Shaq Uncut: My Story (10 page)

Bo spends a good part of my final season driving to the mall and
handing out “cease and desist” orders to stores who were making and marketing their own Shaq Attack T-shirts.

By then teams were having trouble stopping me, so they were fouling me on purpose. Sometimes, the fouls crossed the line from a “hard” foul to downright dirty. Coach Brown told me, “Don’t take all that abuse. If they try to hurt you, I’m giving you permission to hit them back.”

We played
Tennessee in the first round of the SEC tournament that spring. We were up by 22 points, and I was dominating this guy named Carlus Groves. I got the ball in the post, and he grabbed me and jerked me backward and tried to haul me down. I was so mad I wanted to break his jaw. I went to push him off my back and all hell broke loose.

Next thing I know Coach Brown is out there going right for Groves.
When I saw him I thought,
Wow, he’s sticking up for me
. After the game he called the NCAA and told them, “Hey, if you don’t want these guys to get hurt you better do something, because I’m going to tell Shaquille to play with his elbows up from now on. He’s getting killed out there, and you are always blaming him.”

Of course, meanwhile he’s telling me to keep my composure and don’t let these
other players goad me into doing something stupid.

The refs threw me, Groves, and nine other players out of the game. Not only that, but I was suspended from playing in our semifinal game against Kentucky. I was hot. Some guy purposely tries to hurt me, and
I
have to pay the price? Tennessee’s SEC season was over because we beat them. So what penalty did they get?

Coach Brown was so mad about
the suspension he was going to sit out the game and pull our team in protest. I told him I appreciated it, but I thought he should be out there. He really wrestled with it, but in the end he did coach the game. We lost to Kentucky 80–74.

My final season at LSU ended with a loss to Indiana in the second round of the NCAA tournament. They were a higher seed than us, but it didn’t stop people from
wondering why LSU didn’t go further in the tournament with Shaquille O’Neal.

All I can tell you is, in my final college game I had 36 points,
12 rebounds, and 5 blocks. I was also a perfect 12 of 12 from the free-throw line, so what else could I do?

Indiana was the kind of slow-down, motion offense team that always bothered us. They kind of lulled us to sleep. We liked that fast-paced up-and-down
style.

Right after we lost, in March 1992, I left campus. I did it quietly, without saying much at all.

There were three months to go before the draft. Three months to get into trouble. Everybody knew I was going pro. It was the worst secret out there. But I’ve always been what I call Spooky Wook about these kind of things. Kind of superstitious—afraid of what could go wrong.

So, the best thing
I could do was leave campus. It kept me away from girls, partying, drinking, weed. I had been successful in staying away from most of that stuff. Why chance it now? I also knew if I was around Sarge and my mother I wouldn’t even be tempted, so I went home.

I remember taking one last look at the LSU campus when I pulled out of there in my cranky old Ford Bronco II. I was a little sad, a little
nostalgic.

But then I closed my eyes and started dreaming about which car I’d be driving the next time I came on campus. When I opened them up again, I was smiling.

It was time to go.

O
rlando Magic president Pat Williams stuffed the plastic bag with the Shaquille O’Neal jersey under his seat. He wasn’t alone. All eleven men representing their franchises in the NBA draft lottery had printed up a team jersey with Shaq’s name embossed in big letters above their respective logos. There was a Dallas Shaq jersey, a Milwaukee Shaq
jersey, a Washington Shaq jersey.

With ten of the sixty-six Ping-Pong balls in the mix bearing Orlando’s name, the Magic had just over a 15 percent chance of landing the big fella.

One by one, the draft order was revealed. The Houston Rockets were stuck with No. 11 and a Shaq jersey that was instantly rendered useless. The Atlanta Hawks suffered a similar fate when their logo popped up at No.
10. As the Shaq sweepstakes dwindled to five, Mavericks owner Donald Carter caressed his lucky coyote tooth, but it yielded him only the fourth overall pick.

Finally, there were three teams left standing—Charlotte, Minnesota, and Orlando.

When the card for the No. 3 pick was turned over to reveal the Minnesota Timberwolves, Shaquille O’Neal squealed with delight. He was watching the proceedings
from the Brentwood, California, home of his agent, Leonard Armato, and while he had no specific preference, his only wish was to play in a warm weather city.

“Excellent,” Armato said, once Minnesota was eliminated. “Now we don’t have to pull a power play to get you out of there.”

“Charlotte and Orlando? I can live with either one of those,” Shaq agreed.

When Orlando’s number came up as No.
1, Pat Williams’s heart skipped two beats. He reached under the table for his Shaq jersey and skipped up to the stage, mindful of the warning David Stern had issued before the draft lottery began.

“Gentle hugs,” Stern demanded. Two years earlier, he’d received a crushing squeeze to the ribs from towering New Jersey Nets executive Willis Reed when he landed the rights to draft Derrick Coleman.

Shaq leaned back on Armato’s couch. He shook his agent’s hand, then embraced Dennis Tracey, his LSU teammate and new manager.

“Orlando,” Tracey said. “Home of Disney World.”

“Look out, Mickey Mouse,” Shaq said, grinning. “I’m coming for you.”

A
COUPLE OF WEEKS BEFORE THE DRAFT LOTTERY I GOT TO
meet Mr. David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA. His question to me was, “Where do you want to play?” Now I don’t want to create no conspiracy theory, but I told him, “Definitely
where it’s hot.”

Orlando was hot, and so was I.

I was excited about the NBA—and all the money that was coming with it—but I was also still thinking about LSU. I was kind of scared to tell Dale Brown I was leaving. One night I called him about eleven thirty. He said, “I already know what you’re calling about. You are right, you’ve got to go. They’re hammering you so hard out there in the college
game you should leave before you get hurt and can’t play anymore.”

