A few years after we filmed the commercial I saw Wilt in a restaurant in Beverly Hills. He was sitting there with his back to me, and Jerome said, “Aren’t you going to say hello?” I said I didn’t want to bother him, but I kept hoping Wilt would come over and say, “Hey, big fella.” He never did.
He died right after that. I loved Wilt. I used to call him my godfather, and I wanted to buy his house sort of as a tribute. It was nice, but it was kind of old and it would have cost too much to fix it up, so I ended up passing on it.
Once I got to the Lakers I saw Kareem all the time, but he just didn’t want to deal with me. It went on like that for years. We were at the All-Star Game in 2006, and I saw him in the parking lot and I said to my uncle Mike, “Watch this.” He walked by and I said, “Hey, Cap.” He muttered hello and kept on moving.
Jerry West said one of Kareem’s biggest weaknesses was he had trouble relating to his teammates. He kept reminding me that was one of my strengths.
“People like you,” Jerry told me. “They’re drawn to you. You are a natural leader. That big personality of yours is one of your biggest weapons, unless you use it the wrong way.”
And, whenever I did use it the wrong way, I knew Jerry West would be coming for me. My first season we had a couple of rookies, and we hazed them pretty badly. We were dogging them out constantly. It was “Go get my bags, go get me something to eat.” It was kind of a rite of passage in the NBA that a lot of teams do, but we probably went a little too far with it. One of the rookies—Derek Fisher—just took it. The other rookie—Kobe Bryant—ratted us out to Jerry.
Talk about a bad start with your veteran teammates. Jerry called me into his office and absolutely crucified me. He was really ticked off about it. “The kid is eighteen years old, and the two of you can win five championships if you just work together, and already you’re down his throat,” he said. “What the hell are you thinking? Be smarter than that. Be a leader!”
If I closed my eyes, I could have sworn it was Philip Harrison talking to me.
Just like Sarge, I couldn’t get anything past Jerry West.
In the summer of 1998 we were locked out while the owners tried to squeeze some money out of us. We were all told it might be a while before we played any basketball. It was. Our first game that season wasn’t until February, and when we got the call that the games were on again, most of the guys were out of shape—except for Kobe.
They fired Del Harris after twelve games into the shortened season and hired Kurt Rambis for the rest of the season. He quickly aligned himself with Kobe.
Kobe was starting to get comfortable in the league. He started doing too much and taking everyone else out of their rhythm. I told him, “Hey, you’ve got to play team ball,” and he always had an answer back. Anything you told him or suggested to him, he always had a comeback. I don’t think he ever said, “Yeah, sure, thanks. That’s a good idea.”
Rambis had made Kobe the golden child, so everyone was afraid to question the kid. I wasn’t afraid of anyone. I was going to say what was on my mind whether people liked it or not.
We were in Sacramento and we were losing, so we called a team meeting. No coaches—just players. Every time Kobe started with his one-on-one nonsense, we were tired of hearing “He’s just a kid—let it go.” Guys were saying stuff under their breath about him, and that’s never good.
In the meeting one guy after another stood up and said they were tired of the “golden child” getting special treatment. Kobe just sat there. He didn’t say anything.
Kurt was eavesdropping outside, so he busted in and threw in his two cents’ worth which was, “Well, you guys were young and selfish once.”
Right, Kurt. And how is that working out for Kobe? Three air balls in a row. Three of them.
Once Kurt said that it became clear to all of the veterans we weren’t going anywhere with this guy as our coach.
At that point the media starts writing about the “problems” Kobe and I are having. A couple of guys suggested I was jealous that Kobe’s jersey was selling more than my jersey. Please. DFish came to my defense right away. He told them, “Man, all Shaq wants to do is win.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Lakers won a lot of games in the regular season, then got swept in the playoffs. It happened again in 1999. This time we got swept by the San Antonio Spurs, who went on to win the NBA championship.
