The other thing I did was when I got my
Pell Grant, which was about $2,500, I’d take it in five one-hundred-dollar bills and the rest in ones. Then I’d put it in one fat bankroll and drive around campus with this big wad of cash. It looked like it was a hell of a lot more than it was, because most of those bills were Washingtons, not Benjamins. But nobody knew that because I’d wrap that wad with the big bills on the outside. I’d pull out
my stash and wave it around and say, “Should I stay, or go pro?” Naturally, Bo had to come and see me about that, too.
“Bo,” I’d tell him again, “I ain’t done nothing. It’s all an act.”
The truth is, it could have been a lot worse and Bo knew it. I kept up academically. He didn’t have to jump on me for that. He dealt with all sorts of athletes who couldn’t be bothered. He told me one of his
athletes gave up school for Lent.
A bunch of us on the team got to be friendly with this guy who owned a bar called The Tiger. We’d go there a lot and hang out and have fun. Once in a while, I’d jump behind the counter and become the bartender. That prompted another phone call and another visit from Bo, who was making sure I didn’t have an illegal job and I wasn’t drinking any alcohol, since
I was underage.
No Bo. No on both counts.
To this day I still don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. I’ve never been arrested, either, although I was “detained” once in college.
LSU had always been a football school. The football players walked around saying it. But we were winning a lot more than they were, so we walked around saying, “This is a basketball school.”
We all used to mess around with
the same girls, so you knew that was going to be a problem eventually. There was this one girl named Tiffany Broussard, and everyone loved her. She was bragging about being involved with a football player, and I was trying to be with her, so I said, “Screw the football guys. Check their record. See what we’ve done. Basketball is king on this campus.”
The football player Tiffany liked was Anthony
Marshall. He was about six foot three or four, a fairly big guy—unless he was standing next to me. So Anthony wanted to talk to me about what I said to Tiffany.
We all lived in Broussard Hall. I’m in Anthony’s room, and he’s got about four or five of his boys in there with him. We start arguing about Tiffany, and they start to gather around me, so I follow my motto—hit first, ask questions later—and
I pop Anthony Marshall in the mouth. Then I run down the stairs. The basketball players lived on the bottom floor in the corner, and I needed some backup.
The five football guys are chasing after me, and I get to my room and close the door, and now almost the whole football team is outside
my door chanting my name. I was scared, because I was in my room all by myself.
Eventually they get the
door open, and four or five of them run in and they’re about to destroy me when I say, “If Anthony wants to fight, then let us fight. You really need all this help to take me on?”
I got a couple of shots in (and so did he) before I got him in a headlock. By then the campus police was there and the football coach had come flying in, screaming, “Stop hitting my players!” He’s in my face shouting
at me, “This is all your fault!” The next thing you know, Coach Brown is on the scene and he grabbed me and got me out of there. There are TV cameras rolling and the football players are getting arrested and it’s a big mess.
For my role in everything, I was “detained” by the police. Anthony and I had to shake hands. Everyone was trying to downplay the football versus basketball thing, but it
was real. There was a lot of tension between the two teams.
So Dale said to me, “You need to get your own place off campus.” The next semester I moved in with Dennis Tracey, whose claim to fame was that he was an LSU walk-on. One day Dale was having trouble finding someone to shut down Charles Smith from Georgetown, so he put Dennis in the game. Dennis did a great job on Charles Smith, and Dale
ending up giving him a scholarship.
Dennis was a smart guy. He was older than me, and we became good friends. He also became my personal manager for a while. We lived together in this little house with a pool in the backyard. Dennis had a pair of boxing gloves, so we started boxing—with one glove each. Those were really fun days.
During the 1990–91 season I was the first player to lead the SEC
in scoring, rebounding, field goal percentage, and blocks. In December of that season, we beat Arkansas State and I scored 53 points—including, by the way, 17 of 21 from the free-throw line.
We also beat Kentucky and Arizona, which was the number two team in the country at the time. I was finally on the national radar.
Vernel was our second option, and our guard Mike Hansen also averaged in double
figures, but we all knew who was getting the ball when the game was on the line.
