Shaq Uncut: My Story (34 page)

So basketball is out for a little while, but I’m still going to the Thoreau Club in Concord every night and I’m swimming. I’m riding the treadmill, I’m working out, I’m coming back home, I’m getting massages, and I’m watching the games. The next day I’m going to practice, riding the exercise bike, coming home and taking a nap, then going
for treatment, then back to the pool.

I had a key to the Lincoln-Sudbury High School gym, which was right across the street from my house, and they had a little weight room in there. So I’d go there to lift some weights and take some free throws. I usually went around eleven o’clock at night when no one was around. I ate right, stayed active. I lost fifteen pounds, but that damn Achilles just
wasn’t responding.

Just before the All-Star break I got a call that the Lakers were unveiling a statue of Jerry West outside the Staples Center. The All-Star Game was in Los Angeles, and I was invited to come to the ceremony. I told my assistant, “No, I’m a Celtic now. I’m not going.” But a couple of weeks before the event we got another call telling me that Jerry would really appreciate it if
I showed up.

I was surprised it meant that much to him, but once I heard that I made sure that I was there. I knew I was Jerry West’s guy once, but I guess I thought he’d moved on. It was pretty damn gratifying to get to that event and be sitting in the audience while Magic and Kareem
and Elgin Baylor and Pat Riley and Jerry Buss were sitting on the stage, and to have Jerry West find me in the
crowd, point to me, and say, “I love you.”

It blew me away. I went up and talked to him after it was over, and he was crying and telling me I was his favorite. It’s funny. He never really said stuff like that when I was playing for his team. Usually when we had a conversation it was because he was chewing me out for something I’d done wrong.

I want to thank Jerry West for remaining true to me.
I want to thank him for remembering what I remember—that together we brought a championship to the Lakers, along with Kobe and all the other guys. That together we were a pretty good team and created some pretty cool memories for a lot of people in Los Angeles.

Just before the trade deadline in February, Danny called me up and told me they were thinking of trading Perk. There’s been a lot of
talk about that trade and why they did it, but let’s keep it real: they traded Perk because he wanted a big extension and they weren’t going to pay him. Simple as that.

It was business, baby.

Danny admitted that was the reason, along with the idea they had to get younger, and Jeff Green would do that for them. He wanted me to know that Doc believed when I got healthy I’d be a great fit with
the Big Four and that we could probably win it all.

I felt I had to be honest with Danny, so I told him, “Listen, win or lose, there’s a better than 60 percent chance I won’t be back next season. My heel isn’t getting better. I don’t think you should trade Perk.”

The reason I said that was because I had already been out awhile, and even with all the work I was doing to get my heel right it wasn’t
improving. To be honest, at that point I was getting kind of nervous and scared, because I didn’t want the whole thing to hinge on me and then have it all fall apart because I couldn’t get out there and play.

I had been blamed so many times in so many places when
things went wrong, I didn’t want that to happen again. Not there. Not in Boston. I didn’t want it to be my fault if the Celtics lost.
In fact, because I’ve turned into one of those conspiracy guys, I actually put my call with Danny on speakerphone so everyone who was there with me, including Danny Garcia, my massage therapist, and Nikki, my girlfriend, could hear me say, “I don’t know if I’m coming back, bro.”

They traded Perk anyway. The locker room was pretty quiet for a few days. Perk was a popular guy, a hard worker, a
sweet kid. His opinion of himself might have been a little inflated, but hey, join the club. You could probably say that about all of us.

It took a while for us to adjust to all the new faces. The Boston Celtics scene is kind of intense, and Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic looked a little shell-shocked the first few weeks. For one thing, no one had ever asked them to play defense like that before.

The season was winding down and I still hadn’t played, and I was getting really uneasy about that. We had five games to go, and I told them I wanted to try and play against the Pistons on April 3.

I knew they’d have to give me a cortisone shot or I’d have no chance. They didn’t want to give me the shot. They didn’t want me to play, but I hadn’t touched a ball and I felt like we were running out
of time. I told them, “Just let me get in, let’s see if I still got it.”

