• Being shamed into a pregame Kobe Bryant acknowledgement.
• Bearing the Andrew Bynum dunk and subsequent brouhaha.
• Losing to the Lakers for the first time since joining the Heat.

Watching Monday's game clarified an unfortunate fact for me: we're very close to having zero superstar centers left in the league. As noted on TNT, Shaq is averaging career lows in points, rebounds, field goal percentage, and free throw percentage. His minutes are also way down, thanks to nagging injuries that seem like they'll never go away.

Looking back, the 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons were good times for centers in the NBA. MJ was off playing baseball, which left David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, and Shaq to dominate the league. They finished 1-2-4-5 in the MVP voting both years. Hakeem's Rockets won titles both years, knocking off Ewing's Knicks in '94 and Shaq's Magic in '95.

Since then, The Diesel has been pretty much carrying the mantle on his own. He's the last great true center, and the last of the 50 Greatest Players, but it doesn't look like he has much left in the tank.

To test this impression, I decided to chart John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating (PER) by age for our most recent star centers, to see where Shaq fits in on the curve:

As you can see, O'Neal got an earlier start than the other guys, and seemed to peak at an earlier age (26). His decline doesn't look too healthy, although at 33, his PER this year is still in the same ballpark as the other players' PER at that age.

However, since PER is a per-minute statistic, it doesn't take into account differences in number of minutes played. For Shaq this year, that makes a difference. He's playing 28 minutes a game, whereas the other 3 guys played an average of 36 minutes a game when they were 33. So, I decided to generate a per-game PER by multiplying the PER by minutes and dividing by 48 to build this chart:

Here, O'Neal's early decline is much more pronounced. His 33-year-old per-game rating is on par with the other center's ratings at 36-37 years. And at the current rate, he could be out of the league in another 1-2 years. This isn't such good news for the Heat, who owe him another $80 million through 2010.

Hopefully, Shaq will be able to turn things around and stay productive for another few years. If not, the league will have some big shoes to fill.