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The Miami Heat retired Shaquille O'Neal's jersey on Thursday night, sending the big fella up as the third player to have his name raised in the rafters. Well, Heat player, anyway. Dan Marino and Michael Jordan (for some reason) both also hang in AmericanAirlines Arena, but O'Neal is by far the biggest name player to have a Heat jersey retired. And it was quite the ceremony.

For starters, Shaq's mom arrived on a miniature Diesel, because, sure.

Then after praising his impact on the Heat's championship team, Pat Riley pranked Shaq by dumping cards with "15 strong" all over him, a reference to the cards that Riley had made up for the team in that 2006 title season. As way of explanation, from a piece on that team:

From that single card came what would grow into, by Riley's perhaps exaggerated estimate, 120,000 more, thousands of playing-card-sized paper reminders, encouragements, inducers added regularly to a bowl the size of an inflatable children's pool, which the team took from playoff venue to playoff venue, covered so the cards only could be viewed by those in the inner circle. Many of those cards were inscribed with the "15 Strong" motto.

"We didn't even understand it at first," Wade said. "It just became bigger, and our belief got stronger."

A decade later, the cards are the living legacy."Anytime I see those guys I give 'em a big hug," Riley said. "Every now and then they'll text me or I'll text them, or I'll get a telephone call. But anytime we see each other, there is a '15 Strong' connection. Believe me, when I see Gary Payton somewhere, there's a big hug. And I ask him, 'OK, let me see your card.' We all swore we were going to carry those '15 Strong' cards that we spewed all over the walls in Dallas in 2006. I have mine."

Source: '15 Strong' still uplifting for Heat 10 years later - Sun Sentinel.

Here's that moment for Riley:

O'Neal himself couldn't quite believe it as that jersey was raised in Miami:

And of course, the Big Fella ended things in appropriate, over-the-top, gregarious manner:

It's a nice moment for the Heat, and O'Neal was exceptionally gracious, talking about the impact of other players for those Heat teams, like Udonis Haslem and Alonzo Mourning. Of course, conspicuously absent was Dwyane Wade, who presumably couldn't make it due to NBA travel with the Bulls. Wade did post this to Instagram on Thursday as congratulations for O'Neal:

Wade's absence felt awkward, though. Those two combined for that 2006 team as a balance of power and grace, speed and muscle, youth and experience. They don't win that title without the other one, and it's strange for this to have gone down without Wade.

It does make you wonder about the decision to do it this year instead of waiting until Wade's seemingly inevitable return. But either way, it's a nice moment for O'Neal, who also broadcast the game as a color commentator for TNT as the Heat beat the Lakers.