Shaq Uncut: My Story

by Shaquille O’Neal

  We flew him out to the 2009 All-Star Game in Phoenix as my guest and we gave him a brand-new pair of my Dunkman sneakers, which weren’t even on the market yet. I took him out to eat in my Shaq-Liner, and he got to enjoy a longtime Shaq custom: dessert before dinner.

  Then I took him to my personal tailor and we got him a custom wardrobe.

  I really felt for the kid. He was so sweet, really intelligent, very sensitive. I told him, “I’ve been through it all, Brendan. The bad days, the aches and pains, the kids picking on me. I know how you feel.”

  He’s a teenager now, still growing. It’s tough, and his outlook isn’t all that good. I still send him clothes all the time. I gave him one of my mink coats. He’s kinda cool now because he’s friends with Shaq, but my heart goes out to him. No kid should have to suffer like that.

  For the most part I kept a fairly low profile when I was in Phoenix. I had a few reality TV projects on the back burner but nothing concrete. So one night I’m watching Michael Phelps swim and I said, “Damn, that dude is fast.” I’m talking to my boys and I said, “Do you think if Michael Phelps went down and back for one lap and all I had to do was just go down for half a lap, could I beat him? I think I could.” We started laughing, and I said, “That’s it. That’s my show. Shaq Vs.”

  The show Shaq Vs. turned out to be a lot of fun. The general idea was for me to compete against professional athletes in their sports, with me getting some kind of handicap to make it fair. So I played football against Ben Roethlisberger and baseball against Albert Pujols. The Michael Phelps show was definitely my favorite. He was a real clown, an absolutely terrific guy. My only regret was I didn’t think of the show when I was a little younger. I might have had a shot at beating some of those guys if I was still at the top of my game.

  You should see the way Michael Phelps eats. Incredible. At the time we were filming I was on a diet because the season was coming up, so I’m eating salads and this kid is eating pizza, burgers, cookies, Twinkies. The reason he eats so much is his warm-up is fifty laps and he swims every day and he’s burning calories all the time, so he can eat whatever he wants.

  He invited me to his place, and it’s a house of horrors for me because there’s cookies, ice cream, and cake everywhere. I told him, “Mike, you’re killing me!” He was such a sweet guy, a big star who doesn’t even know he’s a star. He kind of reminds me of Blake Griffin in that way.

  When I lost my race to him, I dressed up in this badass pink bikini and walked down the beach in it. A bet is a bet, so I had to do it. People were pulling out their camera phones right and left.

  Every show we did was enjoyable because the people we picked to compete against were the masters of their craft. I had a great time with the two women volleyball players, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. I got a little competitive and I was trying to spike it like they were, and when I got up the next morning I couldn’t move.

  The hardest was my race car show. I was terrified driving against Dale Earnhardt Jr. They had to build a special car for me that I could fit into. I squeezed myself into this race car, and when I was getting ready to go out there I’m thinking about the ratings and I thought, If you want to get good numbers for the show, you should really crash into the wall.

  So that was my plan, but just before I rev up my engine the guy in the pit tells me, “Listen, you have a fireproof suit on, and if you hit the wall and catch fire it should take us about two minutes and then we’ll come out and get you.” Two minutes! So now I’m absolutely terrified. I’m driving 70 miles per hour around the track, which is slower than when I’m driving to work, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is going 130 miles per hour, and I look like I’m driving a go-kart. They are in my ear shouting, “You gotta go faster” and I’m thinking, The hell with you. I’m not going to die! So then I hear Dale in my ear saying, “Okay now, keep it steady, keep it steady, I’m going to pass you on the right,” so I grip the wheel and he goes flying by me.

  When I lost to Dale Earnhardt Jr., I had to pull out that pink bikini again and run around the track in it. When I lost to Roethlisberger, I had to send him my championship ring so he could wear it for a week.

  Even though I was the “elder statesman” on the Phoenix Suns, it didn’t stop teams from trying to take me out of the game. The Spurs coach, Gregg Popovich, went to the Hack-a-Shaq strategy a little bit, which disappointed me. Pop is a great coach. One of the best. I never had a problem with him, but I hate that Hack-a-Shaq thing.

