Even though he had these two seven-footers to choose from, Chris still jacked it up about thirty times a game. Chris had Tourette’s syndrome. It made him shout out random things for no apparent reason. It took some getting used to. I didn’t really understand it. He needed to take some medication, and he hated it because sometimes it made him sick. Chris was off on his own a
lot, so I never really got to know him very well.
One day I was in the dorm and I heard this guy screaming at the top of his lungs, “Hey! Hey!” I went running down the hall because I thought somebody was getting murdered.
It was Chris, standing by his door. He had this thing where he had to click the knob on his door to the right three times before he could open it. Sometimes it didn’t click
exactly the way he wanted it and he’d have to start over. The problem was, he couldn’t stop until it was just right, and it got very frustrating for him. He’d waste an hour just trying to open the door.
That particular day I went over and opened it for him. He said “Hey, thanks, Shaquille,” and then he was gone. He was very quiet, very isolated. I rarely saw him outside of practice.
I remember
one day being in the gym with him and we couldn’t leave until he got three swishes in a row. Not three baskets—three perfect swishes. I was like, “C’mon, man, let’s go. Party starts at eight.”
Chris was All World on our campus. People treated him like a god. He was one of the greatest shooters I had ever seen. He always stayed in shape, always ate right, always did what he needed to do to stay
on top.
Near the end of my freshman season I was starting to get a little press, and I got mad at Chris after one of the games because he just wouldn’t pass the ball. I said something about it, and the next day Dale brought in this tape on Tourette’s syndrome and made us all watch it. Dale’s thing was, “Maybe he doesn’t know he’s not passing. Ease up, okay, Shaquille?”
Great.
Now
, I remember
thinking to myself,
I can’t dog this kid because there’s a chance he doesn’t even know he’s being a ball hog
.
My best friend at LSU was Mo Williamson. He was from New Jersey and his dad was Super John Williamson of NBA fame, a serious baller. I always thought Mo would go pro. He scored a hundred points in a high school game once. But I think he was overlooked because Chris was there.
Mo was
like an older brother to me. He showed me where to go and where not to go. I had no idea what college was like, so he walked me through registration. He told me, “You want that teacher and take this class, and work out your schedule so you have Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes in the morning. Start at seven thirty a.m. so you can have the rest of the day.” All of it was great advice except the
7:30 a.m. classes. Too early for me. I needed my beauty sleep.
I was humbled my freshman year. I thought I was The Man. What I realized when I got to LSU was that everyone there was The Man.
Everyone was on scholarship, so I had to go all the way back down to zero. I had so much to learn about the game of basketball. In one of our first intrasquad scrimmages, Stanley was scoring on me and I was
trying to guard him, and Coach was yelling to me, “Shaq, three-quarter him!”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was too embarrassed to tell him that. So I came down and I dunked on Stanley thinking that was going to make it all okay. But Stanley rolled out and spun away from me and Coach started yelling again, “Three-quarter him!” Finally I stopped and said, “Coach, I don’t know what
you mean.”
Coach Brown was very patient with me, but he was on me right away about my free throws. He kept telling me how important it was for big men to be able to shoot them.
One day Coach Brown came up to me in practice and said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get you to shoot underhand. Rick Barry, who is in the Hall of Fame, was the best at it.”
“Coach,” I pleaded with him,
“please don’t do that. Please don’t make me shoot that granny shot. It’s embarrassing.”
I really didn’t want to shoot them that way. When I was a kid, someone else suggested that approach before and Sarge told me to forget it. “That’s a shot for sissies,” my father told me.
Coach Brown said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. We’re going to chart your free throws every day, separate
from the team. You are going to be assigned a trainer, assistant coach, or manager with you at the basket every day. If you keep practicing and can shoot seventy percent or better, I’ll let you keeping taking them the way you are.”
I shot 72 percent leading up to the season, but once I got in the games my percentage dropped to 56 percent. A lot of it was mental. If I was feeling good, I’d make
them; if not, no chance. I could never get comfortable from the line, although I had a habit of making big free throws when it mattered. In our tournament game against Georgia Tech, for instance, I was 9 of 12 from the line. Why? I don’t know.
