There was only one problem: I still hadn’t dunked in a game yet. I was getting close, and physically I finally had the coordination to do it, but part of it was psychological. I just wasn’t sure about it. What if I missed? I didn’t want anyone laughing at me.
Joe was trying to help me out. We started out by dunking a sock. Once I got comfortable with that, I tried dunking a tennis ball. Next it was a softball, then a volleyball, and then, finally, a basketball.
But dunking in an empty gym with my friend Joe was a lot different than pulling it off in a game in front of fans and family—especially my father.
Early in my junior year we were trying to
break the press, so Doug Sandburg threw the ball to me in the middle, and I decided to take it all the way. I’m dribbling up the floor and I lay in a nice little finger roll, only there’s a little too much spin on it, so it kind of falls off the rim. All of a sudden I hear my father in the stands yelling, “Call time-out! Call time-out!”
I refuse to look up at him. I know it’s him—everyone knows
it’s him—but I’m not the damn coach, so how the hell am I going to call a time-out?
But Sarge isn’t taking no for an answer. Now he’s coming down out of the stands, and thank God the other team calls time-out. We’re about to get in our huddle but my father grabs me and says, “What’s with the finger roll?” I told him, “I’m trying to be like Dr. J.”
“What the hell did you say to me?” he screamed.
He grabbed my uniform and hauled me through a side door out of the gym. My coach is standing there and all the players are watching, but no one is going to mess with my father.
We are standing in the hallway and the buzzer is sounding because the time-out is almost over but Sarge doesn’t care. He’s banging me in the chest. “The hell with Dr. J!” he roared. “You start working on being Shaquille
O’Neal. Now you go out and dunk the ball!”
He knew. He knew I was afraid to dunk it. He knew the only way he was going to get me to do it was shame me into it.
I went back on the court and I got the ball and I threw down a monster dunk. I mean, it was vicious. And then I realized,
Man, this isn’t so hard. I can do this
.
Once I started dunking I couldn’t stop. I loved the power of it, and
I
was addicted to the looks of terror on guys’ faces when I slammed that sucker over them.
It couldn’t be the only part of my game, I understood that—but it could be
the
part of my game.
My learning curve was still going up, up, up. When I wasn’t in the gym I was stealing a little bit of something from all the great players I was watching on TV.
One of the first guys I can remember paying a lot
of attention to is Patrick Ewing. I just loved him because he was so mean. He ran around the court with a scowl on his face, and he always looked like he was ready to beat the crap out of everybody. You could tell people were afraid of him. I’d watch him and think,
Yeah, I need some of that
.
When I was in high school and stuck inside on punishment because I did something Sarge didn’t like, I’d
sit back and watch Michael Jordan and Ewing and take all sorts of mental notes. Now when I closed my eyes, I wasn’t dreaming about the Hulk or Superman anymore. I was dreaming about Ewing and Jordan.
At this point people are saying I’m not going to make it as a basketball star, but they don’t know I’ve decided to kidnap Patrick Ewing’s mean streak.
I was a rookie with the Orlando Magic the first
time I ever met Patrick. We were playing at Madison Square Garden, and my plan was to shake his hand and say, “Hello, Mr. Ewing,” but before I got the chance he punked me. I went to shake his hand, and he wouldn’t. So I went to put my fist out and he hit me real hard on my knuckles. Then he said, “I’m going to bust your ass, rookie.”
Ewing was mad because everyone was talking about me like I
was the Next Big Thing (which I was). I led the All-Star Game in votes my first year in the NBA, and after that happened Ewing told some guys no rookie should ever be allowed to start in the game. Pat Riley was the coach of the East that year, but he was Patrick’s coach with the Knicks, and he told everyone it was “ridiculous” that I was the starter. So when we got to the All-Star Game Riley started
me because he had to, but he played me and Patrick the exact same amount of minutes.
I didn’t like that. I never really forgot it. I was voted in as the starter. Not Ewing. The fans wanted to see me. So give the fans what they want, right?
