Let’s all give Shaquille O’Neal a big hand for offering to pay for the funeral of the great George Mikan, whose financially strapped wife accepted Shaq’s philanthropy and buried her husband this week.

Now let us ask this question: Instead of giving legends a few thousand dollars to make their deaths more tolerable, wouldn’t it be more benevolent if the NBA and its players gave them decent pensions to make their lives more comfortable?

“In concept, I think everybody wants a better pension for the older players,” says Pat Garrity, who is the Orlando Magic’s union representative. “But, honestly, I’m not quite sure of the details.”

Garrity’s ambiguity is understandable. When you make as much money as today’s NBA players, you don’t really need to concern yourselves with the monthly chump change a pension plan will provide you in the future. But that’s certainly not the case for pioneers such as Mikan, who blazed trails as a young man but struggled to make ends meet in old age.

Mikan battled diabetes, had a leg amputated and lived his latter years in a wheelchair. He was the NBA’s first dominant big man, but life literally cut him down to size. He lobbied hard in recent years to get the NBA players’ union to increase the pitiful pension for players who played in the league before 1965. Sadly, he had to die to make his point.

Mikan once said the older players felt “like we were in the covered wagons that went across the United States.” He’s right. While most of today’s top young players have personal chefs, many old pioneers are eating cat food by the campfire.

NBA players who were in the league before 1965 had no pension at all until 1988. It was then that the players’ union gave the pre-’65ers $200 a month for every year they played. Players who played after 1965 get nearly twice that amount.

Isn’t there something backward here? The NBA gives unproven teenagers millions right out of high school, but a proven legend can’t even make $25,000 a year in retirement.

Mikan, who had to sell off most of his awards and memorabilia, would have been better off working at the post office.

Mikan impacted the game more than any player in history. The lanes were widened and the three-second violation invented to get him away from the basket. The 24-second shot clock was instituted to keep opponents from playing stall ball against him.

He was Shaq before Shaq, leading the Lakers to five NBA titles in six years during the ’40s and ’50s. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird may be responsible for the NBA’s rebirth in the 1980s, but Mikan was responsible for conceiving this baby in the first place.

It was during the last NBA labor dispute and work stoppage when point guard Kenny Anderson said times were so tough he was considering the ultimate personal sacrifice of getting rid of one of his eight luxury automobiles. “I’ve got to get tight,” Anderson said then. “I might have to get rid of the Mercedes.”

And who’ll ever forget Patrick Ewing, who was making about $20 million, saying of management’s proposal to the union: “We’re fighting for our livelihood. We cannot survive if we sign this (proposed) contract.”

When he hears such ridiculous talk from modern-day NBA players, George Mikan probably spins in his grave.

The saddest part of all is that it’s a grave he didn’t even pay for himself.