I didn’t start the first four games of the season, because, I think, Coach Brown was worried about people expecting too much. But once people saw me play,
they said, “Okay, this kid is serious about being great.”
What they meant was, I wasn’t like Stanley.
Looking back, I realize in many ways Stanley made me who I am. It was good to have someone there who was better than me. He had it all—girls, money, cars. Everyone loved him. What got in his way was his partying. That day in the dungeon when I went after him with the trash can, Stanley was hungover.
He was there trying to sweat out the alcohol. I’m thinking,
Imagine how good he’d be if he hadn’t been out all night
.
I didn’t drink, and after watching what it did to Stanley and some of the other guys, I was pretty sure I’d never be a drinker.
There were plenty of other ways for me to have some fun.
I had a Ford Bronco II. It wasn’t much of a car, but I’d move the seat all the way back on
the track so I could fit, and I put my own speakers in there, so that truck was rocking. I played that music so loud it was shaking.
Just like every other place I went to when I was the new kid, I told a lot of jokes and did my break dancing at center court before practice. I got everybody loose. When I moved into my dorm, I set up my own little studio with a turntable and a mixer so I could
do all my rapping. The guys loved it. My neighbors didn’t like it so much, though. I was always getting knocks on my door to turn down the music.
Our team had a lot of fun together. We tended to travel in packs. A few of the guys got together and we called ourselves the Dunk Mob, because me, Shawn Griggs, and Vernel Singleton could all throw one down. We’d show up at the fraternity parties and
get in a line with me in the front, and we’d do our Dunk Mob dance. We’d act like we were shooting a jump shot then rock this way, that way, then “do the dunk.”
Everyone on campus loved it. It wasn’t long before everybody
knew me. I was making new friends every day. I loved college. I fit in at LSU. For the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged.
I also knew I had to do well in school
or my father would kill me. Even worse, my momma would be disappointed in me, and I never wanted to disappoint her.
I took a public speaking class in my freshman year, and I was a little nervous about it because I had a bit of a stuttering problem. I asked Coach Brown to critique it for me. I did my speech and then I asked him, “Can you come to class while I do this?” He said, “I’ll be happy
to, Shaquille.” The next day I showed up at class and there was Coach, in the back of the room, giving me the thumbs-up.
I had the highest GPA on the team in my freshman season. I think if you ask my mother, she’ll tell you that was one of her proudest moments.
We played our games in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, which was nicknamed the “Deaf Dome” because the fans were so loud.
I spent
most of my freshman year at LSU in foul trouble. It was really frustrating. I couldn’t really understand how it was that I would take a shot with three guys hanging on me and there was no whistle, but the minute I got near anyone they were calling stuff on me. My dad always taught me, “When you get the ball, be aggressive with it.” It seemed like every time I took his advice, they’d call me for
charging.
Coach Brown used to go crazy over that kind of stuff. I averaged only twenty-eight minutes a game as a freshman because I spent so much time on the bench in foul trouble.
When I got there in my freshman year, I just wanted to fit in. I was still working on my game. I told Coach Brown, “Don’t worry about me. I don’t need to score. Let those other guys do that. I’ll just play defense
and block shots.”
That was first and last time I ever said
that
.
I still averaged 13.9 points and 12 rebounds a game, and I blocked a ton of shots—115 of them. That was the first time someone in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) had ever gone over 100.
Stanley showed up out of shape, and since Wayne Sims was a captain he had to get up at five o’clock in the morning and run with him. Wayne was
so pissed about that. The two of them were roommates, and once in a while Coach would call Wayne and say, “Is Stanley going to class? Let me talk to him.” Stanley hadn’t even come home from the night before, so Wayne would cover for him by saying, “He’s in the shower, Coach. He’ll have to call you back.”
In spite of all that, Stanley still managed to average 14 points and 10 rebounds a game.