  Don Nelson started it. The first three minutes of the game, he fouled me. Shawn Bradley and Sean Rooks would come in the game and start fouling, because Nelson’s thing was if I shot 50 percent from the line he’d take those odds. We’d be up by 15 and he’d start in, and it really pissed me off. That’s when I called him a clown. The next game we played him he showed up wearing a clown nose.

  The free-throw shooting is always what humbled me. It kept me grounded. I used to joke with people that if I shot 80 percent from the line it wouldn’t be fair. I’m already too dominant at everything else.

  I told reporters, “Once the Hack-a-Shaq works once, you know I’m going to see it again. The only thing worse for basketball than that defense is the Lack-A-Shaq offense, where I have to go to the bench because of foul trouble. There’s no fun in that.”

  Even though I thought a lot of Pop and Duncan, I said some crap about the Spurs through the years. But the truth is, I didn’t mean it. Those two guys knew that. They understood how I rolled.

  But you know at some point Pop is going to get me back. So they foul the shit out of me in the ’08 playoffs and I’m a little irritated.

  We play them in the season opener the following year, and the first time I touch the ball—I’m talking like five seconds into the game—they hack me. I look over at their bench like, Are you kidding me? and there’s Pop, laughing his ass off, giving me the two thumbs-up. You gotta love a guy who has a sense of humor like that.

  Pop understood that even though I respected him I had to market myself and sometimes that meant saying stuff to amp up the game. It was never personal. So he played along. Sometimes the people involved take it the wrong way unless you fill them in on the plan.

  For instance, take the Maloof family in Sacramento. I loved those guys. They take care of me every time I go to Vegas, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to go at their team. So the time I called them the “Sacramento Queens.” Joe Maloof calls me up and says, “C’mon now, Shaq.” I told him, “Hey, I’m just playing, baby. Do you know how many people are going to be at that game now? I just put your team on the map.” He said, “You’re right, you’re right. Tell your mother I love her and I said hello.” I said, “All right, talk to you later, and by the way, I’m coming to Vegas, I need a room.”

  After the Spurs eliminated us from the playoffs, they got knocked out by the Lakers. Check this out. It was the first time in ten years neither Tim Duncan or Shaquille O’Neal was playing in the NBA Finals.

  I was in New York doing a number of promotional things while the Celtics were beating the Lakers to win the 2008 NBA Championship.

  Anyhow, I went to a club and I started doing some freestyle rap, and of course I’ve got to mention Kobe in there somewhere. I’m rapping “Kobe can’t win without me” and “Tell me how my ass tastes.” I went a little overboard with the language, but other than that, it was good fun. The crowd was eating it up.

  If some wise guy hadn’t recorded it and posted it on YouTube, then nobody but the people there would have even known about it. But, instead, some guy sells it for $1,500 and everybody makes a big deal out of it.

  Why? We’ve been rapping for years, breaking each other down. It’s called freestyling. It’s done all the time, and everyone knows that. But now this rap has caused a big stink so I’ve got to call Kobe and say, “My bad.” He told me, “Don’t worry about it, dawg. I’m cool.”

  But people kept on playing it, so eventually Kobe got annoyed with it. I don’t think it was wrong to do i
t, it was wrong it got out to the public. My mother made me apologize, so I did. I tried to explain to her I’d done the same thing hundreds of times before, grabbed a mic and made fun of friends and teammates. If I rapped the same thing about Derek Fisher no one would have cared.

  But because it’s Kobe and Shaq, it’s another chapter in our long running, unscripted reality show.

  Don’t think for a minute we didn’t manipulate y’all from time to time. Remember in 2006 when the Heat played the Lakers on Martin Luther King Day? I went up and shook Kobe’s hand before the game and it was breaking news. World headlines, because before that our relationship was kind of frosty.

  Everyone asked me why I did it and I told them, “I had orders from the great Bill Russell. Me and him were talking in Seattle the other day, and he was telling me how rivalries should be. I asked him if he ever disliked anybody he played against and he said, ‘No, never,’ and he told me I should shake Kobe’s hand and let bygones be bygones and bury the hatchet.”

