Shaquille O'Neal might be the Most Dominant Ever, but as far as Most Dominant Right Now goes, he's a long way off. At the start of his 16th pro season, the Heat's self-proclaimed alien has never looked more human.In the Heat's first four games -- all losses -- O'Neal averaged a meager 12.8 points per game. He has recorded nearly as many fouls (18) as baskets (22) and, despite the relative inactivity on offense, his three turnovers per game would be the most since his rookie season, if he keeps up that pace.The fouls are creating another problem -- he can't stay on the court. O'Neal is averaging more than a foul every seven minutes, making it difficult for him to play the 35-38 minutes Miami would prefer. Even if coach Pat Riley completely ignored foul trouble during the course of the game, it would be difficult for Shaq to stay on the floor -- at his current rate, statistically, the odds say he'd foul out in under 40 minutes. Predictably, O'Neal has complained about a lack of shots, but actually that's the least of his problems. He hasn't made a case he deserves more looks, as his true shooting percentage of 49.6 is quite poor for a center; combined with the abundance of turnovers, it makes him an unappetizing option. Additionally, his rebounding has been anemic -- he's pulling down only 8.7 rebounds per 40 minutes and had only three in 28 minutes against San Antonio on Wednesday -- and teams are feeling free to attack him on the pick-and-roll because he's not in shape, exacerbating the foul problems.So is this it for the Big Whatever He's Calling himself These Days? Are we watching the basketball equivalent of Willie Mays stumbling in the outfield? I'm not sure I'd go that far. First of all, it's four games. Let's be realistic about interpreting too much from this small sample size. Second, Shaq got off to a rough start last season, too -- before he checked out after four games for knee surgery. When he returned he was in better shape and looked much more like the Shaq of old.That, to me, is the most likely possibility here -- that the noticeably out of shape O'Neal gets in better shape as the season goes on, and November ends up being his worst month. Looking at his splits from recent seasons, dreadful Novembers have been the norm. Even in his MVP days, he was a slow starter -- his last good November came in 1999-2000.But realistically, what's the upside here? I thought Shaq might be motivated by last season's sweep to make one more go at getting into decent shape, and the player projections also foresaw a slight uptick from a season ago. Alas, we both were mistaken. The projections don't know that Shaq is guaranteed $60 million over the next three seasons regardless of what kind of shape he's in and that it's almost certainly his last contract, or that he's going through a messy divorce that can't be helping his performance on the court. Now that the games have started, Shaq almost can't help getting in better shape -- just the 30 minutes of activity during each game might be more than he was doing in the offseason. But if you start with the premise that he's in even worse shape than he was a year ago, then the absolute best-case scenario would be that he plays himself into good enough condition to repeat his numbers from the second half of last season -- 19.1 points, 8.2 boards and just 30 minutes a game thanks to foul trouble.That's still a potent player -- in fact, even during his troubles the first four games, teams respect Shaq enough to double him nearly every time he catches the ball. But the Heat's championship hopes depend on Shaq's being more than a "nice" player. He's taking up $20 million a year on a team that refuses to pay luxury tax, so he pretty much needs to be a superstar. Those days appear long gone. Even if Shaq matches his second-half numbers from last season, he's a borderline All-Star at best. Again, I don't want to overstate things too much based on a four-game sample, but there's a very real chance we've seen The Diesel play in his last All-Star game. And with O'Neal taxing up nearly a third of their usable salary real estate over the next three seasons, the Heat will have a great deal of trouble regaining a foothold in the East's elite.