Showing He Can Hack It at Line

Shaquille O’Neal made more than 60% of his free throws in the regular season for the first time, this coming after he made a playoff career-high 64.9% in last year’s postseason.

After more than a decade of promising he’d “make ‘em when I have to make ‘em,” and occasionally doing it, he’s on a year-long free-throw roll -- for him -- and almost never sees the Hack-a-Shaq anymore.

While Phil Jackson assumes the Minnesota Timberwolves will measure O’Neal’s free-throw dexterity as the teams’ playoff series proceeds, he also knows O’Neal makes a logical late-game target, even as a 62.2% shooter.

“That would seem to make some sense,” Jackson said. “We would do it. In a playoff game, there is no alternative.”

In Minneapolis on Friday afternoon, Timberwolf management seemed to say it would allow the game situation to dictate its approach.

“I call it the 60-60,” Coach Flip Saunders said. “He’s shooting 60% from the line, he’s shooting 60 from the field. If he takes 24 shots from the field, he’s going to get 24 points. If he takes 24 shots from the free-throw line, he’s going to get 16. Or whatever.”

Which suggested they’d foul him.

But ...

“Because of how he shoots, no one’s gotten to the point where you can consistently go and foul him, because he can make free throws,” Saunders said. “Them having to take him out at the end of ballgames, that’s not a factor anymore. He has confidence and Phil, and even around the league, people know he can make his free throws.”

And yet ...

“You have a better chance putting him at the line for two shots,” Saunders said, “than giving him one shot where, a lot of times, when he gets it inside it’s like a Nerf dunk anyway.”

Vice president Kevin McHale said, “It’s all relative to where he’s at. You want to make Shaq earn it. But I’m not sure if the 40-foul, Hack-a-Shaq deal is the way to go, either.”

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O’Neal’s grandfather, Sirlester O’Neal, died Thursday in South Carolina.

The funeral is expected to be held Wednesday or Friday in South Carolina and O’Neal told team officials he would attend. If it were held Wednesday, O’Neal would fly from Minneapolis after Game 2 and rejoin the Lakers in time for Game 3 on Thursday night in Los Angeles.

It could be a very emotional week for O’Neal, whose wife, Shaunie, is due to give birth to their son April 27.

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The Lakers will practice in El Segundo this morning, then fly in the early afternoon to Minneapolis.... Derek Fisher and Slava Medvedenko joined Rick Fox last Friday for the premiere of “Holes.” Fox plays a professional baseball player in the movie.