  Naturally everyone lapped that up. The Great Bill Russell! Detente with Kobe and Shaq! It was a great story, but that’s just what it was—a story.

  I can tell you this now: I made it up. I was just trying to add to the mystique of the great Bill Russell. I did talk to Bill Russell in Seattle and we discussed many things, but we never even mentioned Kobe. We talked about Red Auerbach and all the racism Bill endured in Boston and how he learned to become a leader.

  I was so impressed with him I wanted to elevate his status a little bit. People seemed to have kind of forgotten him a little bit, so I figured if I made him peace broker between Kobe and me that would amp his credibility. He is one of the greatest players of all times and deserves respect.

  By the time I had been in Phoenix a couple of seasons the whole Kobe thing was irrelevant. We had both moved on. We played together on the West team in the 2009 All-Star Game and they voted us co-MVPs.

  I’m there with my son, and we’ve got this one trophy, so I said, “Here, Kobe, you take it.” He said, “No, give it to your son. I’ll get mine later. Give it to your little guy.”

  My kids absolutely love Kobe Bryant. They call him Uncle Kobe, and his girls call me Uncle Shaq. If you look at our relationship from the eyes of a kid, it’s pretty simple. We played together, we won together, and everyone thinks we were the best together. They don’t need to know the other stuff.

  So here’s my son Shareef coming home with this big trophy and he tells all his friends, “Kobe gave me his MVP trophy.” I don’t think he even realized I got the MVP trophy, too. It was all about Kobe. It almost brought a tear to my eye.

  Seriously. I mean it.

  Right after that was the game when I went off on Toronto and Chris Bosh and scored 45. I was in a bad mood that night, but I started off with a couple of good looks, and they were trying to guard me with just Bosh in single coverage, so I took that as a sign of disrespect and just went off.

  My teammates were laughing and high-fiving me and slapping my hand. I guess it was funny to them to see me go off, but I wasn’t laughing, because I knew even at thirty-six years old I could do that if they gave me the ball.

  People thought my game was falling off, but to me “falling off” is consistently going 2 for 13, and I’ve never done that. I’ve shot 60 percent before in a season, and 58.2 percent for my career. My numbers might be down, but that’s because the shot attempts are down. Give me ten to twelve shots a night and you’ll be satisfied with the results.

  My final season in Phoenix we won forty-six games but we didn’t make the playoffs. I knew what that meant: time for me to go.

  Steve Kerr called me and said, “Cleveland has been asking around about you. Mr. Sarver wants to save some money, so I wanted to give you the courtesy of knowing we might make a move.”

  I was impressed. That’s all any player wants—to be treated fairly and honestly. I told him, “I appreciate it. Go ahead and do what you have to do.” He didn’t have to call me. It was his right to do whatever he wanted, but he made the effort and I appreciated it. He was like that the whole time I was there. He’d say, “Hey, I need you to do this” or “We’re going to sit you and rest you this game.” I’d say, “Are you sure?” and he’d say, “Yes, we think it would be good for you.” I would have done anything for Steve Kerr. All he had to do was ask.

  When they pulled the trigger Steve called me again and said, “Hey, I’m sure you are watching the news. I understand this might be hard.” I told him there were no bad feelings. I understood Sarver was a businessman and he wanted to be under the cap and I had a big salary and I was thirty-six years old. Made sense to me.

  I was going to Cleveland to win a ring for the King, LeBron James. That was what I told them when I arrived, and that was what I aimed to do.

  LeBron was a huge star. He was as big as I was in 2000 in LA when I was dominating the league. My kids are too young to remember any of that. My sons love LeBron more than they love me. I’m a little jealous about that.

  You get around LeBron and you realize he’s everything he appears to be. He’s a strong kid with a ton of confidence who works his ass off. He doesn’t quite have Kobe’s range yet, but I bet he will. He’s not going to stop until he wins multiple rings.

  He’s also a great team player. I give him the edge over Kobe on that. He’s going to do what it takes to win, knowing that he can take over the game whenever he wants, but understanding you’ve got to keep your teammates involved.

