Shaq Uncut: My Story

by Shaquille O’Neal

  Shaq feigned indifference over his show of strength, yet inside, he was seething. The dunk was a message to Coleman, who had been talking trash to him all night and threatening to dunk on his head.

  “When Shaq pulled that backboard down, it was all about respect—and one-upmanship,” explained his friend Dennis Scott.

  Within days Armato and Pepsi were on the phone, concocting ways to capitalize on the big man’s demonstration of dominance. Pepsi drew up a commercial that would feature a bigger-than-life Shaq reaching through the roof of an arena, grabbing the basketball rim, and tearing it off.

  When apprised of the story line, O’Neal rejected it immediately.

  “I only do what’s real,” Shaq explained. “Like tearing down rims and playing with kids.”

  WHEN I FIRST GOT TO ORLANDO, I WANTED TO ESTABLISH myself as a dominant force. I felt it was important to intimidate the other big men out there with my size and my strength. I wanted them to think twice about coming after me.

  I was Superman, just liked I had dreamed about when I was a little boy in Newark, New Jersey. The Magic was an expansion team and needed some credibility. It was my job to bring it.

  But first I had to get settled in my new community. Lester found me a house that he thought was just perfect for me. Wrong. When I sat down on the toilet my knees were up to my ears. The shower had to be ripped out because I couldn’t even stand up in there. That house was a temporary holding tank for Superman. I had much bigger plans for myself.

  That was my mentality back then. Buy something, then make it bigger and better. I went to a place on Lee Road in Orlando and bought a Ford Fairlane convertible. I turned it into what Dennis Tracey and I called my first Hoop-D. I put about sixty thousand dollars into it to get it the way I wanted.

  By the time I was done with that car, it could jump up and down and shake side to side. There were speakers inside every available panel. That car was literally rocking.

  I saw it at this little old used-car lot one day when I was driving by. The guy wanted ten grand for it. I walked out of there having paid $3,800. Even then I was a good businessman.

  There was this fairly new community called Isleworth sprouting up in Windermere. It had a gate and that was good, because it was becoming obvious I needed some place where people couldn’t just ride up and hang with Shaq. It was a beautiful spot, right on the water. The house was furnished, and when I went upstairs to look around I saw this amazing round bed in the master bedroom. It was huge. It fit thirty people.

  I told Lester, “I gotta have this house.”

  It was the bed. I wanted that bed.

  We made an offer and I told them I wanted it furnished. The guy wanted three hundred thousand dollars extra for the furniture. Now I was so in love with that bed I would have paid that much just to get it, but I’m a businessman, so I got him down to seventy-five thousand. As soon as that bed was mine, I had a custom-made black comforter with a Superman logo for it.

  We had to throw in a couple of signed jerseys, some tickets, and a signed picture with me after a game. It was amazing how the price dropped if I would just stop and take a picture with someone.

  Of course, if you were a kid, I was going to do that for free anyway. I did just about anything for kids. Now those pushy grown-ups? That’s another story.

  Once Dennis and I moved into Isleworth, we used to tell our friends, “Welcome to Disney World.” It felt like it. I had everything I ever wanted. But the minute I walked outside those gates I’d say, “Well, here we are back in the real world again.”

  Years later someone asked me why I insisted on living my life like I was still a little kid. I told him, “Sometimes I feel like the Tom Hanks character in the movie Big. But my life is not a movie. I never have to go back to Coney Island to find the fortune teller machine so I have to grow up again.”

  One of the things I invested in when I first got to Orlando was some coin-operated car washes. We were doing really well, making a lot of money, but one day Lester called me up and told me the numbers weren’t matching up. The profits we should have had were not the same numbers that were being deposited in the bank.

  “Don’t worry, Lester,” I told him, but he was freaking out about it. He even flew to Orlando to discuss it with me. He calculated we were missing almost a quarter million dollars.

  It took me a while, but I finally came clean with him. I showed Lester my bedroom, where there were a whole bunch of wooden rain barrels—full of quarters.

