LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal has scheduled surgery on his arthritic right big toe for Sept. 11, the Orange County (Calif.) Register reported Sunday.

	O'Neal

According to the Register's report, O'Neal is expected to be out eight weeks recovering from the surgery and is likely to miss training camp and some of the regular season, which begins Oct. 29 against the San Antonio Spurs at Staples Center.

Dr. Robert Mohr will perform the surgery at UCLA Medical Center. Mohr said recovery time varies from patient to patient.

O'Neal has been battling a virus for the past three weeks and that could prove to be a complication and eventually delay the surgery. O'Neal's agent, Perry Rogers, told the Register the date was set assuming his client is well.

"Shaquille wants to get on with this,'' Rogers told the newspaper. "We can't wait anymore."

O'Neal will have a cheilectomy, which involves removing bone spurs in the joint that have caused pain and restricted his motion.

Since the first week of July, O'Neal had been consulting with doctors and sought three opinions about his toe. O'Neal played last season using a combination of medication, orthotics and other treatments to ease the pain, but no method was effective.

"The pain became so bad that I think I relied on (painkiller) too much," O'Neal told Fox Sports Net last week. "Sometimes if I didn't take it, I didn't feel well and I didn't play well, and I would have to rely on the painkillers for me to play well."