The adrenaline rush of being out there and playing after so long was amazing. When I went into the game the crowd just exploded. They gave me a standing ovation. That got me pumped. I was flying. I was flying and feeling good. I hit my first three shots, including a little up-and-under move that no one was expecting.

And
then just like that, I felt another pop. They called it my calf, but it was really the area around the Achilles again. It felt like somebody had shot me with a gun. I was running along and I felt it and I was like,
What the hell was that?

So now I’m worried. Really worried. I’m calling everybody I know. I’m getting stim machines flown in, I’m having double massages. I
call my boys from Phoenix,
who helped me so much when I was there.

They fly in and help me loosen up my hips and I’m starting to feel a little better. Doc was great. He wasn’t putting any pressure on me. He was telling me, “We don’t need you in the first round of the playoffs.” I still had some pain back there behind the heel so our trainer Eddie Lacerte was saying, “Give it one more week. One more week.”

We knock out
the Knicks in the first round of the playoffs, and we get to the Miami series and I’m not ready, but we’re out of time. I understand that. So I tell them, “Shoot me up. Let’s go.”

Dr. Brian McKeon, the Celtics team physician, was really against that. We had a couple of pretty big blowouts over it. But I told them, “If you don’t shoot me up, I’ll find someone else who will.” I ended up getting
about fifteen shots before we were done.

Dr. McKeon kept telling me, “Shaq, this is no good. I don’t want that thing to rip.” I said, “You’ve been so nice to me, so hospitable. I need to do this. If it rips, it rips.”

I played in Game 3 against Miami and I couldn’t move. I played eight minutes and got my two fouls in, but I was having trouble. It upset me because I had worked hard to get in
great condition, but that heel really limited my mobility. And there’s Magic Johnson on television telling people I’m not in shape. Wrong, Magic. It’s called an injury.

They shot me up again and we gave it one more try in Game 4, but I lasted only three minutes. Doc came to me afterward and said, “Shaq, we want you to stop. We appreciate all that you’ve done, but it’s over. I won’t play you.”

He could tell I was completely bummed out. I could barely look at the guy. The next day he told the media I was done and said, “The guy is devastated. None of you have any idea how hard he’s worked to get back.”

It was brutal to sit there and watch Miami beat our team. I was crushed. I hated it. The Celtics were the best. People don’t realize
how physically screwed up Kevin Garnett was all season.
His legs and his knees were all messed up. He was in pain all year. If you ask him, I bet he’ll tell you he thought about retiring, too.

I’m watching that series and Miami has no inside presence, and it’s just killing me. In the game I did play, the Miami players thought about driving the lane, but when I touched them up they never really came back in. LeBron, DWade, Chris Bosh, they were all
thinking twice about going in there because they knew I had every intention of using all six of my fouls.

I felt bad for Paul Pierce in that series. He struggled. It all started when he got tossed in Game 1. I didn’t understand where the referee, Ed Malloy, was coming from on that. The referee kind of panicked and was moving too fast. Paul had picked up a technical earlier in the game, and then
a few minutes later DWade nailed him with a moving screen, so Paul said something to the official but he wasn’t real demonstrative when he said it. It wasn’t like he was showing the guy up. Everybody talks. We all do. Ed Malloy should know that. But he’s new and young, and he panicked and he tossed Paul Pierce. Even though we all sympathized with him, he still got an earful from Doc. “You’ve got
to be smarter than that,” he told Paul.

Miami went on to beat us in that series. LeBron was a beast. I’ve never seen him play like that before. He sure as hell didn’t play like that against Dallas in the Finals.

I’m just really upset and disappointed because I believe this was the Celtics’ year. This was the first time in my nineteen-year history that all the powerhouses were gone. They brought
me in to bang Dwight Howard, and he was gone. They wanted me to rebound against the Lakers. They were gone, too. I thought it would be us and the Spurs, me and Tim Duncan, two guys with four rings going at it—but they were gone, too.

I did everything I could to get back on the court. I have the holes in the back of my heel to prove it.