  Lester said, “Shaquille, what the hell is this? Is this the missing money?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Lester, I can’t help it. I like seeing my money. Come here, run your fingers through all these quarters. It’s awesome!”

  Lester called the bank and told them he had $250,000 worth of quarters to deposit. It took weeks to put it all in there because they didn’t have enough coin machines to sort it all out.

  Even though I had all that money, I was determined to keep it real. I had two Rotweillers, Shaz and Thor, and I used to walk them all over town. I wasn’t going to be a shut-in just because suddenly I was famous. One day I was driving my new SUV and I had the music blasting and they could hear me coming from five miles away. Boom da boom da boom, must be Shaq.

  I was driving past Turkey Lake Park and there were a bunch of guys playing some ball. I slowed down a bit and I was watching them play, and they weren’t half bad.

  They looked like they were having fun, so I pulled over, and me and my Rotweillers got out and I shot around with those guys for about an hour.

  I liked doing things like that. I liked talking with people. And once they put their tongues back in their mouths and got over the shock that it really was me, Shaquille O’Neal, star of the Orlando Magic, we had ourselves a few laughs.

  It’s hard for celebrities to get around. That’s what you always hear. Well, it’s only as hard as you make it. I’m a people person, so I like to be out and about. It’s what makes me happy. I’m not the guy who is sneaking out the back door. Never.

  One of the things I loved doing when I was in Orlando was riding the SkyCoaster. It was this skydiving and hang-gliding ride, all in one.

  I always took the same route home every day and I was mesmerized by what looked like this upside-down triangle. I always wondered what it was. One day I’m driving and I see these people swinging back and forth up almost over the highway. I was so curious about it. At first, I used to go at night and watch people do it.

  So one night I finally got on it and I was hooked. I was addicted. I did it thirty times in a row. They put you in this harness and they tie you in and when pull this lever the cord springs you up in the air.

  The last time I did it I was with my bodyguard, Jerome, and another friend. All three of us are big. There was a lot of weight on it and when we started swinging up the damn thing buckled. We were up so high I thought we were going to tip over. I looked at Jerome when the ride was over and said, “I’m never riding this thing again.” Too bad, because that ride was a lot of fun.

  One thing that got a little complicated was all the people who came out of nowhere once I signed my contract. All of a sudden everyone wanted a piece of me. Old “friends” who I never liked in the first place. New “friends” who didn’t love me, only the sight of all my money. Even people I really cared about, all of a sudden everyone had an opinion on what I should do and how I should do it.

  My first couple of years in the NBA, I tried to please everybody. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work. I wish it did, because I like to get along with people. I was raised by the Sarge to respect authority and to never question the people in charge.

  But that became hard to do after a while.

  We went 41-41 my first season in Orlando, which was 21 wins better than the year before. I was still learning my way around the NBA, but I still managed to be the first rookie in eleven years to have 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in a season. We missed making the playoffs because Indiana, which had th
e same record as us, edged us out in the tiebreaker, but then the most incredibly lucky thing happened.

  Even though we had only a 1 in 66 chance of winning the draft lottery, we did it again. We got the No. 1 pick. The Magic was going to take Chris Webber, but I went in to talk to Orlando general manager John Gabriel and flexed my Superman muscles. I told him, “Listen, I understand you want Webber, but this cat Penny Hardaway is the answer. I got to know him doing the movie Blue Chips, and if you put us together we could be like Magic and Kareem.”

  I waited a second for dramatic pause. Then I told him, “If you don’t bring Penny in here, then maybe I’ve got to think about doing something else.”

  So they bring in Penny and everything is great. We’re cool, we’re playing ball together, we’re going to win the whole thing.

  Penny was a lot of fun. He wanted to be a star, and he had some grand ideas on how to pull that off. I liked his style. We got involved in this little game of “anything you can buy I can buy better.” It was a competition, but not in a negative way. We were just two young, stupid, rich athletes showing each other up.