Coach Brown was on me to make sure I didn’t blow it. I was never late for practice, but once in a while I missed a class. One morning I’m sound asleep in my room and there’s this loud knock on my door. It’s four thirty in the morning. I get out of bed and there’s Coach Brown standing there. He said to me, “Did you
miss class yesterday?”
I’m half asleep but I say, “Yes sir.”
He says, “Well, then, c’mon, son. Put your shoes on. We’re going for a run.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Right now, Coach?”
“Right now, Shaquille,” he said. “Let’s go.”
After that, I didn’t miss too many more classes.
By the end of my sophomore season we had tied for the SEC regular season championship, and we had one game left before
the tournament.
I injured my leg and it was really killing me. All we had to do was beat Mississippi State and we’d win the SEC outright, so Coach Brown says, “What do you think?” I told him I could play, but the truth was there was really something wrong with my leg.
Dale decided to sit me out. “Shaq, I don’t want you to risk it,” he said.
We lost to Mississippi State and everyone was furious.
Coach also sat me out against Auburn in the SEC tournament, and we lost that game, too.
Coach Brown and the trainer, Doc Broussard, really got into it. The trainer thought Dale was trying to be a doctor. But Coach Brown told him, “I’m not. I’m just trying to protect his career. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to Shaquille that stopped him from going to the next level.”
Doc Broussard
was from the old school, worse than my father. I remember once Wayne Sims got popped in the face, and his lip
was split open and he was bleeding all over the place and he needed stitches, but Doc said, “You’re all right, you sissy. Get back in the game.”
He was hard-core, a mean bastard. I kept telling him, “Every time I put pressure on my foot, it really hurts.” In fact, I had an MRI afterward
and they said it was a hairline fracture.
When Coach Brown told him I wasn’t playing against Mississippi State, Broussard said, “This is the first time since Pistol Pete Maravich we can win the SEC championship and this wimp won’t go. He’s just saving himself to go pro.”
Dale said, “No, he wouldn’t do that.”
While they’re arguing our team is on the court warming up. I’m not out there, so the
Mississippi State fans started chanting, “Where’s your big-lipped African? Where’s your big-lipped African?”
Coach Brown went crazy when he heard it. Mississippi State’s fans had done this before. The previous year someone wrote an article on Chris Jackson and how he never knew his father, so when our team ran out for warm-ups, they started chanting, “Where’s your dad? Who’s your dad?”
Dale
went to the PA announcer and ordered them to stop. The game hadn’t even started and already everyone was all riled up. Coach Brown got on his radio show that night and blasted Mississippi State, their coach, their fans, their president. That’s why we loved Coach. He always had our backs.
I was still injured when the NCAA tournament started, but I gave it my best shot. I had 27 points and 16 rebounds,
but we lost to UConn. Mike Hansen had gotten mononucleosis, so he wasn’t himself, either.
Doc Broussard was wrong about me. I didn’t declare for the NBA draft that spring. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t even started taking my business classes yet. I knew how to balance a checkbook, but that was about it. I needed to learn about making a living in case this basketball thing didn’t work out. I needed
an education.
Coach Brown had already started talking to me about playing
professionally. He could see I was going to be dominant and eventually go to the NBA, so he started exposing me to all sorts of different people. I remember one morning I was asleep in my dorm room and I heard some noise and I woke up and I was kind of fuzzy, but I see this old guy talking to me, and it’s John Wooden. He
was friends with Dale Brown, and he came to talk to me about teamwork and the pride of playing for one’s school. I think what he was really trying to do was to convince me to stay in college for all four years. I certainly respected Coach Wooden and everything he stood for, but I still had to do what I had to do.
Another time Dale brought in Kareem to teach me a sky hook. He brought in Bill Walton,
who later told reporters I reminded him of Charles Barkley because of my “raw power.” My father heard about these visits and wanted to know why Dale was encouraging me to shoot a hook shot.
“He’s a power player,” my dad told my coach. “I want him to dunk.”
Dale got me on the phone with Julius Erving, my childhood idol. He brought Olympic sprinter Carl Lewis in. Coach Brown loved Carl Lewis.
