Shaq Uncut: My Story (21 page)

Phil decided we needed more defense, so Glen Rice, who had made the mistake of getting in a public contract squabble with the Lakers, got traded and Horace Grant came
in. He knew the triangle in his sleep, and it was great to be reunited with him, but we lost DFish for sixty-two games with a broken foot, and it hurt us more than you’d know.

We started the ’00–’01 season with a 23-11 record, and Kobe was on my nerves. After one game, when he scored 38 points and refused to even look at anybody else, I asked for a trade. I was kidding—sort of.

The best thing
that happened to us that season was Kobe got injured and had to sit out nine games. Like I’ve said before, he’s a smart guy, so while he’s sitting there and he’s watching us win eight out of nine games, he notices that when the ball is moving and everyone touches it, we’re a better team.

Give him credit. When he came back after his injury, he was a different guy.

That meant we were a different
team. We finished strong and beat out Sacramento by one game for the division crown.

People asked me about the roll we were on and I told them, “Our offense is like the Pythagorean theorem. There is no answer.”

The media had a blast with that one. Of course some wise guy comes back at me later and challenges me, so I said, “There is no answer to the Pythagorean theorem. Well, there is an answer,
but by the time you figure it out, I got 40 points, 10 rebounds, and we’re planning for the parade.”

I was planning for a big parade. I was feeling invincible, like
Superman. The only thing that can stop Superman is Kryptonite, and there’s no such thing as Kryptonite.

What we did next was the most satisfying stretch of my entire career.

We played our old nemesis Portland and swept them in three
straight. Just dominated them. Next up, the other team I couldn’t stomach, the Sacramento Kings, who I started calling the Sacramento Queens. Here are my numbers for that sweep: Game 1—44 points, 21 rebounds; Game 2—43 points, 20 rebounds; Game 3—21 points, 18 rebounds; Game 4—25 points, 10 rebounds.

See ya, Queens.

So now we’ve got to play the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals, and that
means Tim Duncan again. Tim was injured in 2000, so we didn’t get a chance to see them in the playoffs. In my mind, I had to win at least one title that included getting past my most worthy opponent.

We took Game 1. In Game 2 they were up 15 in the third quarter and Duncan was terrific, and I was like,
Damn, we can’t let this happen
. Kobe was thinking the same thing, and he just took over the
game. He went nuts. He was spectacular and the Spurs had no answer. He brought us all the way back, and after we won I said, “He’s my idol.”

And I wasn’t even kidding.

We went on to sweep the Spurs—did you hear that? We swept the Spurs!—so we still hadn’t lost a playoff game yet.

We’re going to play the Sixers in the Finals, which means a lot of Allen Iverson, who stole my second regular-season
MVP trophy from me. He was a talented little bugger and we knew we’d have our hands full, and when they beat us in Game 1 we started hearing the hoots from all the Lakers haters. They said their center Dikembe Mutombo, who was the Defensive Player of the Year that season and a Georgetown guy (you know how those Georgetown guys bother me) was going to “negate me.” That’s a fancy word for “stop
me.”

Don’t bet on it. It became my goal not just to beat the Sixers, but
to destroy Dikembe. He was complaining about my elbows and my “aggressive play,” and I figured,
How’s this for aggressive?
I dunked on his head, again and again. I completely undressed him.

We needed only five games to get the job done. What I remember most about that 2001 championship is my father on the court with me,
looking up at me and saying, “I love you.” The old man didn’t say that too often, and it kind of choked me up for a minute.

Jerry West called me after the series to congratulate me. He said I had “shredded” the morale of the Sixers and Mutombo. “Shaq, your quickness, your footwork, your balance, your power, it was like watching a one-sided boxing match,” Jerry said. “They should have stopped
the fight. You dominated Dikembe so completely, at times I was thinking,
This almost isn’t fair
.”

Getting that kind of praise from one of the best ever, the logo, was really special. I was on top of the basketball world.

Before the ’01–’02 season I had some minor surgery on my toe. I had this arthritic toe that was giving me major problems. There was a more serious, more involved surgery that
I probably should have had, but we were winning and I didn’t want to interrupt that with too much time missed, so I went for the quick fix that would only keep me out of training camp.

