Shaq Uncut: My Story (7 page)

We walk into that gym and I have my headphones on and I’m ready to stare these badasses down—and they’re a bunch of small little white guys. Now I’m
really
pissed. You think you puny little dweebs are going to beat me? I don’t think so.

I go out there and I give them what they want. I act like
a monkey. I’m dunking and I’m swinging from the rim and I’m screaming like a beast. You want it? Here it is. I was acting completely crazy. They think I’m nuts. So now I’m looking into their eyes and they’re scared. We got ’em. Easiest forty-something points I’ve ever scored.

There was a lot of name-calling in my senior year. For some reason, people liked to do that. Southside, the school that
I bent the rims against, liked to call me Shaqzilla, Freakzille. I’m the type of guy who takes criticism and name-calling two ways. You can either get dogged by it and hang your head, or you can get motivated and have it make you go up harder.

Here’s the thing they didn’t realize. My father used to call me names all the time. Crybaby. Softy. I’d heard it all. He started doing that when I was
three years old. He knew what was coming. He was getting me ready.

My high school team was still undefeated as we headed into the 1989 states, and I started thinking about the history of our little army base that never won nothing. We had come out of nowhere and could win it all and I was telling myself,
I gotta make this happen
.

A television reporter stuck a microphone in my face after one
of our wins and asked me, “What’s been the secret to Cole’s success this year?” I answered, “The secret is me.”

There was a lot of pressure, but I was good with it. I didn’t want a repeat of my junior season. We got a rematch with Liberty Hill in the Regional Finals, and I dropped 44 points and 18 rebounds on them, and I also hit 5 free throws in the final minute to clinch it. Consider that score
settled.

We rolled over Hearne in the state semifinals, which was highlighted by one of my favorite high school plays. One of my guys had lobbed me the ball for a dunk but I had a bad angle on it, so I threw
it off the glass then rammed it through. Check it out—I think it’s still on YouTube.

So there we are in Austin, Texas, before the state title game. The place is banged out—a new record for
attendance in the 3A championship. We are playing Clarksville and everyone in the locker room is nervous except for me. I’m not nervous because I know we’re going to win. We
have
to win. There’s really no other option for me.

I look around at my guys and they are tight. Really tight. Every five minutes someone is running out back to go to the bathroom. So now it’s my turn and I have to take a
dump. I’m cleaning myself up and I get this idea. It’s definitely kind of gross, but I think it might work. So I come back into the locker room with a tissue covered in crap. I start chasing all my teammates around the room with it. They are all screaming and howling and laughing, and all of a sudden it’s time to go and they are loose. It worked.

Clarksville’s game plan was the same as everyone
else’s—try to get O’Neal in foul trouble and force him to make free throws. They had a post player named Tyrone Washington who kept stepping out to shoot fifteen-footers. He had twenty-four points at halftime, but we made a decision to have me stay home and protect the basket instead of flying out there and trying to guard him from the perimeter.

He kept baiting me, saying, “You can’t guard me.”
I just laughed at him. I told him, “Why don’t you come inside where the real big boys play?”

We got an early lead and never really gave it up. Of course I got into foul trouble again and the nine-or ten-point lead we had going into the fourth quarter was disappearing because I was on the bench with four fouls. Coach Madura turned to me and said, “Can you play without fouling?”

I told him I could.
I decided I wouldn’t go for any blocks and I wouldn’t dunk unless it was a clear path so they couldn’t call a charge on me. The first time I got the ball when I checked back in, I made a move like I was going to the rim to jam it, but instead I pulled up and hit a jumper.

The crowd kind of gasped, like they were surprised I could do anything other than dunk. The truth was I took jumpers in practice
all the time. I had three-point range. Ask my teammates. I drained them all the time. Coach Madura told me once if we ever needed a three-pointer at the end of the game he’d consider letting me take it because I could hit it and he knew no one would ever be able to block it.

It just didn’t make sense in games to take those kind of shots when I could just as easily slam the ball through. It was
all about high percentage shots. My field goal percentage in my senior year of high school was 71 percent.

We ended up holding off Clarksville to win the state championship. Even though I told myself I wouldn’t go after any more blocks, I did swat one more shot away in the final minutes. It was one of Tyrone Washington’s jumpers. I couldn’t help it. He scored only five points in the second half.
When reporters asked me about him I told them, “He said I couldn’t stay with him. Obviously, that was a lie.”

When the buzzer sounded, I actually lost my breath for a minute. All these guys I loved, my best friends, were on the court with me and we had finally done it. It was an amazing feeling—but, I realized, mostly a feeling of relief. I didn’t realize until it was over how much pressure I
had put on myself.

Not long after we won, Coach Madura announced he was retiring. He was no dummy. I was graduating and, as he put it, “There will be too many people wanting to get even with me.”

Winning that championship meant the world to him. We could all see that.

Right after the game Coach Madura pulled me into one of the stalls in the locker room and grabbed me and hugged me, and then
he started to tear up. It was the first time I had ever seen a grown man cry. He told me, “I knew when you arrived at school you were going to be a great player, but I never allowed myself to think we’d win the whole thing. You’re going to do great things in college.”

I didn’t really know what to say. It kind of made me uncomfortable at the time. Here I am, this seventeen-year-old kid who has
spent most of his life trying to be cool, and now my coach is crying in my arms. I wanted to say to him,
Get ahold of yourself, man!

I didn’t get it at the time.

I do now.

T
he LSU basketball players were scrimmaging in the dungeon, the tiny, dimly lit basement gymnasium where they congregated in the off-season, when Stanley Roberts unexpectedly sauntered in.

Roberts was a gifted, skilled player, but the amiable seven-footer was perpetually in trouble for missing class or breaking curfew. He rarely showed up for these pickup games,
and when he did he only gave, by his own admission, a half hearted effort.

