Suns center Shaquille O’Neal announced a week ago that he planned on retiring in exactly 735 days.  From channel CF13, via Bethlehem Shoals:

He told Green that he intends to play out the remainder of his contract and then call it quits.

“My basketball career will be over in 735 days, and being an educated man, I’ve always had things to fall back on. So one of my options is law enforcement.  But if Jerry Demings is going to be the sheriff I would love to work for him,” O’Neal said.

Not a surprise, because we’re hearing it from a man who once declared in an interview that he didn’t have a cell phone because he could communicate with his friends via ESP whenever he wanted to hang out.  This news is a week old, but worth further consideration.  735 days from September 10, 2008 would be…September 15, 2010.  What is the significance of this?  It’s about three months after the NBA Finals, and about two weeks before most teams open training camp.  I’m tempted to conclude that Shaq just made up a number extemporaneously, but then I remember that what Shaq says and does, he says and does for a reason.  When he famously grabbed a microphone and speculated on what his ass tastes like and does not taste like, it was calculated discourse.

So, let’s try to understand this fellow.  What’s so special about September 15?  What is he trying to bring attention to?  Wikipedia time.

1835 - HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galápagos Islands.

An event that kicked off the revolutionary study that forever altered how humans understand themselves.  Fair enough, fair enough.

1950 - Korean War: United States forces land at Incheon, Korea.

The battle that helped turn the tide of the war in America’s favor.  I’ll buy it.

List of Home Improvement Episodes
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maybe, Baby
Original airdate: September 15, 1993

Jill learns her sister Carol is having a baby girl. When they talk about the baby’s name and Jill is going through the boys’ baby toys, she wishes she could have a baby girl. Tim tells Randy and Brad that Jill always wanted a girl so they tell Mark that Jill wished he had been a girl. This upsets Mark and when Jill wants to bake a cake with him, he doesn’t want to. When she finds out the truth, she tells Mark that what Randy and Brad told him isn’t true. Tim is also upset because he doesn’t want another child. But he feels alright again when Jill tells him that they don’t have the time for another child. On Tool Time, Tim and Al welcome Heidi, who becomes the new Binford Tool Girl, after Lisa goes off to college.

This is it, isn’t it?  Damn it, Shaq, you hopeless empathetic.