It didn’t work. My toe was killing me all season, and it made it difficult for me to push off. That year we finished second in the division behind Sacramento. Our rivalry had heated up, and of course I was fanning
the flames every chance I got.

During one of our preseason games against Sacramento we’re staying at the Palms in Las Vegas and we go to hang out at this club called Rain. It has three levels; there’s about two thousand people in the club and we’re roped off up on the top floor. It’s me, BShaw, and DFish, and I start rapping about Doug Christie’s wife, who had popped off in the papers about how
her husband was being treated. I mention Kings guard Mike Bibby and CWebb and Vlade in my rap, and I’m having some fun at their expense.

Of course the Kings players were all there. They were on the
second level and they heard everything I said, but I didn’t care. It was all in fun. It was freestyle rap—whatever comes to you, you say it. I’m dumping all over them in this rap but they’re laughing,
because what else are they going to do?

Naturally we ended up playing Sacramento in the 2002 Western Conference Finals. It was a bloodbath, a lot of smack talk going back and forth. Three of the games ended on last-second shots.

Their coach, Rick Adelman, kept complaining I was stepping over the line too soon after I shot my free throws. So, after Game 3 I sent him a little rhyme that went like
this: “Don’t cry / Dry your eyes / Here comes Shaq / With those four little guys.”

In Game 4, I hit 9 of 13 free throws, and we won at the buzzer on a shot by Big Shot Bob. In Game 6, I was 13 of 17 from the free-throw line. We won, which forced a Game 7.

As I’ve said before, I happen to be a big “conspiracy theory” guy, but I can’t sign off on Sacramento’s charges that the league wanted the
Lakers to win instead of them.

When we won Game 7 (11 for 15 from the line, because I know you were wondering), we got on our bus and got the hell out of there. I couldn’t resist, though. On the way out I mooned their fans.

My mother didn’t like that. If I had thought about Lucille before I did it, it would have stopped me in my tracks. Sarge wasn’t too crazy about it, either, but he has a temper
so he understands sometimes your emotions get the best of you.

We played the New Jersey Nets in the Finals, and just like the previous year it was kind of a letdown after the series we had just had with Sacramento. We won the first two games, and in Game 3 the Nets were making some noise about winning a game, but I sent Jason Kidd’s driving shot into the third row of the seats and Kobe hit a
spinning jumper and it was over. We went on to sweep them to lock up the three-peat.

I got myself another ring, another series MVP. Kobe came up to me and said, “Congratulations, greatest,” and I said, “Congratulations, most dominant.”

This time I didn’t guarantee a four-peat because I was still having some serious issues with my toe. The doctor told me I had hallux rigidus, which is a disorder
of the joint located at the base of the big toe. It’s a form of degenerative arthritis, and mine had gotten so bad I needed more surgery. There were three options. I could have the quick-fix surgery again that hadn’t worked the first time, or another surgery that would keep me out two to three months, or a third, more involved surgery they perform on ballerinas. If I had chosen that one, I would
have been out six months and I wouldn’t have been able to come back until January or February. Phil Jackson was pushing me to have the more involved surgery. He could tell my toe was so painful and so stiff that it was affecting my lift and I was putting strain on the rest of my body.

He told me, “If you get this done right, you can play until you’re forty.”

I wish I had listened to him. I was
too nervous about being out six months, especially since the Lakers were stalling on the extension we had been negotiating. So I had the surgery that would keep me out three months. It helped me some, but my problems with my toe have never gone away.

It took me a while to make that decision, and to find the best surgeon, so I didn’t have the surgery until later in the summer. I missed the first
twelve games of the season. When someone asked me why I put if off so long, I said, “I got hurt on company time, so I’ll heal on company time.”

Phil wasn’t happy with me after I said that. Neither was Dr. Buss. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever said, but I was injured and worried about my future, and I was getting no love from the Lakers.

