<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Coach Pat Riley said Monday that Shaquille O'Neal's absence from the offense is a product of opposing defenses and not the center's conditioning. Riley said O'Neal's 20 points on combined 6 of 15 shooting the past two games do no signal a step back in the center's fitness. "He's moving to the direction I want him to move in," Riley said after putting his team through a light workout at San Francisco in preparation for Wednesday's game against the Warriors, the fourth stop on this seven-game trip. "I'm not going to get into a definitive number, but he's moving in that direction." Riley has not addressed O'Neal's weight since the center said two weeks ago he did not consider it an issue. O'Neal returned a month ago from an 18-game absence due to a sprained right ankle. "I still think his ankle is not 100 percent, even thought it's not sore," Riley said. "He's running better. He's moving better. "Now we just want to take it to another level, as we do with everybody else." Before the past two games, O'Neal had been averaging 19.7 points on .546 shooting. Last season, he averaged 22.9 points on .601 shooting. In deflecting questions about O'Neal's fitness, Riley instead spoke of how the Suns and Trail Blazers spent the past two games double teaming O'Neal even before he received the ball, daring the remainder of the Heat lineup to score 4on 3. "As long as we're winning, scoring points, attacking the areas on the court that they are trying to take advantage of him, then we'll just live with what we do," Riley said. That raises the issue of whether the Heat could be content with O'Neal as a 7-foot-1, 300-something-pound, $20 million-a-year decoy. "We can't force it," Riley said. "What you're doing is you're just playing into their game. We are forever looking for him in just about every situation. I think it will loosen up. "I'm not concerned about it. He and I have talked about it. He's going to have his games."</div> Source
