Does anyone remember the furor and passion that people had in believing that Rasheed Wallace was DEFINITELY not retiring and would be coming back. Heck, people were believing it all the way into March.
It NEVER happened.
And neither will Shaq returning. The surgery was something he was going to need regardless of whether he was retiring or not. He's gone. Get used to it.
Gotta admit there was a much better chance of Sheed coming back than there is that Shaq will. He was 4-5 years younger than Shaq is, came to one of the first team practices, stayed near Boston after the season started, and a quote from Pierce that pretty blatantly alluded to it.
That plus having JO, Perk, and Semih all hurt pretty much before the season even started, left us desperate for size, and lead to people probably hoping Sheed came back rather than thinking he actually would. It ended up dying down when Baby started the season hot and Semih surprised us with 1 shoulder, but then picked back up again when Shaq got hurt, we traded away our starting C + Erden and Baby turned into one of the worst 6th men in the league (again horribly desperate for size).
It is unlikely... but there is probably about 2 or 3% of NBA stars that attempt a comeback after going out of the league. Some ones that have been attempted successful (meaning they made it back to the nba) or unsuccessful in recent years were Jordan, Scottie Pippin, Shawn Kemp, Anfernee Hardaway, Antoine Walker, Dennis Rodman, Tim Hardaway, Allen Iverson, Allen Houston, Alonzo Mourning.
There have also been plenty of role players that tried to make it back (or did) like jonathan bender, Kevin Willis (in his 40's), Byron Russel, Greg Ostertag etc....
While it remains highly unlikely, at the end of the day it is probably more likely chances than the celtics had of winning the championships for about 15 years prior to KG and Ray Allen and we all still watched and hoped and prayed. Lets keep hoping the big fella comes back!
