THE PASSWORD IS...MVP

There’s a big flashy passer in the middle of the Laker offense these days, lobbing up crazy alley-oops, dropping no-look passes and bearhugging just about any teammate within his gargantuan reach.

The joy. The effervescence. The magic?

“Magic Johnson was probably the most unique player that I’ve ever seen, for size and skill, his enthusiasm for the game,” Laker Executive Vice President Jerry West said.

“Now I see Shaquille--he’s certainly a different kind of player, but I just think there’s joy in his play today because I think he’s finally realized just how good he is.”

Oh, yes, Shaquille O’Neal can score a little and rebound and block shots and make free throws now too. There’s a growing sentiment that he should not only win his first most-valuable-player award this season, but win it unanimously.

His active, intimidating defense has been the Lakers’ foundation. His scoring and rebounding are their constants.

O’Neal is the MVP for all those reasons, and for leading the Lakers to easily the best record in the NBA, right now on pace to win 68 games, which would be the team’s most since the record-setting 1971-72 team went 69-13.

But, perhaps more than any other area, it’s his passing--his will to do it this season and his obvious talent at it--that has connected all the Lakers’ stray parts and lifted him and his teammates to infectious new emotions.

“Well, he enjoys anything that makes him look good,” Laker guard Derek Fisher said with a broad smile. “Making good passes, that makes him look like a better player. And he enjoys that.

“He doesn’t like to feel like he has any limitations or any weaknesses in his game. So if he can add assists and good passing to his game, that will only solidify what he already feels about himself.”

O’Neal, who averaged 2.5 assists in his first seven seasons (and 2.3 last season), leads all NBA centers this season with a 3.7 average--far above such noted passing big men as Sacramento’s Vlade Divac (2.8) and Portland’s Arvydas Sabonis (1.8) and competitive with relative little men Vince Carter (3.8) and Allen Iverson (4.7).

Among the Lakers, on target to average about two more assists a game than last season, only Kobe Bryant averages more assists than O’Neal.

West and O’Neal’s teammates point out that the triangle offense, with its patterned movement and ability to get the ball into the post quickly, has allowed O’Neal to touch the ball often and, once the double-teamers charge toward him, know that there will be a steady stream of precise cutters.

Coach Phil Jackson and assistant Jim Cleamons say that the additions of Brian Shaw, who teamed with O’Neal in Orlando, and Ron Harper, a big target and a savvy cutter, have given O’Neal open avenues to pass.

O’Neal says it’s all about trusting his teammates to deliver, and their trusting him to deliver the ball when he’s double-teamed.

“This team I have now, I like looking for my guys,” O’Neal said. “We’re a very unselfish team.

“You know, it really doesn’t make sense for me to try to shoot over two and three guys every possession. I could if I wanted to.

“But you know, the way Rick [Fox] and Rob [Horry] are going, it’s going to make it very, very hard for a team to defend us. Rick, Robert and Brian. I just kick it to them.

“I just like looking for my teammates.”

Most stirring, O’Neal has found fellow superstar Bryant on several jaw-dropping alley-oop passes--one from midcourt at the end of his 61-point night against the Clippers, and, in perhaps the pass of the season, a perfectly timed jump-hook, line-drive pass across the lane to a flying Bryant at a key moment in the Lakers’ victory at Miami on March 20.

Heat players, like the rest of the league, did not know what hit them.

“Well, that’s great stuff,” Jackson said of the Miami pass. “That makes what probably was a pretty good defensive play of Miami’s into a spectacular play for us.”

And exactly the kind of play the Lakers were not capable of in the last three O’Neal seasons, which led them to their playoff doom when tough, tall teams lined up to stop him with little fear of the Laker offense adjusting to it.

Said Cleamons: “It’s wonderful that they look for each other. I think that’s the way we try to teach the game--hit the open man. Coach often says hit the first open man you see. That develops a rhythm and a flow; guys then don’t have to worry about holding on to the basketball. . . .

“I think that’s the realization of teams that want to finally win or understand what winning is about. When each player on the team thinks about his teammate before he thinks about himself, then you really have a wonderful team.

“You don’t have to focus your attention on yourself because somebody else is and you’re doing the same with somebody else. . . . When I speak at camps, I call it the backwards equation--it’s almost like Christmas, it’s more blessed to give than to receive. You’re giving, but you don’t miss what you’re giving because somebody else is giving right back to you.”

What was it they said about Michael Jordan as he developed into the game’s best all-around player? It wasn’t until he toned down some of his individual play and concentrated on making his teammates better that the Chicago Bulls became a dominant team.

O’Neal, while maintaining scoring and rebounding averages that are right at his career highs and at the top of the league leaders, will blow away his career-best assist mark (3.1, in his first Laker season).

“I think in the past he’s made us better just from the simple fact that teams have to double-team him and are forcing him to pass the ball out,” Fisher said.

“But I think now he’s making us better night in and night out, play after play, on the offensive end and the defensive end. It’s not something that is necessarily by design, but he’s stepped his game up to another level.”

Will he keep going? O’Neal is 28 and in the best shape of his life. His team is winning, and he is unveiling new facets in his game just about every game--a left-handed shovel shot, a leaner from the right post, even a . . . Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sky hook?

“The other day in Sacramento, he shot this hook shot,” West said, chuckling. “When I saw it, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve seen this before, but with another number on the back.’ ”

Kareem, Magic, Wilt Chamberlain . . . there’s something for everyone in O’Neal’s game these days. West, who predicted this MVP O’Neal season back in October, says there’s more coming.

“I think he’s just scratching the surface of something enormous,” West said. “I think there’s more there, myself.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Good Dishes

Shaquille O’Neal is the NBA’s leader in assists for centers. His season-by-season assist average:

1992-1993: 1.9

1993-1994: 2.4

1994-1995: 2.7

1995-1996: 2.9

1996-1997: 3.1

1997-1998: 2.4

1999: 2.3

1999-2000: 3.7