What a great organization Boston was. What a great town.
I had no idea the people there were so fantastic, so knowledgeable of the
game, so appreciative of their stars. Everybody was so nice, so hospitable, especially in Sudbury. They let me be Shaq. I wish I had something left in the tank to reward them for how graciously they treated me.

I had a meeting with Dr. McKeon before I left. The only way we could have gotten that Achilles right again was
to go in and clean up the area all around it. If we did that, I’d be out nine months and then we’d be back where we started again, people waiting and wondering when and if I was ever coming back. I didn’t want to hold Boston up like that again. That city deserved better.

Now, if it had been a two-month recovery, maybe that would have changed my mind.

The tendon is actually in decent shape, but
all the muscles around it are almost ripped in half. They are shredded. So, I can chill and let it heal with a ton of scar tissue, or I could have Doc McKeon go in and clean it up for me. Either way, it isn’t good.

I feel like I let Boston down. I didn’t want to hold Boston hostage. That was why I announced my retirement. They want to go out and try to get younger. I would have loved to come
back, but they say once your Achilles is damaged it’s never the same.

Doc Rivers is right up there with Phil Jackson as one of the great coaches in the game. He commands respect because he is so consistent in how he approaches things. He also speaks our language. Phil spoke some kind of foreign zen “cousin of weed” language, but because of his great track record everyone listened.

Doc was able
to get down to our level. He’d say, “Hey, you’ve got the Big Three out there, so why the hell are you pulling up and trying for a three-pointer, Big Baby?” He knew our lingo, knew how we think.

He never stopped preaching team. Ever. He expected us to act like professionals, and if we didn’t we heard about it.

Let’s say Ray hit four or five shots in a row and then Doc called a different play.
Ray would say, “Yo, Doc, I’m feeling it,” and Doc would say, “But it ain’t about you. It’s about the team.” He never
stopped stressing that. He didn’t care how many points you had, how many rebounds, how many assists. As long as the team was playing well, as long as we were winning, that’s what it was about.

Doc never believed in embarrassing or humiliating anyone. Take our film sessions. If
Paul got into one of his stretches where he was taking the ball one-on-one too much, Doc could have put together a nice little film package of that and called out The Truth in front of his teammates. That’s not his style. Instead, he put together a tape of plays where guys were making selfish decisions and just ran it. No commentary, just the proof, right there on film.

Sometimes the pictures
speak for themselves.

Paul was the leader of the Big Three, no question about that. He was the guy who was going to do things the way he thought they should be done, and you’ll never hear any criticism from me on that, because I was the same way. I respect Paul’s position. For years, it was all on him. If they lost, everyone was pointing the finger at him. So Doc would have to call Paul out every
now and then, but Paul always handled it like a pro.

Ray had his moments, too, because he had to have everything a certain way, and you knew with a bunch of knuckleheads like us that wasn’t going to be possible. Paul liked to mess with him a little bit. I left it alone. Ray’s an interesting guy. I would tell him, “When I’m posting and your guy’s head is turned, just get to your spot and I’ll
find you.” That was how I used to roll with DScott and Glen Rice. But some guys are stubborn in how they want to get the ball.

I think Ray is more like Dirk Nowitzki, an off-balance type of shooter. He likes to come off the fly, catch it, and go up. He’s a hell of a shooter and an extremely nice guy. He and Derek Fisher are going to be general managers somewhere, because those guys are inside
the system. They know the game, and they hang with the front office guys. Ray and Danny played golf together all season. Doc, too. Ray is almost like a front office guy already.

By now you know I always root for storybook endings. I’m not a fake dreamer anymore. I deal in real dreams. My dream of winning
a championship with Boston came up short. I feel terrible about it. I probably won’t get
over it for a while.

But the Boston Celtics will move on, and so will the NBA. That’s how it works.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

Except for me: I’m not going anywhere.

W
hen the big dreamer fantasized how it would end, the scenario was always the same. Shaquille O’Neal danced at the victory parade, celebrating another NBA title in yet another city. The crowd was electric and squealed with pleasure at Shaq’s championship antics.