O’Neal delivered in Game 6

MIAMI – Dwyane Wade was in the hospital, and Shaunie O’Neal was rightly concerned.

The biggest game of the Miami Heat’s season – maybe the biggest in franchise history – was only hours away. Wade, the team’s leading scorer, had IVs pumping fluids into his body, the Detroit Pistons’ confidence was growing by the second, and memories of Miami’s missed chance in 2005 crept into her head.

With a kiss, her husband assured her everything would be fine.

“It’s done,” Shaquille O’Neal told his wife. Sure enough, his dominant 28-point, 16-rebound, five-block effort fueled Miami’s 95-78 win over the Pistons on Friday and carried the Heat to the NBA’s championship round for the first time.

Looking every bit like a three-time MVP of the NBA finals, O’Neal promised his team before the sixth game of the Eastern Conference title series that if he got the ball, good things would happen.

That promise was kept, as O’Neal controlled the game throughout, hitting 12 of his 14 shots.

Now, he’s four wins from keeping another promise – the one he made at his welcome party two summers ago, when he told Heat fans he would bring a championship to Miami.

“We’ve just got to keep hope alive,” O’Neal said. “We don’t want to just get to the finals. We want to win the whole thing. … Now we have the opportunity to do that.”

And Heat center Alonzo Mourning, a longtime adversary before becoming O’Neal’s teammate and eventual close friend, said Miami intends to ride Shaq’s shoulders to that title.

“We went into the season, we started this season, with one goal and that’s a championship goal,” said Mourning, a 13-year veteran now headed to his first finals.

The Heat are expected to practice at home through Tuesday, then fly to Dallas. The finals start out in Texas on Thursday night.

“We’ve had a lot of near misses, unlucky bounces, suspensions,” Heat coach Pat Riley said. “We’ve had very good teams that I thought were championship contenders. … But ever since Shaquille O’Neal showed up on the scene, this team has been a legitimate contender, and we have put pieces around him.”

So now, O’Neal gets his chance at a fourth ring.