Shaquille O’Neal is the all-time leader in nicknames. During his NBA career, the Big Fella went through them like all the other centers he overpowered. He became known as Superman and Diesel, The Big Aristotle and Shaq Fu. During the final stop of his career in Boston, he even dubbed himself The Big Shamrock.
O’Neal had a knack for self-promotion like few athletes before or since. It’s hard to believe that at one time, he stuttered.
In 1989, O’Neal enrolled at LSU as a 17-year-old freshman. He joined a team that was already loaded with talent. O'Neal said he was the Tigers’ third-best player. But by the end of his time in Baton Rouge, there was no question whose team it was.
During a three-year run, O’Neal won The Associated Press National Player of the Year award, averaged 21.6 points per game, shot 61% from the field and set the Southeastern Conference single-season blocks record three times.
The Tigers never made it past the Sweet 16, but O’Neal was hardly to blame. Once he hit his stride, opponents’ only real strategy of stopping him was to foul.
This is an oral history of O’Neal’s time at LSU.
Kent Lowe, LSU sports communication staff (1988-present): He was very raw. He was a big kid. There were a few games where Dale (Brown) early on didn’t start him and brought him off the bench, like at the first TV timeout or radio timeout.
Dale Brown, LSU head coach (1972-97): He was struggling. I told him before practice, “Come to my office an hour early.” He came in. I said, “Shaquille, I’ve got a question for you. Do you know how good you could really be?” Whenever he got nervous, he stuttered. “N-n-n-no. Not really." I said, “You don’t have to shut your eyes. This isn’t a seance. You don’t need a Ouija board. You don’t need a crystal ball. This is how good you can be.”
Dennis Tracey, LSU guard (1988-90), O’Neal’s former personal assistant: People don’t realize that when he was at LSU, he had a stuttering problem. He was a stutterer. If you think about where he is today, don’t tell me nothing can’t be accomplished with hard work.
Brown: Shaquille had no money at all. You can’t make it. The stupid NCAA. He had nothing. He had no clothes when he came here. Shoe-wise, he has club toes because growing up, they couldn’t afford shoes. He may have the worst-looking feet in the history of the Western Hemisphere because of the shoes.
Johnny Jones, LSU assistant (1984-97), head coach (2012-17): It was freakish to be the size that he was, to be able to do the things that he did. You talk about his footwork — he would be in the gym breakdancing.
Lowe: He could play any level once he got into the flow of games. It took about 10 games. Then it took off. He took off. It was amazing. He was a big-time player. If it was today, he would’ve been one-and-done. That he stayed three years is probably the most amazing story of college basketball.
Tracey: Shaq was ready to leave after his second year. Period. End of story. He was gone. I was at spring break. I’m partying. I was like, “This is going to be great.” I called Big Fella. He was supposed to come down. Dale and Sarge grabbed him and said, “No, you’re not. You’re staying one more year.” How they got him to stay? That was Dale’s relationship with Sarge — 100%. I was ready to live in Charlotte.
O’Neal was raised in a military family. Phillip “Sarge” Harrison, the man whom O’Neal considered his father, was an unapologetic disciplinarian. Brown met O’Neal at an Army base in Wildflecken, West Germany, when O’Neal was just 13 years old. To this day, they still talk over the phone and exchange emails regularly.
Brown: I finish my lecture and I’m packing my bag, and I get a tap on the shoulder. This giant of a man who stuttered pretty badly. “Co-co-co-coach Brown. Could I bother you for a minute?" He proceeded to ask me. He said, “I run up the court three or four times, and my lower extremities tire.” He said, “I can’t dunk a ball. Could you help me at all to build these up?”
Jones: Coach is one of those guys that if he meets you, he gives you a business card. Or if you write him, he’s going to write you back. He’s never not going to reply and communicate.
Brown: I sent him our weight training program. He sent me a handwritten letter. “Coach Brown, I did everything you told me to do. My high school coach cut me off the team. He told me I’m too slow. I’m too clumsy. I have too big of feet. That I could never play basketball. He suggests I become a goalie in soccer. What should I do?”
Lowe: Dale was very much a second father figure to Shaq. He was very close to him. Very careful with him. He got on him. He dressed him down when he had to. But there were moments when he was the father figure who could explain things in life and what the future held.
Harold Boudreaux, LSU forward (1989-92): Knowing the coach Brown that I know, he is genuine. Shaq, he is a genuine person. Sometimes people are alike.
Brown: I told his parents I’d do everything for him to be successful and know to use his money and we’d put him in the right classes. I put him in, I think, an international business class and a speech class. He came into my office all shook up, stuttering. “Co-co-coach, I can’t take that speech class. I just can’t take that speech class.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because I stutter.” I said, “Well that’s why you’re taking the class. Because you do stutter.”
Jones: Shaq, he wasn’t really one of those guys you really had to worry about missing class because of the relationship coach Brown had with Shaq and his family. The promises he had made to Shaq’s mom and dad about academics — coach wasn’t going to allow him to slip. When Shaq did miss, I think coach wanted to make sure he got his attention. I think he did.
