Shaq Uncut: My Story

by Shaquille O’Neal

  Pat hears me so he starts going ballistic on me. Now, JWill was my guy. I kind of brought him there, so I felt responsible for him.

  I tell Pat we’re a team and we need to stick together, not throw guys out of the gym. Pat is screaming at me and says if I don’t like it, then I should get the hell out of practice, too.

  That’s when I said, “Why don’t you make me?”

  I start taking a couple of steps towards Pat. Udonis Haslem steps in and I shove him out of the way. Then Zo tries to grab me. I threw him aside like he was a rag doll.

  Now it’s me and Riley face-to-face, jaw to jaw. I’m poking him in the chest and he keeps slapping my finger away and it’s getting nasty. Noisy, too. He’s yelling “Fuck you!” and I’m yelling back, “No, fuck you!”

  Zo is trying to calm us both down and he has this kind of singsong panic in his voice. He keeps saying, “Big fella, no big fella, big fella!” I finally turn around and tell him, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hit the man. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  At that point Pat decides that practice is over. He walks out and goes to his downstairs office, and everyone just kind of stands there. Nobody is sure what to do. I think they were pretty shocked because it was the first time they ever saw anyone stand up to Pat like that.

  Everybody was kind of backing away from me because I had that murderous “Shaq is about to go off” look on my face. They knew better than to mess with me at that point.

  Obviously that was the end of me in Miami. Pat knew and I knew it. I called my uncle Mike and my agent, Perry Rogers, and told them, “Let’s ask for a trade before he can control the story.” I knew because Pat was such a control freak he’d want to spin it his way.

  In the end, I was kind of sad about the whole thing because Miami was a city that was very nice to me, and I didn’t want to be disrespectful to their fans. I also loved Miami’s owner, Mickey Arison. He was the best owner I’ve ever been around. He was friendly, gentle, generous, and kind. He supported us but never interfered, which is what every owner should do.

  I’m not a big schmoozer, but when I first got to Miami, Mr. Arison invited me on this beautiful yacht. He told me, “I’m glad you’re here. Tickets sales are up, and I think we can win a championship. If you ever need anything, just call me.”

  That was really the extent of my relationship with him. I’m not the kind to hang with the owner, but whenever I saw him I always enjoyed it, even if all we did was say, “Hey, how are you doing? Shalom.” I’m sure Pat complained to him about me. I’m sure he told him that I was faking my injury, and Mickey probably wasn’t too happy to hear that.

  Of everything that happened, that was what upset me the most. I still can’t believe Pat questioned whether I could play. They wanted me to do all this rehab and then threw that in my face when I left because I didn’t do what they wanted me to do, but I didn’t trust them anymore. How many times was I going to fly to California to have somebody stick needles in my legs before someone said, “Hey, maybe this isn’t working”?

  Soon after my little incident with Pat, he called Perry and told him, “It’s over. We’re trading Shaq.” Perry said: “Let me fly out there and talk this over with you.” Pat said, “No, we’re done.”

  He told Perry they had a deal to trade me to Phoenix. Perry called me and said, “What do you think?” I said immediately, “Let’s go.”

  By the time I left Miami things weren’t really all that good between me and DWade. It wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t good, either. I’m sure someone got in his ear and said, “Stay away from Shaq, he’s trouble.” People ask me if I’m disappointed DWade didn’t stand up for me, but I wasn’t, because you can’t stand up to Pat. If you do, you’re gone, and DWade wants to stay in Miami for his entire career.

  He’s a bona fide star now. Very talented kid. Am I sorry we didn’t stay friends? I don’t know. It’s not really about that. The job is to win championships. We got one championship together, so that’s what I’ll remember about Dwyane Wade.

  When he traded me, Pat denied we were having any problems. He told the media, “I loved Shaq when I got him and I love him today.”

  He didn’t mean it. He hated the way I called him out. He didn’t like to be challenged. I’m sure he thought I was trying to destroy the culture he created. He was probably right. I thought his “culture” needed some tweaking.