The Spurs won because of Tim Duncan, a guy I could never break. I could talk trash to Patrick Ewing, get in David Robinson’s face, get a rise out of Alonzo Mourning, but when I went at Tim he’d look at me like he was bored and then say, “Hey, Shaq, watch this shot right here off the glass.”
You gotta love that. I used to say Duncan and I were like two mafia bosses. I was the loud East Coast boss, taking names, knocking heads. Tim was the laid-back, one-hundred-acre farm don. Nobody knows what he does, he’s the chill mafia guy, but we both know how to carry out a hit.
I was jealous of guys like Duncan and Kevin Garnett, who got to do stuff like face up and shimmy. I could so some of that myself, but I was such a power player and the double teams came so quickly, in order for me to get mine I had to go with the boom-boom-bam move. Meanwhile Timmy and Kevin are out there dribbling, shooting off the glass, fading away.
Anyhow, after Duncan and the Spurs swept us out of the playoffs, I was hurting really badly.
All that self-doubt that used to wear me out was coming back. What if I can’t win a championship? I was really beginning to wonder if I could. It just wasn’t happening. What was wrong with us?
Jerry Buss and Jerry West must have been wondering, too. They fired Kurt Rambis. When the media asked me what I thought the Lakers should do, I told them, “We need someone we can respect, like a Phil Jackson.”
Hint hint.
Jerry West had the same idea. He told the owner the coaching carousel had to stop. We needed someone with some juice.
So they hired Phil, and right after the press conference they tell me, “He wants to meet with you.”
Phil didn’t mess around. He told me he expected big things from me. He told me there was absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t be the MVP of the league. And then he went right into it: no more movies, no more rap records, no more parties.
“I know you’ve heard this before, and you’ve said, ‘Yes sir,’ and ‘Okay, sir.’ But you ignored it. This time you better not,” he said.
I told him he had my word. For one thing, the man’s résumé spoke for itself. For another, I was getting older and I wanted to win. I was so tired of people talking about me not being a leader.
That summer I went to see Phil Jackson at his lake house. I was booked to do a benefit rap concert in Montana about twenty miles away, so I told him I was going to drop by.
Phil was at a doctor’s appointment with his daughter. When he got back I was jumping on his trampoline with all the neighborhood kids. But then I got hot, so I threw on my bathing suit and started to do gainers off Phil’s dock into the lake.
Phil kept asking me, “Shouldn’t you be wearing a life vest?” Maybe he thought I couldn’t swim, because most white people think black people can’t swim. Not true, dawg. I’m an excellent swimmer.
We sat down and had a conversation, and he reminded me he expected me to concentrate on basketball and basketball only. Then his kids came to my concert and that was it. I didn’t see Phil Jackson again until training camp.
I couldn’t wait. I wanted that ring, and I’d finally hooked up with the guy who could get me one.
JUNE 19, 2000
Staples Center
Los Angeles, California
The first person who got to Shaquille O’Neal was Kobe Bryant, leaping into his arms like an excitable little boy who couldn’t wait to celebrate with this big brother.
Their embrace was emotional, prolonged, and the big man didn’t bother to conceal the tears that streamed down his face. Shaq had just won his first NBA championship, yet his were not tear
s of joy. They were tears of relief.
They were the by-product of eight years of frustration, criticism, and self-doubt, emotions one person in particular would completely understand. And that was why, in the biggest moment of his professional life, Shaquille O’Neal went looking for Lucille Harrison.
“Once that buzzer sounded,” he said, “all I wanted to do was give my mommy a kiss.”
Since he was eight years old his pregame ritual hadn’t wavered. He found his mother and pecked her on the cheek, a homage to the woman who had fortified him with the emotional strength to withstand the withering disappointments that had clouded his career.
Lucille was the one who reminded him, “Michael didn’t do it the first time. Michael didn’t do it the second time. Stay with the mission.”
“Everything with Shaquille was, ‘He’s a great player, but…’ ” Lucille said. “After a while, what people say about you starts to influence your thinking. It can overwhelm you. And it started to overwhelm Shaquille.”
