent Perry Rogers, and was arduous, he said. Rogers, unhappy with the growing criticism of a plan that has lingered well into summer, said Wednesday night that he would not have risked O’Neal’s career for the sake of a speedy resolution.

“You have to go through the process,” he said. “I think we’ve made the best decision for Shaquille, the Lakers and Shaquille’s playing career.”

It began in the first week of July, less than two weeks after O’Neal had completed his domination of the New Jersey Nets. Mohr, retained by O’Neal in mid-season when medication, orthotics and other common treatments neither killed the pain nor improved his play, told O’Neal he believed the toe had carried O’Neal as far as it could in its current state. He recommended a cheilectomy.

On July 13, O’Neal and Rogers sought and received a second opinion from a specialist Rogers declined to name. Five days later, that specialist, Rogers said, insisted O’Neal would require a cheilectomy and a Moberg osteotomy, the latter procedure being a more invasive surgery requiring a screw inserted into the toe.

Eight days after that, O’Neal, Rogers and Mike Parris, O’Neal’s business manager, sat in Mohr’s office at UCLA Medical Center and presented Mohr with the second opinion. Mohr, Rogers said, told them the Moberg osteotomy not only would put O’Neal’s foot at risk, it might threaten his career.

“Now,” Rogers recalled thinking, “we have a problem.”

That afternoon, Rogers telephoned Laker trainer Gary Vitti, who recommended Dr. Robert Anderson, a well-regarded podiatric specialist in Charlotte, N.C., who has consulted with many athletes, including Deion Sanders and Carolina Panther center Jeff Mitchell.

Mohr forwarded X-rays and other records. Vitti, whom Rogers described as an “awesome” contributor to the process, compiled films of O’Neal gradually losing his ability to run the floor. On Aug. 12, after studying the films and considering O’Neal’s arthritis, Anderson told Rogers he believed surgery was unnecessary, that O’Neal was performing too well--even through the pain--to risk any surgery.

Three specialists had arrived at three different conclusions.

“The difficulty was the conflict,” Rogers said. “I have three similar opinions, that’s easy. It became a debate with three prongs to it.”

It was O’Neal, Rogers said, who settled it. After a lengthy telephone conversation with Mitchell, the NFL player who had endured two cheilectomies, O’Neal said he could not play another season with the same uncertainty, and the same experimentation with orthotics and Indocin.

And so, with the Lakers having given their blessing, with Mohr prepared to schedule the cheilectomy and O’Neal having made the decision to push ahead, O’Neal checked himself into a hospital in Sand Lake, Fla., on Thursday, his fever at 103 degrees. He was released from the hospital Friday and traveled to Los Angeles from Orlando, but some of the symptoms have remained, delaying again the surgery O’Neal and at least one of three specialists believe will allow him to resume his career, as pain-free as possible.