  The sad part is, a little communication could have fixed all of it. As long as I know what’s going on, it’s cool. Be straight with me and we’ll be fine. Don’t tell me, “We love you, we love you, you put our franchise on the map,” then turn around and trade me a few days later. Just be honest with me. Talk to me like a man.

  I can still hear Pat telling me, “I’m going to take down that 6th Man Michael Jordan jersey we have up in our rafters and put your number 32 uniform in its place. You have done so much for this franchise. Your jersey will be the first one up there, the first one ever retired by the Heat.”

  And then, just like that, I’m gone.

  FEBRUARY 27, 2009

  Phoenix, Arizona

  Shaquille O’Neal positioned himself in the post and waited for the double team to come.

  It never arrived.

  “Coach,” he said to the Suns’ Alvin Gentry as he jogged by the bench, “single coverage.”

  Gentry grabbed point guard Steve Nash and instructed him, “Give the big fella the ball.”

  He was one week shy of his thirty-seventh birthday, but Shaq had jumped into his time machine. As a series of Toronto players, Chris Bosh among them, tried to stop him, the Big Cactus kept sticking them with dunks, jump hooks, and putbacks. When he was finished, he’d scored 45 points in 20-of-25 shooting, his most prolific output in six years.

  “I think I’m the only player who looks at each and every center and says, ‘That’s barbecued chicken down there,’ ” Shaq said afterward.

  The Suns won 133–113 on a day Toronto coach Jay Triano conceded his team had “no match for Shaq.”

  It was evidence, Shaq would later say, that although he was old, he could still get it done given the proper touches.

  Bosh begged to differ. He sniffed O’Neal was “camping” in the lane all night.

  “I mean, if they’re not calling three seconds—I thought it was a rule, but I guess not,” Bosh groused.

  “That’s a big statement coming from the RuPaul of the NBA,” Shaq shot back. “Chris Bosh? How would he know about three seconds? He’s afraid to go inside.”

  With the Big Shaqtus waiting for him in the lane, it was hard to blame him.

  I WENT TO PHOENIX IN PEACE, ARMS UP IN SURRENDER. I WENT from punking Penny to fighting with Kobe all the time to chilling out with DWade and banging heads with Pat Riley. I was burned out. I didn’t want to fight with anybody. My motor was shot. So I wasn’t about to punk Steve Nash. It was “Okay Steve, do whatever you want, let me know what you need from me.”

  But it never really worked out for us. Of course in my line of business that falls on me. My fault again. They said I slowed Phoenix down. I don’t really think that was true, but people are certainly entitled to their opinion.

  You won’t hear anything negative from me about Phoenix. I loved it there. The guys were great, and Mike D’Antoni was excellent. The training staff was phenomenal. They saved my career and they helped me understand my body, and I will always have their backs for that. Athletes are spoiled. They do amazing things, and then when their body breaks down, they go to the medical people and say, “Fix me.” We don’t care how or why, just do it. I learned a lot from Aaron Nelson and Michael Clark on how to take care of myself while I was playing, but also techniques I could use after I’m done playing to keep myself healthy.

  Phoenix was a good fit for me at that point of my career because they were an up-tempo team that ran all the time. Mike D’Antoni was careful not to burn us out in practice. Our practices lasted something like twenty minutes.

  We’d go out there, play a g
ame to 7, and then we were done. We’d watch some film, talk about what we should have done, and go home.

  That was why they were able to run all the time. Mike was smart enough not to overdo it. He could do that because he respected his leaders, Steve Nash and Grant Hill. He knew they would always come into camp in shape.

  Those guys were true pros. I have never met a single person who doesn’t like and respect Grant Hill. He’s a great guy. He’s also one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen. If he didn’t have the if next to his name, he would have been one of the greatest ever. He was stuck with the if because he had a foot injury that got all messed up and misdiagnosed, and it cost him a huge chunk of his career—the prime of his career, really.

  So he gets tagged with the if, the same way Alonzo Mourning did. If Zo didn’t have his serious kidney issues and the surgeries and if he didn’t miss all those years, he’d be another “greatest ever.”

  Grant was able to reinvent himself as the ultimate role player after his injuries. He’d stand back and watch and absorb what was going on in the game and then adjust to it. His basketball IQ was off the charts.

