We get over there and we rope everything off, and this is a big test for me. Anyone who comes in after that has to be recorded. It’s called a chain of custody, and you have to keep track of who comes in just in case any evidence is missing. The forensic guys come in and take pictures.
We get to the car and there’s a guy, about nineteen or twenty years old, with a piece of his head blown off. It was gang related. He still had a shotgun sitting in his lap, but a good chunk of his head was gone. I wish I could tell you I’ve never seen anything like it, but I have.
One day I was in the house in Newark on punishment, and it was raining really hard. I went to the bathroom and I opened the window because it was hot, and I see these two guys fighting. One of the guys pulls out a gun and shoots the other one right in the face—boom! Only the guy that gets shot doesn’t die. He gets up and he’s bleeding all over the place and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I’m just a kid and I’m on punishment and I’m a compulsive liar because of what my mother called my “active imagination,” so I’m all worked up and I run to get one of my cousins and yell, “Someone just got shot!”
My cousin runs to the window and he doesn’t see anybody so he said, “Screw you, Shaquille. Get back in your room.” No one believes me. After a while even I’m wondering if I made the whole thing up, but then about three days later some of the gang guys from the neighborhood come by and tell my cousin, “Yeah, our boy got shot in the face.”
Most of the time when I was working with the Cargo Cats, we’d be tailing stolen cars. Sometimes they’d pull over and get arrested peacefully. Other times we’d have to chase them down. You had to be careful where you did that because you didn’t want to go after a car at high speeds with lots of people around. The trick was to wait until they got on a highway. We’d be coordinating with a couple of other cars, and we’d chase them down and pull our guns. I did that countless times without anyone knowing about it, but one time people found out about it because I had my Shaq sneakers on instead of my boots.
One of the most memorable busts for me was in Baton Rouge, somewhere around 1998 or 1999. It was a drug bust and nobody was supposed to see me. We were wearing masks, and we went into the house with a warrant and we’re asking questions and we’ve got our guns drawn. This guy looks over at his refrigerator, which has a picture of me from LSU on it, and then back at me. He says, “You’re not a cop, you’re Shaq!” But he was really drunk, so I said, “You’re crazy. Shut up and put your hands behind your back.”
I’ve assisted in more than five hundred arrests. Some go smoother than others. I was in Virginia working with a federal task force—the ICAC, which stands for Internet Crimes Against Children. We had to go up there for training. It was a three-day course, sixteen hours each day, and then we graduated.
The US Marshals and the FBI were conducting a child porn raid and invited me to assist. The street address was something like 1336, but this house had those little numbers that you hammer in with a little nail and when the nail comes out, the nine flips over and becomes a six. So we ended up going to the wrong house.
And this was no little bust. We had helicopters overhead, the whole thing. So we hit the house and it’s a big spectacle because we’ve got the wrong place, so I get across the street and I take off my mask and someone recognizes me, so of course the story comes out that Shaq was on a raid and he crashed the wrong house. Give me a break. It wasn’t even my bust!
I learned a lot about law enforcement and the tendencies of criminals. I saw a lot of horrible things, some disgusting crimes against children that still makes my stomach turn every time I think about it. It was a six-week course and they show you all the horrible things you can’t possibly imagine anyone would be sick enough to do. I had to take a step back from that kind of work because I love children, and those kinds of crimes really fill you with rage.
What you realize when you get involved in police training is you don’t really know people. You think you do, but you don’t. The innocent couple walking their baby up and down the street could be embezzling millions of dollars for all you know.
We all have secrets.
And, as we all found out in the summer of 2003, that included Kobe.
I’ll be honest with you. I thought the kid was a geek. He got a perfect score on his SATs or something, so I figured he was always in his room studying or reading.
That’s why I was so shocked when the Colorado thing happened. It was the summer of 2003, and Jerome came in and said, “You aren’t going to believe what I just heard.” He told me a nineteen-year-old girl had accused Kobe of raping her in a hotel. I couldn’t believe it. I kept saying, “For real? Are you busting me, Jerome?” because I just never figured Kobe would ever be involved in something like that.