We had some big wins that season. We were an up-tempo team, so we always had high-scoring games. We beat Texas 124–113, and I had a triple-double. Same thing against Loyola Marymount, when we beat them 148–141 in overtime. It was an incredible game. Loyola’s star Hank Gathers scored 48 points in 38 minutes. Both teams were just flying up and down the floor. I had a pretty good game myself—20 points,
24 rebounds, and 12 blocks.
About a month later, Hank Gathers collapsed and died in the middle of a basketball game in Los Angeles. We were shocked when we heard that. We were saying, “But we just saw him…” For a couple of weeks, we all kind of stopped in our tracks. It put everything in perspective.
But, us being kids, it wasn’t long until we were back to goofing off and partying and having
fun and loving our lives as LSU Tigers.
We went into the NCAA tournament with a 23-8 record and beat Villanova in the first round. If we won our next game against Georgia Tech, we’d get to return to Louisiana to play in New Orleans the following weekend.
Georgia Tech was loaded with talent. They had four guys who wound up in the NBA: Kenny Anderson, Dennis Scott, Brian Oliver, and Malcolm Mackey.
Stanley and I were close to unstoppable inside, and Vernel played a strong game, but they just kept burying threes over our backcourt of Chris Jackson and Mo. Chris had a bad game. He missed ten of his fifteen shots.
Brian Oliver was all over him. His coach must have told him, “Don’t lose Chris Jackson,” because whenever Coach Brown called a time-out, Brian Oliver practically escorted Chris Jackson
to our bench.
We lost 94–91 in overtime, and we were all pretty disappointed. I was kind of mad at Chris. He had this one herky-jerky move that got him open and he rarely missed, so normally you couldn’t say anything, but in that game he kept missing and missing and he just wouldn’t pass it. At one point I said to him, “What are you doing? Look inside.” He just looked at me. I felt like he sold
us out a little bit. He wanted to get big numbers because he knew he was going pro.
We had what they call “exit interviews” after the season, and Chris and Stanley went first. Chris went in to talk to Coach and he came out and said, “I’m gone. I’m leaving.”
He was the No. 3 pick in the draft of the Denver Nuggets. He converted to Islam in 1991 and changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. That
dude loved the game of basketball. He played in Japan during the 2010–11 season at the age of forty-two. Bet he can still shoot.
When Stanley went in for his meeting, Coach told him, “Stanley, I think you’ve done just about everything you can do at LSU. Maybe it’s time for you to move on.” It really was disappointing to Coach Brown that Stanley was out drinking and blowing off class and hanging
with his girlfriend.
Stanley was the rebellious type. He told Coach Brown, “I’m not leaving yet.”
Stanley thought Coach Brown was trying to run him out so they could feature me in the offense. My dad was talking to Dale Brown all the time, calling him and telling him I needed more shots, more playing time, so maybe that was true.
Stanley had to take a summer course, and when the professor failed
him that pretty much decided it. He had already missed the NBA draft, so he went to play ball in Spain.
With Stanley and Chris gone, now I really was the Big Man on
Campus. I spent a lot of time talking with Bo Bahnsen, who worked for LSU and whose job it was to make sure I wasn’t breaking any rules that could get us in trouble with the NCAA.
Bo was cool. I gave him a run for his money. I nicknamed
him “No Bo,” because that was my answer every time he thought I was up to something.
The NCAA was on my case a lot. Everything was under suspicion. They wondered how I got my shitbox Bronco car. They checked my parents’ credit and asked, “How can he afford it?”
What they didn’t know was I bought that car used. I paid $5,000 for it, and it didn’t even have an engine. It cost me another $1,000
to get one. I had what they call a balloon payment. I put a thousand down from my Pell Grant, which was completely legal, and I mortgaged the other $5,000. I paid $50 a month, and at the end I was going to have a huge payment due, but I figured by that point I’d be in the NBA.
Even though I didn’t have any money, I wanted people on campus to think I did. I was The Man and I had to act the part,
so I took a phone from my dorm room and I put a phony wire underneath my Bronco and pretended I had a car phone. I used to drive around pretending to talk to everybody on it. Of course someone saw me with it and called Bo, and he came down and I had to show him it was phony. “Don’t tell the ladies,” I told Bo, giving him a wink. He promised he wouldn’t.