This was infuriating to Shaquille O’Neal, who had just completed his freshman year at LSU. He was tired of hearing about Stanley’s “natural ability.”

“A Stanley sighting!” exclaimed the captain, Wayne Sims. “Nice of you to join us, man.”

Sims quickly divvied up the teams, putting Shaq and Roberts on opposing sides. Former
LSU player Ricky Blanton, who came back to work out with his old team in the summertime, whispered in O’Neal’s ear, “Go right at him.”

Shaq called for the ball on the block, then turned and dunked over Roberts. Unfazed, Stanley set up for a fallaway,
then drove to the hole and returned the favor with his own slam.

The big men were fed a steady diet of entry passes as they continued to assault
each other with ferocious tomahawks. The other players whooped with delight—until tempers flared, elbows flew, and the two became tangled.

For a split second, the big men squared off before Roberts regained his composure and stepped back.

“I was thinking, ‘This really isn’t no big deal,’ ” Stanley said.

“I was thinking, ‘I’m going to kill him,’ ” Shaquille said.

O’Neal glanced around the dungeon
for a weapon and settled on a metal trash can. He hoisted it with one hand and began chasing Stanley Roberts with it.

“Easy, big fella!” Sims shrieked. “Put that thing down!”

Roberts sidestepped Shaquille and quickly left the dungeon. He’d played enough basketball for one day.

“Shaq is crazy,” Stanley said to Sims afterward. “And you wonder why I don’t show up for pickup.”

One month later,
Stanley Roberts left LSU to sign with the Spanish professional team Real Madrid.

“This is your team now, Shaquille,” Coach Dale Brown solemnly informed his eighteen-year-old center.

“Yes, I already know that, Coach,” Shaq replied.

I
WAS JEALOUS OF STANLEY ROBERTS. IT WAS OBVIOUS THE
coaches liked how he
was
way better than how I played. They were always talking about him, even though he was cutting class and getting in trouble and messing up. Stanley was
really talented. He could shoot step-back jumpers and turnarounds. He had some great moves. He could even shoot threes. The problem with Stanley was he just didn’t seem to care enough.

And I guess you could say I cared too much.

I wanted to be good. I liked the way it felt when I put up numbers and people slapped me on the back and gave me high fives. It was great with the ladies, too. Everybody
loved the basketball players on campus. I was only seventeen years old when I showed up at LSU, but I was almost seven feet tall and ready to start my fabulous new life.

Now, before I got to LSU, I was invited to play in the Dapper Dan Roundball Classic, which is a national all-star game for high school players. I’m still ranked number two in Texas behind Wenstrom, only he’s not playing in the
game because he’s hurt.

I get to the game and Sonny Vaccaro, the guy who runs the tournament and works for Nike, is sucking up to the big names like Tracy Murray and Kenny Anderson, giving them Nike sneakers and Nike bags. I’m standing there waiting and finally I say, “Sir, you forgot my bag.” He turns and says, “And your name is?” I say, “Shaquille O’Neal.” I’m so mad I’m shaking. I go out that
night and I own Sonny Vaccaro’s stupid game. I’m named the MVP.

The same thing happens when I play in the McDonald’s All America game. Dick Vitale is glad-handing all these other players
and he’s not saying anything at all to me, so I went up to him and said, “Mr. Vitale, I’m Shaquille O’Neal. You might want to remember that name.”

The first time I touched the ball in that game I threw it down
for a dunk. I was angry and I played like it. There was one sequence where I came up on Conrad McRae, who was one of those New York City high school legends, and I stuffed him. I blocked the shot on one end, then dribbled the ball the length of the floor myself and rammed it through. Vitale went off the deep end. By the end of the night, I’m the MVP of that game, too, and Vitale is shouting, “If
this Shaquille O’Neal kid decides to go pro, he’ll be the number one pick.”

Glad we straightened that out.

Even though Dickie V had signed off on the Shaq attack, I knew, deep down, I wasn’t ready for the NBA yet.

LSU was the perfect place for me. It was what I was used to—fairly small, down to earth, not uppity, with lots of nice people. It was also a six-hour drive from my mom. I had to see
my mom. But fortunately, back then, a plane ticket on Southwest was $59, so I got plenty of time with her.

The other good thing about LSU was they helped us get jobs in the summer, all on the up and up. We made $15 an hour. We got $7 per hour during the summer and the other $8 an hour was allotted back to us during the school year. I also qualified for the Pell Grant, which helped low-income
students pay for school, so for the first time in my life I actually had some cash. I was convinced I was rich. Free food in the dining hall and some pocket money. I had died and gone to heaven.

The time I spent at LSU was the best three years of my life. Dale Brown was an excellent coach and an even better person. He’s one of my best friends in the world. He stuck up for me a hundred different
times.

One of the things I liked about Coach Brown was he never promised me anything. When I got to campus he said, “If you work hard,
anything can happen, but we’ve got this other guy named Stanley Roberts who is pretty doggone good.”

Stanley. There he was again. That damn guy.

But here’s the problem: I really liked Stanley. Everyone did. He was a cool dude. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, except
himself.

He was a Proposition 48 player, which meant his grades weren’t quite good enough to play right away, so he had to sit out his first year and not play basketball. When I got to Baton Rouge, even though he had been there a year, it was his first basketball season.

Stanley had a 1979 Oldsmobile Toronado, and it was my job as the rookie freshman to drive him around. I’d take him to the
clubs, wait for him outside, and mingle with the people going in and out. I loved it. I got to know so many people that way.

My freshman season in 1989–90, we were expected to do great things. We had Stanley and we had Chris Jackson, who had led the country in scoring the year before. Chris liked to shoot the ball. He could score from anywhere. We also had me, but nobody understood what that
really meant yet.