The most amazing thing about the entire incident was that when Kobe finally walked into camp, it was like nothing had happened. He just showed up with an extra bodyguard or two and played a little harder. He’s the type who never shows his cards. He has a serious poker face.
As soon as I heard the news, I got a message to Kobe through Jerome that he was welcome to stay in our gated house with his family if he needed to get away from all the media attention. I told Jerome, “See what he needs. See what we can do.” Jerome put in a couple of calls, but we never heard anything back.
When Kobe showed up at the practice facility, I didn’t say anything to him. Maybe I should have. In truth, I was waiting on him. I was trying to respect his privacy. I was told later on that he was unhappy I didn’t offer him more support. I thought at some point he’d fill me in on what happened, what he was going through, but he never did. So I left it alone.
Publicly I didn’t say much. It was a serious charge, and without any knowledge of what went on I made a decision not to get in the middle of it. I didn’t need every women’s group in the country coming after me. I had already experienced my share of special interest groups gunning for me. Let me explain.
One time I did a commercial for Taco Bell with Jerry West. The idea was that I loved Taco Bell tacos and I’d crane my neck to eat the taco. I did it so many times my neck was stuck sideways. Next thing you know, people with a certain neck syndrome are picketing the game with a picture of the commercial stuck on the sign. What the hell? I didn’t know there was such a thing as a “neck syndrome.”
Another time I did a Taco Bell commercial where I bit into the taco and my body was on fire. Next thing you know, burn victims come to the game and they’re picketing.
And, of course, I always had PETA on my case because of my fur coats and the stuffed wild game I had displayed in my house.
The last thing I needed was to have the women’s groups on my case. They can be tough. So when reporters asked me about Kobe, I tried a “no comment.” They kept pushing so I finally said, “I’m a big believer in the process of the law and hopefully he’s exonerated of all charges.”
That didn’t work for him, I guess. All those years of the little nitpicky stuff we’d been trading back and forth started escalating. For the first time, there seemed to be real animosity between us. It didn’t help that I heard that Kobe mentioned me in his statements. According to the newspapers, he had told the cops that when I got myself in trouble, I just bought people off to stay quiet. That was curious to me. First of all, what trouble? Second of all, how would you know, Kobe? You never ran with me—ever.
When we started training camp in ’03–’04, Kobe was coming off knee surgery. I told reporters he should be more of a passer than a scorer until he heals. Looking back, it was kind of a dig. Old habit. Kobe fired back I should leave the guard play to him and go set up on the block where I belong.
So that was how the season started. There was tension. We were sniping at each other a lot.
I had my own issues at that point. We had been trying to get an extension from the Lakers on my contract and certain promises were made. They told me if I could convince Karl Malone and Gary Payton to come to LA for less money
, they’d take care of me on the other end with my contract. So I’m on the phone begging these two future Hall of Famers to come. It wasn’t an easy sell. Karl had his legacy in Utah and he was leaving a couple of million dollars on the table. Same for Gary in Seattle.
But I held up my end of the bargain and convinced them to join us.
The Lakers didn’t. The extension wasn’t materializing. We’re in Hawaii for a preseason game and I’m going off. I’ve got about 30, I’m interacting with the fans, I’m feeling it. So I turn around, hit a deep fadeaway, then run past Jerry Buss and shout, “Pay me.” Buss didn’t like it. I could tell he was ticked. He thought I showed him up.
By that point I had a new agent named Perry Rogers. He called me up and said, “Man, you can’t do that.”
I said, “Hey, I was just playing,” but Perry was really angry at me.
“You messed this up,” he said. “Being disrespectful is not going to help these negotiations.”