Brown: I had a master key for all the rooms. He’s sound asleep lying on his back. I push him on the chest. “Wha-wha-what?” he said, “What happened?” I said, “Get up and put your pants on.” We go down on the track. I said “What did I promise your mom and dad? You told me you wanted a degree, right? You’re just going to miss class? That ain’t going to happen.” Never again did he miss class. His freshman year, he had the highest GPA on the team.
Headed into the 1989-90 season, LSU had star power everywhere on the court. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (then known as Chris Jackson) averaged 30.2 points per game as a freshman and was the go-to guy. Inside, the Tigers had Stanley Roberts, a 7-foot giant who could hit jumpers. O’Neal was the third option.
Tracey: People really don’t realize how good our team was. Shaq really was the sixth man coming in.
Boudreaux: You could’ve compared us to an NBA team at that time. Every position from the 1 through the 5 were talented players.
Stanley Roberts, LSU center (1989-90): Mahmoud had just come off a heck of a freshman season. He pretty much had the green light. It was our job to get the rebounds and the offensive rebounds. That was how we scored most of our points. I was more polished at that time offensively. If they needed two points, they would usually come to me. Shaq, he had to grow. He had to develop. Like all freshmen do.
Tracey: Stanley and Shaq would just clash and clash. After a certain time when someone is fouling the s*** out of you — and those two knew how to foul each other. There were a lot of arguments. I remember Stanley grabbing a garbage can one time and chasing Shaq around the gym with it.
Roberts: He came out. He wanted to prove himself as a freshman. I had been here for a year. My teammates were like, “You can’t let this freshman come in here and take over.”
Tracey: It was always a fight between those two because they were so talented. I think that led to Shaq’s development to the player he is. Because when you have someone like Stanley beating on your a** — without Stanley there, does Shaq become the player he is as quickly as he does? Probably in the long run. But Stanley made him develop quick. He couldn’t out-finesse Stanley. Never going to happen.
Brown: The fundamentals, he always had. He could run the court, he could jump and he could dunk. I don’t want to leave you thinking, “Dale Brown developed him.” He had a great talent when he came. He just had to get it all together. Like a young child learning how to walk.
Jones: I bet if I would’ve told him that he was the third-best player when he was a freshman, I would’ve had to take off running because he would’ve beat me.
Lowe: The chemistry at the end of the day probably wasn’t what it needed to be. Mahmoud eventually learning to play with post guys for the first time. And then these guys learning to play with someone who could really score and shoot it. They’d never played with someone like that before. So they were trying to figure that out.
Tracey: I think at the end of the season, if we meet any other team besides Georgia Tech, we wipe them out and we’re on the way to the Final Four and we win a national championship. Georgia Tech just happened to be as good as us. (Georgia Tech defeated LSU 94-91 in the second round of the NCAA tournament, and the Yellow Jackets advanced to the Final Four.) When you have the best f****** player in the country in Chris Jackson, you let him go. Sometimes it doesn’t go your way. That’s just the way it is.
Roberts: I think we would’ve won a title if I would’ve stayed and Mahmoud would’ve stayed. We only played one year together. That knowledge that we got in that one year, if we would’ve stayed, I think we would’ve won a championship.
O’Neal became the undisputed No. 1 option as a sophomore. Abdul-Rauf left for the NBA. Then three months before the season, Roberts was declared academically ineligible and decided to pursue a pro career. O’Neal stepped up. Statistically, he had one of the greatest college seasons ever. He averaged 27.6 points per game on 62.8% shooting, led the nation in rebounding (14.7) and ranked third in blocks (5.0).
Jones: He was the go-to guy. And he did not shy away from the responsibilities.
Lowe: There were a couple of times where he took the ball off the glass and decided he would dribble the ball down the court. People were running out of the way. It didn’t happen often. There was a poor kid for some small school — I think it may have been Lamar — who decided he was going to try to take a charge when Shaquille was coming. We were all concerned when he got run over at the other end of the court.
T.J. Pugh, LSU guard (1990-92): You really didn’t know what to do, basically. I didn’t see anybody in the country who could match up one-on-one with him in any shape or form.
Lowe: He had a way of when people came up and asked, “How did you play tonight?” He would give percentages. He’d say, “I played 77% tonight. The team played about 68%.” Everybody writes it down at first. Then everybody kind of got the joke.
Boudreaux: He would tap on your shoulder and make you look over the wrong shoulder. Just those things kids would do.
Pugh: He went down Fraternity Row, throwing firecrackers at people’s doors. He did so much stuff. It was about having fun.
Tracey: He had these turntables. He would scratch to the point where you have to go in there and say, “Dude, are you serious? Can you please stop. I’ll pay you. Do you want McDonald’s? Do we need to go to Burger King?” We used to go to Blimpie. That was our big deal. He loved Blimpie. I said, "I’ll give you a Blimpies to stop this s*** right now because it’s awful, and I can’t put up with it."