  Steve Nash was a guy who liked to do things perfectly. I wasn’t used to his Amare Stoudemire one-step bounce pass. It took me a few games to catch on to that. I also wasn’t used to the way he ran a pick-and-roll. We never clicked on the court the way we should have. There wasn’t any negative vibes—we just didn’t have the time to develop any chemistry. We were both old-timers used to playing a certain way.

  Amare was a hardworking kid, very friendly. He had a lot of offensive weapons. He was young and wealthy and successful and just starting out on his own fabulous journey.

  I ended up selling him my Lamborghini. It was a car I bought while I was in Miami. Whenever I have a lot on my mind, the first thing I do is jump in my car, crank the music, and go for a long, long ride. I can think better that way. So I’m in Miami and Pat and I have a blowup, or me and my ex-wife have a fight, so I take a drive from Miami to Ft. Lauderdale. I sit there and watch the water, listen to the waves, calm myself down, and start to head home.

  I was driving fast—way too fast—probably around 190 miles per hour. So I’m flying down the road and this car cuts me off and I’ve got to make a quick turn. I cut away from this other car and I go into about five different spins. My first thought was, I’m going into the wall and flipping over into the water. This is it. This is how I’m going to die. But I’m a lucky guy, and the car just misses that wall and keeps spinning, and when it finally stops I’m facing the opposite direction. I put the car in reverse and get out and try to stop my knees from buckling.

  Right then and there I decided, “I’m never driving this car again.” And I didn’t.

  When I got traded to the Suns I brought it out to Arizona so Amare could look at it. He offered me $120,000 for it. I was trolling the Robb Report and found what would eventually be the Shaq-Liner for $110,000. I figured I’ll sell the Lamborghini to Amare for $120,000, buy the Shaq-Liner for $110,000, and put another $10,000 into it and I’ll be even.

  That’s being a Shaq-a-matician, except for one small little detail. The Lamborghini cost me $600,000 originally. So I lost a lot of money on it. The reason it cost so much was I bought a brand-new Lamborghini and then I bought an old, beat-up Lamborghini, and in order for me to fit into it, they had to chop them both in half and then superglue it together. It was a beautiful car, hardtop, platinum silver.

  I have to say, when I was driving that car around, it made me think about those rich drug dealers from my neighborhood in Newark. I can still remember one guy cruising around in his muddy-green Benz and the other one, tooling around in his souped-up Volvo. I wanted so badly to be driving around in a cool car, so I closed my eyes, whipped up some happy thoughts, and put myself into some of the finest automobiles in the world. That’s the great thing about being a dreamer. It always works out exactly the way you planned.

  That’s not always true in real life, but by the grace of God and some damn hard work, many of the things I wished for as a little warrior named Shaun have happened.

  By the time I sold my Lamborghini to Amare Stoudemire, I was done with it. The thrill was gone.

  Amare had a certain flair about him that I could relate to. He wasn’t a big personality like I was, but he could pull off the Lamborghini thing. While I was there, he was having all sorts of problems with the media and the owner, Robert Sarver. Every week it was the same thing: “Is he getting traded? Is he signing an extension?” There’s no question it got to him. You could see it on Amare’s face. It wore him down, and it affected the way he played. He’s only human. It would have bothered anyone.

  He would ask me all the time, “What should I do?” I told him, “Do what’s best for your family.” Truthfully, I didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t want to hop on anyone’s emotional roller coaster. I had too many rides of my own like that.

  I played hard and did what I had to do in Phoenix, but I wasn’t as invested as I have been in other places. I knew they brought me in as hired help, as a last-ditch chance to win it all. I wasn’t expecting to be there a lot of years.

  So why was it that Phoenix never won with all that talent and experience? We had no alpha dogs on the team. You need dogs to win a championship. Steve Nash is an alpha but not a mean dog.

  He’s a great leader and a great player, but you need a mean dog who will bite your head off, and Steve just isn’t that kind of pooch. Mike Jordan was an alpha dog in Chicago. Bird in Boston. I was one, too.

