Shaq Uncut: My Story Read Online Free PDF

Jersey, to play some pickup. There weren’t a whole lot of guys around, but there was this one fairly big dude who played a little one-on-one with me. His name was MarkBryant. He later became a big star at Seton Hall and played eighteen years in the NBA. I didn’t have the skill that Mark had at that point, but now that I could jump, I held my own.
    Uncle Mike was impressed with how I improved, I could tell. Whenever we played before, he could shoot over me all day. But now all of a sudden when he pulled up for that jumper, I could actually contest it. My wingspanwas always pretty impressive, but I had never used that to my advantage. I was discovering how to block shots. I figured,
If I’m not scoring much, then nobody is going to score on me
.
    We were leaving the park that afternoon, and my uncle Mike put his arm around me.
    “Something has happened, Shaquille,” he said.
    He was right. Something had happened. I was finally becoming a baller.

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, 1989
    S haquille O’Neal was lacing up his basketball shoes when Cole High School coach Dave Madura and his assistant, Herb More, approached him.
    Both men were agitated. They told Shaquille about a conversation they’d had with the referee moments before.
    “We just heard the funniest thing,” the official told Coach Madura. “Those guys from Southside just informed us we’re aboutto witness the biggest upset in high school basketball.”
    O’Neal didn’t even look up. He merely nodded.
    In truth, Shaq didn’t need any additional motivation. Minutes earlier he had walked into the gym, ducking under the door as a pretty young cheerleader smiled at him. As Shaq grinned in return, her face contorted into a look of disgust.
    “Freak!”
    She shrieked so loudly, he wanted to cover hisears.
    He had grown accustomed to verbal assaults, but he still couldn’t fathom why people were so cruel. Did they think because he was so big and so strong that he had no feelings?
    O’Neal said little in Cole’s pregame huddle. He pointed to his chest and said softly, “Get me the ball.”
    The first time down, he grabbed it on the block, wheeledand jammed so hard the rim bent forward. When he gotit again, he slammed it with such force the rim drooped to the right.
    “By the third time he dunked,” More later recalled, “the rim looked like a roller coaster.”
    The biggest upset in high school basketball would have to wait another day.

N OBODY KNEW WHERE THE HELL I HAD COME FROM WHEN I showed up at Cole High School in San Antonio, Texas, in 1987. I wasn’t an AAU lifer or a summer camp gym rat. I was a military kid coming from Europe who had some size but wasn’tsure what to do with it. That was my self-published scouting report.
    I moved there too late to play basketball in my sophomore year. I even wanted to play football at my new high school, but Sarge wouldn’t let me. He was worried I’d get hurt. He was planning on my basketball skills paying for my college.
    One of the first kids I met at Cole was Joe Cavallero, this little guy who was the sixthman on the basketball team and also the school’s starting quarterback. He was a very good athlete, a born leader. Joe saw me in the office when I was registering and he gave me a little crap and that was it—instant friends. Joe got me the job as football team statistician, just so I’d have something to do. I’d walk up and down the sidelines intimidating the hell out of the other team. They’d lookat me and say, “Shit. When is that kid coming in the game?”
    Even though I wasn’t on the team the football coach made me run all the off-season drills. I even did the log drill, which I absolutely hated. You had two logs parallel to one another with ten feet in between, and you had to do bear crawls across them. You were expected to zigzag across, then roll at the end.
    I’m almost six foot tenat this point, and they have me rolling around in the mud. By the time I was done I was covered in dirt. I