Jones: Shaq had a gift even back then. I think it’s culminated to who he is today. He always had it. To look back on big guys who played in the NBA who weren’t marketable, he’s the only guy who has been marketable at that size who could sell. It wasn’t only his ability to play, but a lot of it had to do with his personality.
Tracey: So there’s two different people, right? There’s the guy who walks on the court and gets after it. He’s going to kick you in your a**. Run you over. Then you have the guy outside of the gym who is a total goofball.
Lowe: The local guys eventually got in on his jokes. Some national writer would come to the game from The New York Times or Washington Post. “How did you play tonight? How do you think you played?” He’d throw out some percentage. The writers would all write it down. Then he’d look at the local guys and just kind of wink at them because he knew that he had them again.
Pugh: We developed our own family with the basketball team. We had something we called Dunk Mob Epsilon, which was our basketball fraternity. We had some purple warmups that we went and got airbrushed with something that was similar to the Jordan Jumpman logo.
Lowe: He was a big kid. That part of his DNA hasn’t changed. He was a big, lovable kid who liked to have a good time. Now he’s a big adult who loves to have a good time.
There was no stopping O’Neal, so defenses resorted to fouling him. During O’Neal’s junior year, Brown became concerned that the intentional fouls were getting out of control. Everything came to a head in the quarterfinals of the SEC tournament, when Tennessee big man Carlus Groves grabbed O’Neal around his waist and jerked him toward the ground to prevent a dunk. O’Neal swung his elbow at Groves. Brown charged onto the court.
Brown: I don’t remember the number. It may have been 27 flagrant fouls. We’re up 30 points on Tennessee in the SEC tournament. He’s going up for a dunk. Carlus Groves grabs him. His knee goes out. I thought his knee popped.
Jones: He was just known in the league to kind of be a dirty player. He had that history. We knew that. Shaq wouldn’t react that way just for anybody fouling him. Because he’d been fouled before and he was kind of a gentle giant.
Pugh: A guy is out of position. He can’t deal with him. And a guy just grabs him. I think it took a big toll on him as the season progressed. You get tired of it.
Boudreaux: He had played through it so many times before. To see him respond the way he did, he really had enough.
Brown: That’s when I made my mind up and went to the press conference. I said, “That’s it. I’m going to tell Shaquille and his parents it’s time to leave and go to the NBA. Flagrant fouls are going to cost him his career. Or it’s going to cost him his own career by smacking someone’s face one day, which he never did.”
Jones: When people hit him, it was like high school kids playing against kindergarteners. That was the difference in the size he had. Officials certainly wouldn’t call every foul. He was just so dominant.
Boudreaux: I was in the locker room with him, put out of that game along with other teammates. I remember him sitting there. He really felt bad. He said, “This is not me. I let that get to me. It shouldn’t have happened. I’m too much of a dominant player for it to happen.” To him, it felt selfish.
Lowe: The best thing that happened was in the NCAA tournament, we were sent to Boise (Idaho). No one in Boise really gave a damn what happened in Birmingham the week before. It was a national story when it happened. Shaq blocked like 11 shots against BYU. Then we played Bobby Knight and Indiana in the second round.
The Hoosiers won 89-79 and, like Georgia Tech in 1990, advanced to the Final Four. O'Neal had 36 points, 12 rebounds and five blocks in the final college game of his career.
Jones: Shaq goes 12 for 12 at the free-throw line. He’s capable. But that was one of those games that meant something to him.
Tracey: The mechanics of Shaq’s body do not allow him to shoot a free throw. He cannot get his elbow under the ball to shoot it. People say, “Why doesn’t he practice?” I want to punch people right in the mouth. You ... think we didn’t practice? Mechanically, he couldn’t get his elbow under the ball. It’s mechanically not possible.
Brown: That’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life, not pushing that (underhand free throws). I stopped him in practice one day and I said, “Here’s what I’m doing. You’re going to leave a lot of points on the board.” I said, “I don’t like your shot. I think it’s the size of your hand.” I said, “Here’s what I’m going to do. Rick Barry is a friend of mine. I’m going to bring him in and have him teach you underhand free throws. You can almost drop-kick better than your free-throw shooting.”
Jones: Unfortunately that wasn’t an area we could get him to improve a great deal in. At the same time, when Shaq was focused and locked in, great things could happen.
Lowe: Even though we didn’t beat Indiana, it was a good game. He ended his career in college on a high note. At that point, I think everyone knew he was going to go pro.
Pugh: If he returned for his senior year, if you couldn’t deal with him the year before, what are you going to do next year? It was the best decision for him.
Brown: He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay at LSU another year. But it was best for him to leave. I told him that.
Jones: He was a special cat, man. They just don’t come around. I don’t know if there will ever be another one. The size and the power he possessed. The mindset and the attitude. How smart of a guy he was. He was something special. He really was.
Brown: When you look at him, he looks like the Terminator. But inside, even today, he’s still Bambi. That’s his nature. Good-hearted. Loves humor. Big joker.