Carl told us, “You know, growing up we’ve all got dreams and we all want to be All-Americans, but wanting that and willing that to happen are two completely different things.”
I was an All-American after my sophomore year. The Associated Press and UPI named me National Player of the Year, but I didn’t win the Wooden Award or the Naismith Award. Larry Johnson of Nevada–Las Vegas won both of those,
so he was on my hit list.
When I started my junior season in 1991, I had an idea it would be my final year of college. I averaged 21 points and 14 rebounds a game, which was second in the nation. I led the country with 5.3 blocks, but again someone else won the Naismith and the Wooden ahead of me. This time it was Duke center Christian Laettner.
The first time I played against Laettner, in February
1991 in Durham, North Carolina, he completely destroyed me. He embarrassed me. He back-doored me to death and walked off with 24 points and
11 boards. I had never heard of him. I remember asking, “Who the hell is this guy?” He fundamentally undressed me, so after that, I was keeping an eye on him.
Coach got us a rematch the next season, my final year at LSU, and a week before the game I strained
my calf muscle. I was really sore, but I had to play because people were talking about Laettner and Georgetown center Alonzo Mourning with a little more breath than they were about me, and I couldn’t have that. I just had to be the No. 1 pick.
I taped up my calf and I took it to Laettner. Hard. I dropped 25 and 12 on him and I blocked 7 shots, but they came from behind and won. I’ll never forget
Laettner’s face when I was dunking on him. He looked terrified. I was talking all sorts of trash to him, too.
Years later I played with him in Miami and discovered he was a really nice guy. I didn’t know. Back in college, I hated everyone from Duke. I knew people who went to Duke had to be smart. I knew I wasn’t that smart. Growing up where I did, I never learned all those words they put on those
entrance exams.
I broke the LSU school record for blocked shots in my final season, and they presented me with the ball before one of our games. My parents always sat in the same place, right behind the student section, so I turned to my father, pointed to him, and threw him the ball.
The reason I did that was because whenever I was a kid and won a trophy, he’d let me take it home and admire
it. I’d get up the next morning and go to school, and the trophy would be gone by the time I got home. When I asked him where it was, he’d tell me, “That’s over. History. Go win another one.”
The commemorative ball was my latest trophy, so I threw it to him to let him know I remembered.
Some student jumped up in front of my dad and snagged the ball. You should have seen Sarge’s face. The kid
was smart enough to hand it over to him.
All of our games were sold out in ’91–’92. Students were camping
outside the gym the night before to get tickets. I was signing autographs all over the state of Louisiana. A family in Baton Rouge named their newborn son after me, so I showed up at their house, unannounced, to take some pictures.
The people at LSU get this great idea to print up these
T-shirts with a drawing of me doing my signature dunk where I’m hanging on the rim with my legs kicked up like Rony Seikaly.
They printed up a whole bunch of these T-shirts and were going to sell them during one of our games. I don’t really know anything about it, but when Sarge walks into the arena and sees those T-shirts, he loses it.
One thing about my father is he’s not going to let anyone
take advantage of our family.
We were in our locker room, and Coach Brown was delivering his pregame speech when
boom!
The door flies open, and here comes Sarge. He’s eyes are popping out of his head, he’s so pissed off. He’s got one of the T-shirts in his hands and he’s shouting, “What the fuck is this about? What makes you think this is all right?”
He told Dale, “We could be taking money.
We’ve been offered plenty of stuff through the years, but we haven’t done it that way. We’ve done it the right way. And now you’re going to make money off my son? I got a big problem with that.”
Everyone is quiet. No one is saying a thing. I’m more than a little embarrassed. Everyone knows your parents aren’t allowed in the locker room before the game. But Sarge has got a point.
Next thing I
know, he’s telling Coach Brown that unless the T-shirts are taken down and put away, I wasn’t going to play in the game. Now I’ve got my head down. I want to disappear.
But Coach Brown is really good. He’s used to dealing with Sarge. He gets him calmed down. The T-shirts disappear. I play in the game. We avoid a major meltdown.