Ewing wasn’t the only guy I was stealing moves from in high school. One night I was grounded and I was watching some ACC basketball, and there was this dude
named Charles Shackleford, a forward for North Carolina State, tearing up everybody in his path. I’m watching him play and I like what he’s doing, and he’s wearing these big knee pads, so I say, “Yeah, I’m going to take that.” They called him “Shack,” so I show up the next day and I’ve got big-ass knee pads and I’m “Shaq.”
So me and my boys on the base keep watching all the college games we can,
and I see Sherman Douglas at Syracuse serving up lobs for this cat named Rony Seikaly. I noticed that every time he dunked he pulled his legs up. I’m watching and I’m thinking,
That’s me. I’m taking that
.
One day I’m at the house and these military guys are talking about somebody named David Robinson, so my father goes out and gets a tape and sits me down and I got to watch film of David Robinson.
I’m watching him run the floor and I say to myself,
I’ve got some work to do
, so I go out and I try to learn Robinson’s spin move.
My dad is working with me and I’m getting better. I’m in between my junior and senior season of high school when my dad comes home from work one night and punches me square in the face. He’s got a program in his hands and grabs me and says, “It’s time for you to get
serious. See this guy right here? We’re going to watch him play basketball tonight, and I’m going to teach you how to destroy him. You know why? Because he makes 15 million dollars—that’s why. See how much money you could make if you’d just stay out of trouble?”
The guy he was talking about was Jon Koncak. He was this huge, slow white dude who really wasn’t that good, but he signed this
contract
for $15 million with the Atlanta Hawks. They nicknamed him “Jon Contract.”
My dad has two tickets to the Spurs game, so we go to watch Jon Koncak. We are sitting way at the top, the worst seats in the place, but I’m watching this guy and I’m thinking,
I can be better than him
.
So now I’ve got something to shoot for. And that’s when I started to turn it around. When the boys came around looking
for fun I told them, “Sorry, I can’t mess with y’all right now.” Even the girls—I cut back on that, too.
Up to that point I still managed to find trouble just about all the time. One spring I played on an AAU team with Charles “Bo” Outlaw, and we went to Tempe, Arizona, for a tournament. We were playing a team from the state of Washington, and this guy kept fouling me really hard. I told him
he shouldn’t do that again but he did, so I turned around and I punched him in the face.
The AAU people didn’t like that so much, so they kicked me out. Permanently. I messed up that kid pretty bad, so they sent me home. Luckily for me, my father wasn’t there. He was in training for a couple of months, so he was out of town for a while and he never found out about it—until now. Sorry, Sarge.
Since I couldn’t play AAU, I went to the army base and played with the enlisted men. My dad was running the gym at the base then, and I could always see him in the window watching. He never butted in when those big guys were pounding me, but later that night he’d tell me, “Don’t let those men push you around. Stand up for yourself, son.”
Ever since I was nine, Sarge taught me all the basics, then
told me, “Go play.” If I went to the park to work on things, he wasn’t trailing along with his head up my butt. It was up to me to get better.
I was going into my senior year, and Bo Outlaw was still playing with my old AAU team. He was probably the best player in San Antonio at that point. They now see how good I’ve gotten and they figure they have a chance to win the whole thing, so they bring
me back.
I have to stay out of trouble because I want to play on that team.
I’m getting letters from almost every college in the country, and this whole basketball thing might work out after all if I can just learn to keep my cool.
Sarge is there for almost all my high school games, and he’s not very hard to miss. He’s riding the officials so hard my coach doesn’t ever have to bother. After
a bad call, you could hear my father in the stands yelling, “You stupid ref!”
My dad was going to make sure I didn’t blow it. Everything had to be done right. Once, in the middle of a game, he stood up and started hollering at me because my uniform shirt was untucked. That kind of stuff drove him crazy. They practically stopped the game so I could get my shirt tucked in. You could have heard
a pin drop in that gym. Everybody knew not to mess with Sgt. Philip Harrison. He spent most of my high school career screaming, “Take it to the hole!”
We played in Class 3A, and everyone was jealous of the Cole Cougars. I was getting all the attention, all the press. Other schools wanted to beat me and our team in the worst way.