So I’m on edge because I don’t have a new deal, and Kobe is on edge because he might be going to jail, so we’re taking it out on each other. Just before the start of the ’03–’04 season the coaching staff called us in and said, “No more public sparring or you’ll get fined.”
Everyone knew it was simmering, but Mitch never came down. Magic Johnson, who was around all the time, never said anything.
But Phil was tired of it. Karl Malone and Gary Payton were sick of it.
I said, “All right, I hear you. I’m done.”
So what happens? Immediately after that Kobe runs right out to Jim Gray and does this interview where he lets me have it. He said I was fat and out of shape. He said I was milking my toe injury for more time off, and the injury wasn’t even that serious. (Yeah, right. It only ended my damn career.) He said I was “lobbying for a contract extension when we have two Hall of Famers playing pretty much for free.”
I’m sitting there watching this interview and I’m gonna explode. Hours earlier we had just promised our coach we’d stop. It was a truce broken. I let the guys know, “I’m going to kill him.”
That night Brian Shaw gets a call from rookie Devean George. BShaw had retired and was a scout for the Lakers in Northern California, but Devean told him, “They’re going to want you down here. The shit hit the fan today. Shaq is going to destroy Kobe.”
Sure enough, a couple of hours later Brian gets a call from Phil and Mitch Kupchak. They ask BShaw to fly down and intercept me at the practice facility the next morning. My bodyguard, Jerome, got wind of what was going on, so the next morning he went by my house early to pick me up, but I was already gone. He knew if I was up that early that I was a dangerous man.
BShaw was waiting at the training facility for me when I pulled in. He had been around me for a lot of years. He knew when the talking was done and it was time to knuckle up.
I said to Brian, “Did they bring you down here? It won’t matter. I’m going to kick his goddamn ass.”
Brian convinced me to go inside to the theater at the practice facility with Jerome and wait.
A few minutes later Kobe pulled up. Brian said to him, “Shaq is going to kill you. He’s going to fuck you up on sight.” Kobe grinned and said, “Ooooh, am I supposed to be scared?”
“Yes,” Brian told him. “This is no joke.”
Meanwhile Horace Grant and Karl Malone have joined me and Jerome in the theater. They were backup in case they had to physically restrain me from going after Kobe. GP was too small for that job, but he wasn’t about to miss all the great Shaq-Kobe drama, so he was in there, too.
They get me and Kobe into the theater and instantly it’s a shouting match. We’re cursing each other and calling each other names and I’m making a move for Kobe when BShaw steps in and tells us both to sit down.
Brian starts with me. He says, “Shaq, you are being childish and immature. You dunked on Eric Dampier in preseason and started acting like a goon and yelling at Jerry Buss, ‘Pay me,’ and now that’s coming back to bite you in the ass.”
I wanted to tell him, I did that because Jerry Buss said he was going to give me an extension and it hadn’t materialized, yet, but before I could say anything BShaw held up his hand.
“And Kobe,” he said. “Shaq takes a beating every season. You know that. Phil told Shaq to take the summer off and let his body recover. He’s always told Shaq to take his time getting back in basketball shape.”
So now Kobe starts saying, “But I work so hard every summer . . .” but BShaw has his hand up again.
Then BShaw hits us both across the bow. He starts telling us how after we lost in ’03 we told the media we needed to get younger and more athletic, and that ended up costing him and Robert Horry their jobs. “You guys are so worried about yourselves that you didn’t even think about us,” he said.
I was kind of shocked. BShaw was right. I’d never considered that what we had said had anything to do with him or Rob not being asked back. I was just trying to give the politically correct answer. I hadn’t meant to undercut Brian or Rob.
Kobe is trying to hear BShaw out but he can’t contain himself. He stands up and goes face-to-face with me and says, “You always said you’re my big brother, you’d do anything for me, and then this Colorado thing happens and you never even called me.”
I did call him. Everyone knows Jerome is me. I had Jerome call for me—twice. But Kobe never picked up. I told him, “We reached out to you but you didn’t accept that. You kept us all out. You didn’t tell any of us anything. None of us in this room have any idea what went on in Colorado.”