I was so relieved. I really didn’t want to let Coach Brown down. The last thing he said was “Please be safe. Drive slowly. Go home and think about it. If you want me to come out there to Texas when you make your announcement, let me know and I will.”

Because I left campus without telling anyone, I didn’t follow the “proper procedures”
of withdrawal from LSU. As a result, my pal Bo Bahnsen confiscated my deposit. All these years later, the first thing I say when I see him is, “Yo, Bo. Where’s my fifty dollars?”

Once I got home to San Antonio, we started talking with agents. Coach Brown was the one who introduced me to Leonard Armato. Just before I left campus this guy—I forget his name—came up to me, slipped me his card, and
said, “If you sign with me, I’ll get you whatever you want. Let’s start with $250,000.” He was from Southern California and he scared the crap out of me.

Leonard came out to meet my family. He was a former college
point guard and Coach Brown trusted him, but my father warned him, “If you mess with my son, I’ll kill you.”

“He’s serious,” I told Leonard. “Don’t doubt it.”

I was about to become
a professional athlete, but my daddy was still standing over me, larger than life, bigger than ever. What I didn’t realize was that was never going to change. Philip Harrison couldn’t—wouldn’t—stay in the background. He just didn’t know how.

When I got back home to the army base in San Antonio, I was living with my parents again, and that was an adjustment. It was a flashback. It was “yes sir,
no sir” again. It was “turn down the music” again. It was “watch your language, son” again (that’s my mother).

But everything was about to change. My parents, who had taken care of me and kept me out of trouble (most of the time), were about to have their roles reversed.

It was finally time for me to take care of them.

In April 1992, even though I hadn’t been drafted yet and I had no idea which
team I’d be playing for, I got some money from an endorsement for Classic Car. They paid me $1 million. I could not believe it.

I was rich!

I managed to blow through it all in two days.

The first thing I did was take care of some matters on the home front. Both my mom and my dad had terrible credit, so I took out $150,000 and paid that off. I’m rich. I can do these things.

The next thing I
did was go to the Mercedes-Benz dealer and buy myself a car. I came home and my dad said, “Where’s mine?” so I went back and bought him one, too. And, of course, I’ve got to make sure my mother is cruising around town in style, so now I’ve bought three Mercedes-Benz cars in one week.

I then got a call from the bank. The man was very nice. He said, “Mr. O’Neal, I don’t want bad things to happen
to you like other athletes we’ve dealt with. But I think you should know you owe us ninety thousand dollars.”

At first I was confused, but then he explained to me by the time
you take that $1 million and deduct all the taxes, it really is only worth between $500,000 and $600,000. Damn. I hung up the phone and I told my mother, “I need an accountant.”

Leonard helped me set up the meetings. The
first person, believe it or not, was the actor Wayne Rogers, the guy who starred in the television show
M*A*S*H
. He came in and told me, “We’re going to get you this and get you that,” and all I could think of was that book about Kareem that my dad gave me and how he lost his money in soybeans and if something appears too good to be true, then it probably is.

Scratch off the
M*A*S*H
dude. Another
guy came in wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit, and he was too slick. The next guy was wearing a cheap suit, and even though I’m fresh out of college and I don’t know anything about mortgages or money markets or municipal bonds, I still know a decent suit when I see one—or don’t see one.

We talked to a lot of people with their fancy brochures and their big plans, but none of them hit me right.
I was getting tired and cranky and hungry (I’m always hungry) when this little guy with curly hair and glasses walks in.

We tell him to put his brochure over on the desk with the rest of the pile and he says, “I don’t have a brochure.” His name is Lester Knispel and he starts talking to me about savings bonds. He talked about potential investments, but mostly he was very conservative in his presentation.
At one point he said, “We can learn together how this should work.”

Here’s what made my mom fall in love with him. She asked every other guy about letting her see the books. She told them I was young and she wanted to help me along. They all said, “Mrs. Harrison, trust us. We do this for a living. Let us take care of it. You don’t have to worry or bother with it. It’s our job.”

Now if you tell
that to Lucille you might mean well, but all she’s hearing is “Butt out, Mom.” And that’s not going to work.

Lester was smarter than that. He told my mother, “You can see the books anytime you want. Same with Shaquille. You are the client.
I would be working for you.” He was no dummy. He knew all the numbers and figures were complicated and boring, and after a while my mother would learn to trust
him and wouldn’t want to be bothered with poring over my stuff. And that is exactly what happened.

I liked Lester because he was straightforward and very smart and not too slick. Not only that, he represented some rappers.

We hired Lester Knispel, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Lester was my sounding board. When I got one of my crazy ideas, he talked me out of it—most of
the time. When I started buying too many cars, handing out money to too many relatives, and going off the edge in general, he reeled me back in.

He was very successful and he had saved a lot of money, so I asked him how he and his family did so well. He told me, “We have annuities.” I asked, “What the hell is that?” He explained to me, “It’s when you pay a life insurance company a single premium,
which they will pay back years later in the form of a fixed sum.”

That sounded like something I needed. When I started making all the big bucks and I had more money than I could spend, I put big hunks of it into annuities. I bought them for myself, my parents, for my brother, and for my two sisters.

What it meant was when I turned forty years old, which back then seemed like light-years into
the future, I would receive a nice monthly sum for the rest of my life that would keep me in excellent financial shape. Thanks, Lester.

My father was very happy with Lester. He was also happy that I was learning how to conduct business. Sarge was proud of my basketball accomplishments, but he always threw the same thing in my face. “You aren’t going to be some stupid fucking African dunking basketballs
the rest of your life,” he’d say. “You are smarter than that.”