There was nothing fancy about our high school program. We dressed
in the band room because we didn’t have a locker room. I was big into rap at that time and I knew all the lyrics to every song. Plus, we’d make up our own songs. One of our best was when we remixed the school song. It started out like, “Hail to our alma mater, hail to thee, colors green and gold.” We added our own beat, threw in a few swear words, put on our plastic Mercedes-Benz necklaces, and
had them rolling in the aisles.
Coach Madura was straight country. He’d hear my rap music and yell, “Turn that garbage off!” Coach Madura handled us just right. He was very tough on me, but on the court he let me do a lot of things, which I appreciated. He used me to break the press. They’d throw the ball up to me and I’d bring it up the floor. My ball-handling skills were pretty good. But mostly,
I could score.
Besides Doug and Joe, who was all-state football and all-state baseball and had some real speed, we had this kid named Darren
Mathey who could handle the ball pretty well. Our other football player was Dwayne Cyrus, another real athlete who added muscle. We had Jeff Petress, who could shoot the ball.
Then we had Robbie, who we nicknamed the Duke of Juke. Robbie would get the ball,
drive to the hole like a madman making all these crazy motions, then he’d kick the ball back out. So one time we’re playing and Robbie goes to the hole doing all his Duke of Juke stuff and he’s got a layup—I mean, no one is on him—and instead he kicks the ball back to me at the foul line.
I yell at him, “Rob, what are you doing? You had a layup. You gotta take that.”
So Rob stops right in the
middle of the game and slams the ball down on the court. “Listen,” the Duke of Juke screams at me, “I ain’t getting no scholarship, bitch. You shoot the ball!”
He was right. I was the only one getting a scholarship. It was all on me.
I ran into some nasty people in Texas. There was a lot of racism. Places like Asherton, Texas, and Plugerville, Texas. Those places held up signs with apes when
black kids like me came to town. When you are a kid, that stuff hurts. I was already kind of self-conscious about my size, and that sure didn’t help. I had no choice but to learn to deal with it.
When I was playing for LSU against Mississippi State, my teammate Stanley Roberts was shooting free throws and one side yelled “Magilla!” and the other side yelled “Gorilla!” If he was mad about it,
he didn’t show it. I watched him and I thought,
Stanley’s got it right. You can’t take it to heart
. If you can’t learn to laugh at yourself, then you are going to have one long miserable life, especially if you are seven feet tall.
Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner, used to call me Fat Albert when I shot free throws. I thought it was hilarious the first time I heard it. Made me miss the
free throw. Not really, because I miss free throws all the time, but it makes for a good story.
My junior year at Cole High we were undefeated and turning the
Texas basketball world upside down. I would walk into practice and never know who would be there. One day, it was Dale Brown from LSU. The next day it was the Shark, Jerry Tarkanian from Nevada–Las Vegas. The day after that it was Jim Valvano
of NC State. I was eating it up.
I suppose it went to my head a little bit. I had gone from this clumsy kid who nobody thought could play to a real celebrity. Everyone in San Antonio was talking about me.
Coach Madura wasn’t going to let me get too cocky, though. One day we were in practice and he gave us a two-minute water break, and I wandered out of the gym and went to the bathroom and took
my time getting back on the court. I was gone only about five minutes, but by the time I got back the team was on the floor running drills.
Coach Madura let me have it. “The rest of the world might think you are some kind of superstar, but we don’t deal with prima donnas around here,” he said.
I was hot. I was mad, but mostly I was embarrassed. I didn’t say anything, but when we started playing
again, I started throwing down dunks. One after another. After practice, Coach Madura laughed and said, “Maybe I should yell at you more often.”
We made it to the state finals in my junior year. We were undefeated when we played a team called Liberty Hill. They didn’t have any post game. They were a bunch of skinny little white guys who ran a flex offense. They were shooting threes from all over
the court. I picked up three fouls in the first quarter. I picked up my fourth foul pretty soon after that and had to sit the entire third quarter. It was so frustrating. Sometimes I legitimately fouled those little dudes, but other times those guys were taking a dive anytime I was within two feet of them. The refs didn’t know what to do with a guy my size so their solution was,
When in doubt,
call a foul on the big kid
.