On the eve of the 2000 playoffs, Lucille corralled her oldest son and attempted to eradicate the doubt she knew was lurking.
“Turn your ear off to the naysayers,” she said. “Don’t let them crush you with their words. You have to change your way of thinking. You were the happiest, most positive little boy I’ve ever seen.
“Now draw from that positive thinking as a grown man.”
He caught glimpses of her in Game 6 of the Finals against Indiana, resplendent in pink, the stress of her son’s journey etched in her face.
He scored 41 points in the final game against the Pacers to smash an exclamation point on a truly dominant season. He was named the All-Star MVP, the regular-season MVP, and the Finals MVP, only the third player in league history to receive all three in one season.
All the past failures in Orlando and LA and LSU were washed away by a deluge of purple-and-gold Laker confetti and the impassioned chants of “MVP!” meant only for him.
A succession of well-wishers embraced him: Phil Jackson, Glen Rice, Magic Johnson, his uncle Mike Parris, his bodyguard, Jerome Crawford. Yet Shaquille O’Neal, the most happy-go-lucky superstar in the league, remained stone-faced.
“I guess I just wasn’t sure it had finally happened,” he said.
He clutched the Larry O’Brien trophy with one of his massive hands and used the other to wrap it around his mother’s waist. He celebrated with John Salley and Rick Fox and Ron Harper and Kobe, too, but they had not walked in his shoes. Although they were his teammates, they were not his confidants.
“Mom,” he whispered in Lucille Harrison’s ear, “this one is for you.”
TRUST IS A BEAUTIFUL THING. WE HAD IT ON MY FIRST championship team in Los Angeles. I admit I wasn’t always good about trusting my teammates in the past. I felt I had to get it done myself.
But we had made some big changes, starting with Phil Jackson.
The first day of workouts he asked me, “What’s the most impressive thing about Wilt Chamberlain’s career?” I knew it was a trick question. I thought he wanted me to say scoring 100 points in a game, but I went with the fact that Wilt averaged 50 points and 27 rebounds one season. “That’s not it,” Phil said. “It was that he played almost every minute of every game. He averaged 48.5 minutes a night in 1961–62, when his team played in ten overtime games. Do you think you can average forty minutes a game?”
I hear myself saying, “Sure, I can do that.”
Phil was a smart guy. He understood me. He knew I liked to have fun and I liked to do things my way, but if he showed me respect and asked me to do something, I would do it.
One of the things he told me was he was going to mess me up if I missed free throws, so I started working on it five hours a day. When I was in Orlando, I worked with a guy named Buzz Braman, who preached routine. If it goes in, follow the routine. So my routine became bounce it one, two, three times, elbow straight, elbow at the rim, take a little deep breath, shoot it, then forget about it. I tried it, but I got the same results. Sometimes it went in, sometimes it didn’t. It was mental with me—had to be. I often shot 80 percent from the line in practice.
Right before the season started there was an article in the paper quoting Phil saying, “If Shaq concentrates he can be the MVP of the league this year. If he doesn’t, it will be like all the other seasons. We’ll win fifty-six games but we’ll go home early.”
I didn’t want to go home early.
We added John Salley and Ron Harper to our roster, two guys who had rings already. They brought in Brian Shaw, my old teammate from Orlando. Suddenly we had veterans who had seen it all, who really truly cared only about winning. I had help all around me, and I’m not just talking about Kobe.
Take a guy like Rick Fox. He’s standing there in the corner and you know he’s deadly from there, so I’ve got the ball and I’m thinking about muscling it in, but then I say, “Let me kick it to Rick and see what he can do,” or “Let me kick it to Glen Rice and give him a look. I’ve already got 25, so let’s get them involved.” It was my way of showing them “Hey, I believe in you.”
It worked. The triangle gave us ball movement and the trust gave us the chemistry we needed to succeed. That’s not to say there still weren’t conflicts once in a while. But we had guys on that Lakers team who knew how to handle it, like Ron Harper. Harp won championships with Phil in Chicago and he commanded respect from everyone.