  It went something like this. Penny would go out and buy a Ferrari, so I had to go out and a buy a nicer car. We were young and cocky, and we all wanted to be The Man in every category. Girls, cars, houses. I figured since I was single and had a lot of money and a lot of responsibility, I had to be The Man on the team. I’m a bit of a show-off, so if anyone tried to one-up me, I had to do something outlandish to respond to it.

  So Penny would come in with a Ferrari, and I’d go out and buy two Ferraris. I’d cut one in half and superglue it together with the other one, and I’d have a Long Ferrari.

  When Horace Grant joined our team, he got this house with a really nice pool in the backyard, so I had to tear down my guest house and gut it and build an even more fabulous pool than his.

  It was all in good fun. No animosity. It wasn’t ever a negative thing. It was more like, “Yo, Penny. Check out my new Long Ferrari when you get to the valet.”

  By the time Penny came on board, Matt Goukas had stepped down and Brian Hill was the coach. He was a very nice man, one of those basketball lifers. We gave him a run for his money.

  Like a lot of teams I was on, the Orlando Magic had cliques. It was me, Dennis Scott, Nick Anderson, and later on Brian Shaw. We always hung out together.

  Then there was a group led by Scott Skiles that included Jeff Turner, Greg Kite, and Larry Krystkowiak. Now I’m not big into the racial thing, but it was true my group was all black guys and Scott’s was all white. There weren’t any bad feelings between the groups, but we had absolutely nothing in common. Can you see Greg Kite coming to the clubs and rapping with me? I don’t think so.

  It kind of came to a head eventually. I was having a blast living large in the NBA, and we went on a West Coast trip that started in Seattle. We flew from Seattle to Los Angeles after the game, and me and my guys went out and partied our asses off. For me that meant staying out late, mixing some rap music, having some fun. I didn’t drink, but other guys did. So we’re playing the Clippers and we lost.

  Brian Hill was the coach and he was ticked off. He had a right to be. Skiles was our team leader, a guy who was a little older and on his way out, and I was the young leader coming in.

  We were still in LA the next day practicing and BHill was making us run. Everyone was a little slow except Skiles. He was running us ragged, swearing at us, telling us, “All you damn guys do is party.”

  He was right. He was telling the truth, but he was puffing his chest out a little too much for my taste. It was a little too phony as far as I was concerned. If you’re a leader, then be one. Don’t try to show off and embarrass the rest of the guys. Skiles kept yapping and yapping and I finally told him, “Shut the hell up. We’ve heard enough of you.”

  All of a sudden the son of a bitch came right for me. Now Scott Skiles is a foot shorter than me. He looks like a little old man at this point. He’s going bald, for crying out loud. But he’s charging me so I’ve got no choice—I gotta slug him with an uppercut to the jaw. You know my rule: Don’t wait for someone to hit you.

  Next thing I do is put him in a headlock, because if I have to hit him again I might hurt him, and that wasn’t what I planned on doing when I showed up to practice that day. At that point Krystkowiak tries to jump me, but DScott elbowed him in the back of the head and now we’ve got this mini brawl going on. If anyone had seen it they would have sworn it was a black-white thing.

  It wasn’t, really. Anyhow, the coaching staff broke us up and Brian Hill said, “Practice is over,” and that was it. You’d think something like that would carry over, but it really didn’t.

  Actually, I wish I would have gotten Skiles a little earlier in his career. He was a tough guy and a great passer. He had some range, too. I really did have a lot of respect for his game.

  The summer after my first NBA season Reebok asked me to do a clinic in Brazil, so I went along with Brian Hill. I remember seeing Phil Jackson there, but I didn’t really say much to him other than hello.

  Dennis Tracey is my manager, and he’s supposed to be organizing this trip for me, but he forget to take into account it was on the other side of the globe and it was winter there, so we had all the wrong clothes. I’m thinking I’m going to this warm South American city and instead I was freezing my ass off.

