You could call this a feud if there were more than one participant. The Lakers could call this a concern, but it's looking like little more than Shaquille O'Neal enjoying the chance to let off some steam and take a few shots at his coach, according to several LA newspapers.

And Phil Jackson? He's not playing the game anymore. A day after O'Neal vented about a perceived lack of respect from his coach, Jackson avoided the topic entirely. "I don't want to talk about this. We're not talking about this tonight here, OK?" Jackson said.

"It ain't over with me," Shaq said. "I don't ever start it. However, I won't be standing for that (crap). Any man that stands for nothing will fall for everything." He said he has not met with Jackson, who suggested Thursday that O'Neal needed to be kept on an edge, and that that typically meant being angry at something. Or, at somebody. Jackson said he was willing to take that hit.

"I don't need to talk [to Jackson]," O'Neal said. "I don't need to talk to anybody. I just do my job. I'm no one's whipping boy. I'll follow orders. I don't need to have a conversation with him. I don't need to have dinner with him. It's about respect."

He'll just play and, he said, Jackson could save his motivation techniques for the others. "I ain't Toni [Kukoc]. I ain't ... Horace [Grant]," O'Neal said of two famed Jackson targets. "I don't need motivation. I'm already motivated. I don't worry about that stuff."