  LeBron takes losses a little differently than most superstars I’ve been around. He’s not the kind to blow up after a bad game. He’s not going to be in your face, spitting at you. I heard him say more than once, “There’s eighty-two games in a season. Let’s be real with ourselves.” He got it. At a very young age, he was already acting like a veteran.

  Once in a while if the guys weren’t responding, he’d come, curse a few people out, and say, “You can work harder than that. I know you can.”

  LeBron is also a pretty good X and O guy. He used to talk to Mo Williams and Boobie Gibson all the time about how he was going to get them open. He’d say, “Fellas, these guys are disrespecting you. You gotta make them pay. I’m going to have three guys hanging on me and I’m going to kick it out to you, and you make sure you have the right angle so you can make the shot. Got that? Hit a damn shot. Loosen it up now, fellas. C’mon now. I’m counting on you.”

  There was talk Mo Williams and I had words while I was with the Cavs. Mo was fine. He just took too many shots. He thought the team should be a one-two punch of him and LeBron, and as a result guys like Boobie were underutilized.

  Doc Rivers said he heard I turned the team against Mo. How was I going to turn everybody against Mo, anyway? He was LeBron’s boy. They were tight. And it was LeBron’s team. Everyone was afraid to rock the boat when it came to the King, so he got to do things his way. I don’t blame him. All the pressure was on him. It was LeBron and everyone else. I was in the “everyone else” category, and that was fine with me.

  LeBron was a leader, clearly the top dog, but he was likable. In all the time I was with him, I only saw him get really mad once. I remember during the playoffs after one of our losses he smacked the bathroom stall, but that was it. He wasn’t crazy like me.

  Maybe he was different before I got there. It’s kind of pointless to snap or go nuts when you are in first place all year. We won sixty-one games. We were at the top of the league. It wasn’t like we were staring in the face of adversity every night.

  Our coach, Mike Brown, was a nice guy, but he had to live on the edge because nobody was supposed to be confrontational with LeBron. Nobody wanted him to leave Cleveland, so he was allowed to do whatever he wanted to do.

  He didn’t really abuse it much because he was a team player, and if you were open LeBron was going to throw the ball to you. It wasn’t like he was out there being a prima donna or anything, but Mike Brown kind of tiptoed around him, and sometimes that was a problem.

 
I remember one day in a film session LeBron didn’t get back on defense after a missed shot. Mike Brown didn’t say anything about it. He went to the next clip and there was Mo Williams not getting back and Mike was saying, “Yo, Mo, we can’t have that. You’ve got to hustle a little more.” So Delonte West is sitting there and he’s seen enough and he stands up and says, “Hold up, now. You can’t be pussyfooting around like that. Everyone has to be accountable for what they do, not just some of us.”

  Mike Brown said, “I know, Delonte. I know.”

  Mike knew Delonte was right. Delonte was fearless. He and Mike Brown used to go at it all the time. Delonte would storm out of practice and sit in the locker room, and they’d have to bring a therapist in there to straighten him out.

  It was a respect thing with Delonte. He just felt Mike Brown didn’t treat him the way he should have been treated. Delonte never went at Doc Rivers like that, though, when he was with the Celtics. When Delonte and Von Wafer got into a fight when we were in Boston, Doc’s attitude was “Get him the hell out of here. We don’t need that for our team.” But both KG and I stuck up for Delonte. KG said, “I’ll talk to him. Let me handle it.” And Doc said, “You better tell him if it happens again, he’s gone.”

  Delonte has had his share of problems, but I really like him. He was a good teammate, both in Cleveland and in Boston. He played the game the right way. The year we played together with the Cavaliers, I really believed we were going to win the championship. I thought we were good enough.

  The Celtics were just smarter. They knocked us out of the 2010 Eastern Conference Finals and they did it by doing a great job of loading up. I was trying to tell LeBron, “Hey, if you get the ball do something fast, so they can’t get into position.” But when he got the ball and did the Jordan stare, now Kendrick Perkins can come over and meet him at the baseline. Then Paul Pierce has time to rotate. If we had moved the ball a little more, we would have had more success. You’ll never beat any team that’s standing there waiting on you.