We started that season 11-19. We recovered
enough to win fifty games but we lost to the Spurs in the playoffs. The series was tied 2–2, and we had the ball in Big Shot Bob’s hands to win it in Game 5, only this time, the ball went halfway down… and out. We were all shocked. Rob’s shots always went in.

Our locker room was pretty quiet after we were eliminated. We had won three championships in a row, and all of a sudden we were yesterday’s
news. I remember Kobe and I sharing a black bro hug and then going our separate ways for the summer.

Even with all the back-and-forth crap between us, we understood we needed each other to win. Go back and look at any criticism I ever had of Kobe. Never once did I ever say the kid couldn’t play. It was never about that.

The crazy thing about Kobe and me was, we never had a problem in practice.
Once we got on that court, whatever issues we had disappeared.

I just never looked at it as a big deal, although I know everyone else did. I heard Doc Rivers say once our relationship was the “biggest travesty in sports” because we should have stayed together and won at least five championships. Maybe, maybe not. We’ll never know.

The media was constantly asking me about Kobe and they were constantly
asking Kobe about me. They kept poking us, prodding us, but in the end, what were the results? Rings. Championships. Legendary status.

At one point they asked me: are you and Kobe the most powerful duo that’s ever played? I put on my blank face and said, “I can’t answer that question. I didn’t have a TV growing up and I don’t know how to read.”

Kobe and I went at it a different way. He was driven,
obsessed with being great. I wanted to be great, too, but I had other things in my life. I didn’t have that tunnel vision that made Kobe so special and so annoying at the same time.

The other thing Kobe didn’t understand was I wasn’t born with his body or his metabolism. If the two of us spent a month in the weight room and did the exact same program, he’d be ripped, defined. Not me, no matter
how much I lift. I don’t ever look that way.

Some guys are what I call natural salad eaters. Kobe, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, they’re salad eaters. Their bodies are fabulous,
chiseled. I don’t know what they eat but they look like he-man dawgs. It’s a genetic gift.

Then you look at guys like me, Zach Randolph, Kevin Love. We don’t have those bodies, but we’re still going to do magical things.
Dwight Howard and Blake Griffin? They’re salad eaters.

Me, I’m going to McDonald’s, buy a Big Mac, and then I’m going to bust your ass. I don’t look like the others, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get the job done.

I’d say three championships in a row proves my point.

S
haquille O’Neal was in training, but not for a fourth NBA championship. For years he had been enrolled in the Los Angeles Police Academy, a challenging physical and academic regimen he took on in addition to playing professional basketball.

His goal was to be a member of the SWAT team. The specific requirements for the specialized unit included the ability to scale
a rope one hundred feet in the air. O’Neal had completed the conditioning tests, the sit-ups and the push-ups, had endured the verbal assaults and disciplinary penalties, but that rope climb kept crossing him up.

“I was too big,” he said. “I’d grab onto that thing and haul myself up, but I wasn’t able to hang on.”

Without completing the task, a spot on the SWAT team was out of the question.

Dozens of times, he tried to shimmy up that rope at the Academy. Each time, he failed. Finally the supervising officer told him, “Shaquille, I don’t think this is for you.”

A few weeks later, Mike Parris went to visit O’Neal at
his Los Angeles home. He couldn’t help but notice the one-hundred-foot rope dangling from the roof.

“Police training,” said Shaq, when asked for an explanation.

For weeks
the big man tested his will against the rope. One morning, Shaq decided to add some small knots so his grip was more stable. Within days, Shaquille O’Neal had scaled it to the top.

He skipped into the house and called Philip Harrison.

“Dad,” he said excitedly. “I did it!”

The following morning Shaq removed the knots and attempted to elevate himself without them. He made significant progress
and was almost three quarters of the way up when he lost his grip and toppled seventy-five feet to the ground. He landed with a sickening thud squarely on his back.

For a moment, he thought he’d fractured his pelvis. He crawled into the house, calling for help. His injuries proved to be minor, but he was so bruised and sore he missed a couple of practices and a game with the Lakers.

“I could
climb that rope with the knots all day, every day,” said O’Neal. “But without them . . . it was just too hard.”