To this day, I still don’t know what happened in Colorado. Kobe never came clean. He came in very quiet to practice and stayed away from the topic. The only details we knew were what were reported in the papers. Kobe eventually admitted to having a sexual relationship with the girl but said it was consensual.
So here we are now, and we find out he really was hurt that we didn’t stand behind him. That was something new. I didn’t think he gave a rat’s ass about us either way.
“Well, I thought you’d publicly support me, at least,” Kobe said. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”
BShaw chimed in with “Kobe, why would you think that? Shaq had all these parties and you never showed up for any of them. We invited you to dinner on the road and you didn’t come. Shaq invited you to his wedding and you weren’t there. Then you got married and didn’t invite any of us.
“And now you are in the middle of this problem, this sensitive situation, and you want all of us to step up for you. We don’t even know you.”
At that point GP and Horace put in their two cents’ worth. They told us we were hurting the team with our bickering back and forth in the papers.
Everyone was starting to calm down when I told Kobe, “If you ever say anything like what you said to Jim Gray ever again, I will kill you.”
Kobe shrugged and said, “Whatever.”
Karl said, “This has got to stop. It’s petty and stupid and we’re tired of it. I didn’t come here for less money to deal with this bullshit.”
They finally made us hug. It was a black bro hug. We tapped each other and agreed we’d have a truce.
But, from that day on, I was done dealing with Kobe. I was done dealing with Jim Gray, too. What goes around, comes around. When he got fired, he actually had the nerve to call me and ask me to help him out. What, did you lose Kobe’s number?
In spite of all the fireworks, we started out that ’03–’04 season winning twenty of our first twenty-five games. Kobe was dealing with the sexual assault charges every day, and even though the charges were eventually dropped, the stress was finally wearing on him. He was trying to fix it all on the basketball court by scoring as many points as humanly possible. Naturally I’m not happy about it.
By this point our relationship had really broken down, although we kept it out of the public eye.
Phil wasn’t saying much, but he never did. He understood he was dealing with
two alpha males. Two crazy dudes. Two crazy dudes, but we were winning and playing. People had this idea of what it was like on the outside, but it wasn’t like that on the inside.
It was almost like a game. Kobe would use TJ Simers or Bill Plaschke to put the wood to me, then I’d come back and use JA Adande to get my message across.
Simers was the real joke. He liked to puff his chest out and say, “I talked to Kobe today.” Good for fucking you. Nobody else wanted to talk to you anyway.
The back-and-forth stuff was uncomfortable for the other guys, but for Kobe and me there was a benefit to it, sort of an untelevised reality show. It kept us in the spotlight. We could handle it—until that final season.
Here’s the funny thing about our so-called feud. All I ever said about Kobe is what everyone is saying now. I just had the balls to say it. I made sure I didn’t belittle him too much because I knew we needed our one-two punch. I was putting up big numbers and he was putting up big numbers, so we weren’t really all that worried about much. Phil knew what was going on, which was why he rarely stepped in. Phil knew what was driving me: Kobe. And he knew what was driving Kobe: me. In four years together I can remember Phil calling me and Kobe into his office only one time. He knew the tension was good for us, good for the team.
He also knew that sooner or later, two alpha males were going to tear each other limb from limb. Only one alpha male is usually left standing.
By February, our negotiations with the Lakers were at an impasse. They were offering two years at $21 million a season, and that wasn’t going to work. After I won three championships and three Finals MVPs, they wanted me to take a $10 million pay cut—and they were willing to guarantee only two years.
Now, did I start acting crazy? I suppose I did. But their approach was a slap in the face. It was a sign of disrespect. Deep down, I knew I could get the money somewhere else. Perry told them if their offer didn’t improve, I would be asking for a trade that summer.
Shaq Uncut: My Story Page 17