  If Steve got really mad, he’d come down and shoot a three, or come down and dish out five straight assists, which was cool—team ball—but it wasn’t enough. Face it. He was caught in this loop where he had three great teams that were always in front of him.

  Maybe he could get past Dirk and the Mavericks, but then you’ve got Duncan and the Spurs and Kobe and the Lakers. It had to be frustrating. When you work as hard as Steve Nash and Grant Hill do, there should be some rewards on the other end. But that’s not how life works, and it sure as hell isn’t how sports works. Don’t you dare tell me that Nash and Grant Hill aren’t winners. Please. If they don’t end up with a championship that will be a shame, but don’t judge them on that.

  When I played for the Suns, Steve was the first option, Amare was the second option, and I was the third option. Amare was all about score, score, score. I didn’t blame him. I was the same way when I was young.

  They were always messing with Amare about his defense but I was never clear on why they singled him out. It didn’t look to me like there were many other guys on the Suns worrying about defense.

  When I joined the Suns I tried to keep it light, but it seemed like there was always something going on while I was there, and for once it didn’t have anything to do with me. The Phoenix politics were in full swing during my time there.

  My first season, Mike D’Antoni and Robert Sarver were fighting. The next year Mike left, and Terry Porter came in and wanted to play slow-down, so that got Amare ticked off and he wanted to be traded. Terry lasted fifty-one games before they fired him and promoted Alvin Gentry. After that, I was the one traded. Everybody was moving around so much it was hard to ever settle in, get something done.

  I was excited to play for Mike D’Antoni. Mike was the one who pushed to bring me there. He told me, “I know you can still play. I want you to be a part of the offense.” I told him, “I don’t need much. Maybe a couple of shots here and there.”

  Mike loved Phoenix and he loved the players, but I sensed he just couldn’t deal with Sarver, so he left. I think if you talked to him now, he’d do it differently, given the chance. He didn’t realize how good he had it with so many professionals in his locker room. He had a great situation in Phoenix.

  His successor, Terry Porter, got a raw deal, in my opinion. He knew the game. He wanted to put the brakes on a little, move the ball around, get it inside now and again, but Steve and Grant couldn’t really do that. They wer
e used to one way. Every day they’d ask the same thing: “Can we run? Can we run?” Terry would hold two-hour practices and everyone hated it because they were used to something else. I felt bad for Terry Porter. He got all tangled up in the system. He never really had a chance.

  The general manager, Steve Kerr, was trying to manage it all but he had his own issues with the owner. Steve is one of the most honest GMs I’ve ever been around. When I got there, he told me D’Antoni was very excited to have me. Then he told me point-blank he was taking a huge gamble by bringing me in and he wasn’t 100 percent sure it would work. I told him I’d do everything I could to help him.

  I did a pretty good job of putting the Miami Heat in my rearview mirror even though everyone wanted to talk about them all the time. My first trip back to Miami wasn’t until March 4, 2009, so I had been gone more than a year.

  I wasn’t expecting a parade or another key to the city. They booed the crap out of me, which was what I figured would happen. At one point in the game DWade drove to the hole, so naturally I knocked him on his back and stood over him. I didn’t help him up and that got the crowd really fired up, so they started chanting, “Shaq, you suck!”

  Hmmm. Does that mean you want to vacate that 2006 championship? Get back to me on that.

  The pace in Phoenix was much more laid-back, low-key. They treated you like adults in that organization. Your time was your own. They left it up to you to make good decisions. They were pretty community oriented, which I liked.

  So I’m hanging in the Valley of the Sun, and I get a phone call one day from Oprah Winfrey. She says, “Shaq, I need your help with something.” Obviously, when Bill Gates calls, you listen. The president calls, you listen. Same with Oprah. Whatever she wants, you do it.

  Turns out there was a twelve-year-old boy named Brendan who suffered from a genetic abnormality that forced him to keep growing. He was seven foot two when I first met him, and he was struggling. Kids made fun of him, his health wasn’t good, and he couldn’t find any clothes to fit him. Oprah said I was his favorite player and she asked if I could help, so the first thing we did was load up a bunch of my sweat suits and sneakers and jackets and shipped them to him.