Despite an outpouring of fans who have pleaded with him to stay a Laker, Shaquille O'Neal said again that he is not going to stay in Los Angeles next season.

"Unfortunately, it has come to this. But I want the fans to know that it's not me," he told the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise in an interview Thursday.

O'Neal was referring to the Lakers' decision to part ways with head coach Phil Jackson and also owner Jerry Buss' apparent preference for Kobe Bryant over him.

O'Neal's contract is for $27.7 million next season and $30 million in 2006, and Buss is not pursuing an extension for the big man.  

Still, O'Neal insists that the financial issues are secondary.

"They said it's about the money. It's not about the money," he said. "It's about honesty, and the honesty me and Jerry West had. That's been gone for four years now ... It ain't about the extension. Of course, that's what they are going to make it out to be."

O'Neal thinks that success has made the current Laker management "fat" and that the drive to win has disappeared.

Shaq refused to consider the option that the Lakers would not trade him, thereby forcing him to return to the team next season.  

"There ain't no ifs," he told the newspaper. "I want to play for a team that's willing to win."

O'Neal seems bothered by the perception that he is an aging star on the downside of his career: too old to get a contract extension, too old to be more valuable than Kobe Bryant, too old to win a championship.

"They say I'm getting older. Of course, I am.  But can't nobody (mess) with me. I'm like toilet paper, Pampers and toothpaste. I'm definitely proven to be effective."