Just in time to counter the effects of season-shredding NBA player-owner negotiations, former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal releases his memoir Shaq Uncut: My Story. This, from publisher Grand Central:
…If you follow the game, you also know that there's a lot more to Shaquille O'Neal than just basketball.
Shaq is famous for his playful, and at times, provocative personality. He is, literally, outsize in both scale and persona. Whether rapping on any of his five albums, challenging celebrities on his hit television show "Shaq Vs.," studying for his PhD or serving as a reserve police officer, there's no question that Shaq has led a unique and multi-dimensional life. And in this rollicking new autobiography, Shaq discusses his remarkable journey, including his candid thoughts on teammates and coaches like Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Phil Jackson, and Pat Riley.
From growing up in difficult circumstances and getting cut from his high school basketball team to his larger-than-life basketball career, Shaq lays it all out in SHAQ UNCUT: MY STORY.
In Shaq Uncut, O’Neal discusses how he emerged from an impoverished childhood to dominate during the basketball renaissance of the 1990s and early 2000s. Deliciously frank stories abound from a career spanning almost twenty years and the five NBA franchises on which O’Neal left his indelible stamp. In the pages of Shaq Uncut, O’Neal voices unvarnished opinions of established players like Kobe Bryant, Anfernee Hardaway, and Alonzo Mourning, as well as members of the new guard like Dwayne Wade and LeBron James. O’Neal is also candid about the coaches and front office personnel who have helped to shape his legendary career, like Phil Jackson, Jerry West, and Pat Riley.
Off the court, O’Neal embodied the era’s cultural zeitgeist. O’Neal speaks with youthful abandon about starring in films (Kazaam, Steel, Blue Chips), hanging with hip hop giants like Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z, and releasing several rap albums of his own – all started with arguably the most infectious callabo of the time, “What’s Up Doc,” with Fu Schnickens.
Of course, audiences read tell-alls for the promise of dirt dished, and Shaq Uncut does not disappoint. Here’s a sampling:
On his Miami Heat coach Pat Riley’s coaching style, particularly the requirement that all guards have 6 percent body fat:
It made no sense to me. I had been taking care of my body for twelve NBA seasons and we had won three championships, and I had never seen anyone from the Miami Heat come even close to winning anything. They may have been in the best shape, but I never saw any of them around when we were passing out rings.
On Kobe Bryant, with whom O’Neal had a famously contentious relationship, after Bryant’s 2003 sexual assault charge:
All I ever said about Kobe is what everyone is saying now. I just had the balls to say it.
His oblique take on the end of his marriage to Shaunie O’Neal, a media mogul in her own right with her Basketball Wives franchise:
At one time my ex-wife Shaunie and I were happy, but I admit it—I was a guy. I was a guy with too many options. Choosing to be with some of those women, well, that was on me. In my mind, I never did it disrespectfully, but obviously I shouldn’t have done it at all.
On finding love with Flavor of Love reality star Nikki “Hoopz” Alexander, whom O’Neal allegedly married about a week ago without a prenuptial agreement:
We’ve been together a year now, and I’m trying hard to keep myself on the straight and narrow. I’d like to think I’ve learned my lesson, and become a better man.
O’Neal has written several books. However, Shaq Uncut is told with the benefit of hindsight by an elder statesman of a game interested in clearing the decks and ensuring his legacy. In the interim, though, Shaq Uncut, for readers with a serious basketball jones, reminds us of a time when the game and its colorful personalities, not the bottom line, was what mattered most.
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