  I had to get Dennis back for that, so we’re driving down the street in Sao Paulo and we’re at a red light and I say to Dennis, “Hey, dare you to jump out and run to the light and back with no clothes on.” It was probably about fifty yards away, tops. Dennis says, “What’s it worth to you?” I told him, “I’ll give you five thousand dollars.” So Dennis whips off his clothes and jumps out of the car, and of course the light changes and we lock the doors and take off. So Dennis is running after us for about a mile and a half and he’s naked. We finally let him back in—but only if he agrees to forfeit his five grand.

  I did a couple of overseas trips that summer, including one to Tokyo. I did one appearance where there were about fifteen thousand fans, and they kept pushing closer and closer, and when they announced I’d be signing autographs it was like a dam broke loose and these people were all coming straight for me. They had to bring out the riot police so the fans wouldn’t rip me to pieces.

  My favorite part of that trip was when I got to meet a genuine sumo wrestler. He gave me a samurai sword as a gift, but they wouldn’t let me take it on the plane.

  My early years in Orlando were a great time in my life. Our team was getting better, but we were still young and foolish and having fun. I was a real practical joker. Guys would come out of the shower and I’d completely ambush them, tackle them, take them to the ground.

  Butt naked, of course.

  Guys started to realize they better stay sharp on the plane, otherwise they might wake up with pink-painted fingernails.

  I was in demand all the time. I did a lot of endorsements, but I also made sure I made time for the community. That was very important to me. Whenever there was a sick kid or a terminally ill person who wanted to meet a Magic player, I was their guy. I had a soft spot for the kids in particular.

  I started a Shaqsgiving Dinner for homeless people in the area. One of the most vivid memories of my childhood is when I was with my dad. We never had any money, but he was going to take me out for a burger. We’re heading there and we see this homeless guy on the street, and my dad calls him over and he gives him our money for the burgers. “You always help those less fortunate than you,” said Sarge.

  I know, but geez, I really wanted that burger.

  Because I was so visible in Orlando, I started becoming really popular in the community. Leonard described me as “a cross between the Terminator and Bambi.” Pat Williams told Sports Illustrated I was “sucking the marrow out of the bones of life.”

  Most of the time, everyone was good with it. Once in a while, though, they didn’t dig Shaq being Shaq.

  So
mehow it just worked out that when we played Atlanta it always hit on the weekend of Freaknik, this big spring break party they had in Buckhead with students from all of the black colleges. It was party city, and me and DScott and the guys always made certain we participated. What that meant was when it came time to play the Hawks a lot of us were suffering from the “Buckhead flu.”

  Brian Hill got so upset he told us, “I’m never taking you guys to Atlanta the night before the game again. From now on we’re flying in on the same day.” NBA regulations require you to fly into the city the night before the game, but he didn’t care. He paid the fine rather than give us another crack at Freaknik.

  Even though I was having fun my first couple of years, we weren’t winning enough, and everyone around me in my inner circle was frustrated. My father complained constantly about our point guards to just about anybody who would listen. Leonard called Pat Williams all the time about it. He’d say, “Get the big man the ball.” Pat would tell him, “We’ll get right on that.” It wasn’t until they brought in Brian Shaw and we established the Shaw-Shaq Redemption that we had a point guard who knew how to throw up that lob.

  Brian was one of those final pieces that helped us bring it all together during the 1994–95 season. The other piece was Horace Grant, who had won championships with the Bulls and knew what it took to get over the top.

  We had a strong nucleus with those two guys and me and Nick Anderson and Penny, who was turning into a serious star. He had raised his game to an incredible level and made the first All-NBA team that year. We made it to the NBA Finals, and we did it by beating MJ and the Bulls, which was a big deal for Horace.

  Hell, it was big for all of us. We were jumping on top of the press tables at the O-rena and soaking in the love from the crowd. All of a sudden our city was on the basketball map. It was loud, vibrant, crazy.

  We got too happy too soon. After we beat the Bulls we had ten days off before the Finals. Me and DScott flew to Atlanta and just partied. We were hitting the clubs and finding some girls and dancing and gambling and listening to music all night long.