He was old school and I was old school and Harp knew Kobe was new school, so if Kobe and I were having a beef he’d have a conversation with Kobe then he’d come to me. He’d calm us down. He’d tell me, “Shaq, meet me halfway on this. Kobe’s a young guy, you’ve got to understand that. And we need him. You know we do. You’re getting under his skin, so lay off a little bit.”
I won’t lie to you. That was hard for me. I was under so much pressure, and Kobe took so many bad shots I wanted to scream at him, “Miss another shot and I’m getting you traded!”
BShaw was another guy who ran interference. He had no problem getting in Kobe’s grill and telling him, “Stop being so selfish. We’re playing team ball here.” BShaw knew how to get me the rock. Our Shaw-Shaq Redemption move was unstoppable. We had an eye contact thing. Brian wasn’t a traditional point guard. He’s not just looking at where you want the ball, he’s looking at how the defense is playing. A defender might be in one spot, but only a smart guy like Brian would know to throw it to a different spot. Once I saw his eyebrow go up I knew the lob was coming. And it was perfect, every time.
We were lucky to have Robert Horry on our side, too. Every coach has their whipping boy and Rob was Phil’s. He would mess with Rob all the time. He’d tell Horry, “When you hear me whistle, that’s the sound of your master calling, so you better come.” Rob would say, “You ain’t my goddamn master,” but when Phil whistled, Big Shot Bob came running.
Man, Horry hit a ton of big shots. He was a guy who understood his role and didn’t worry about anything else. Hit game winners. That was what his calling card was. Everything else was gravy.
Phil Jackson knew how to treat us like men. If I went out and gave him a 29-point and 20-rebound game, he’d come in the next day and say, “Hey, go find Danny. Get a massage.”
Danny Garcia was our massage therapist. He’s one of my closest friends, and he’s been with me ever since I went to Los Angeles. When I played in Boston during the 2010–11 season, he lived in my house in Sudbury with me. He knows the pounding my body takes. So I’d get my massage, and then Phil would put me on the exercise bike for thirty minutes, and then he’d send me home. I remember thinking, “I love this dude.”
You know I was going to give my coach everything I had in the next game because I wanted Phil to believe this arrangement was going to work.
Naturally we were going to run the triangle because that was Phil’s signature offense. I didn’t know anything about the triangle before Phil got there. The good thing about Phil was we did the same thing every day. We did this litt
le hip-skip-hop thing. He said “hip” and we went forward. Then it was “skip” and we hopped back.
We’d run through each option of the triangle seven times each. We did it over and over so guys would memorize it, almost like muscle memory, only this was brain memory. After a while it became second nature.
He’s telling me, “Shaq, you will be like a point center in the triangle. You are going to touch the ball every time down.”
Phil was definitely a different sort of cat. He was into his Zen mode a lot. Being from the ’hood, I knew what certain drugs smelled like—weed, for instance. Phil wanted us to meditate, so he’d put us in a room and dim the lights and he’d burn sage. It smelled like weed. We’d call him on it and he’d tell us, “No, it’s not weed. It’s the cousin of weed.”
We had this fifteen-seat theater at the practice facility, and he’d start pounding this Indian drum. When he hit that thing, it meant “Get your ass to the theater.” You could be anywhere, but when you heard that doo, doo, doo sound you better get moving—or else.
Once we got in the theater he’d turn out the lights and it would be pitch-black. So here comes the weed—oh, sorry Phil, the “cousin of weed”—and then he’d tell us to lean back in our chairs and relax. Then he’d start talking to us about whatever was going on with our team.
He’d say, “Right now there’s some negativity going on, so let’s release that,” or he might say, “Tomorrow we’re playing a team that is going to be coming for you, so concentrate on your safe place, your positive thoughts. Remember to share the ball, move the ball, trust each other.”
A lot of days you’d hear guys snoring, usually the ones who had been out late the night before. Certain days even I’d fall asleep because I was tired, and other times I’d try to listen to what he was saying, and other times I really would meditate.
Shaq Uncut: My Story Page 14