Shaq Uncut: My Story (30 page)

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 were 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.

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 it, 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.