Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ? Let’s play a little game: I’ll describe an athlete’s childish body of work, franchise-wrecking ego and bullying ways. Then you tell me who the jerk is.

He has bad-mouthed three franchises in his rush out their doors, leaving a trail of dismantled hopes and awful messes to clean up.

Nope, not Terrell Owens.

He has been an equal-opportunity whiner throughout his career, running off small-name coaches and ripping Hall of Fame ones.

Nope, not Randy Moss.

His ego landed him in a storm that his media chums, public-relations charm and championship rings can’t seem to douse.

Nope, not Roger Clemens.

Which brings us, uncomfortably, to the correct answer: Shaquille O’Neal. Does that change anything? Doesn’t it make you re-examine everything? Oh, he’s not a lost cause. Yet. A public sense of outrage hasn’t overtaken O’Neal’s sense of humor. Yet. He is still seen as fun and funny, personable and a personality, the celebrity that stars want to hang with and the athlete that kids make a wish to be with.

For now.

He gets all benefit of the doubt because he’s Shaquille O’Neal. Anyone else gets beat up for doing what he continues to do. He has dumped on franchises that made him rich, coaches that backed him up, even the littles who can’t fight back. Come on, Chris Quinn? Ron Culp?

This past week brought the latest inanity, overplayed and over the top, that spoke to the public nuisance O’Neal is becoming. If you missed it, well, congratulations. You live a life far beyond the reach of modern television and public sports discussion. It involved O’Neal at a club, freestyle rapping about his former Lakers teammate, Kobe Bryant.

There was a time, early in O’Neal’s Heat tenure, that team President Pat Riley told him to shut up about the Lakers and Bryant. It was immature. It was unprofessional. It was, well, Shaq being Shaq. But it never crossed the line of bad taste.

This rapping on video did. It painted him less the comedian and more the cartoon. Some family-legible lines go:

“Check it, you know how I be.

Kobe, you can’t do without me.”

And: “I’m a horse. Kobe ratted me out. That’s why I’m getting divorced. He said Shaq gave a (woman) a mil. I don’t do that ’cause my name’s Shaquille.”

O’Neal reacted like he always does. “It was all done in fun,” he said. Question: Is anyone laughing?

Look, I enjoyed the first two years of O’Neal with the Heat. He was engaging and entertaining. But what about the ugly exits from Orlando, Los Angeles and now the Heat. The coaches he has sacrificed for his ego. And now this latest, silliest nonsense. Just where is O’Neal taking his legacy?

It’s hard to believe O’Neal could screw up his name. But he has tried awfully hard through his grand career, hasn’t he?