Shaquille O’Neal is a humongous man. And though he is aloof, he is not a gentle giant by a long shot. Instead, O’Neal is the meanest kid on the playground if you mess with him. He is the kind who loves to joke around and have fun but if you get on his nerves, he is quite capable of destroying you.
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Considering his size and ferociousness, it is hard to comprehend a scenario where someone would dare mess with him, much less threaten him. However, in his book Shaq Uncut, Shaquille O’Neal detailed an incident that left a deep mark on his psyche.
He wrote of the time he was in high school and went to play a game in Texas. He was met with an ominous and deeply racist threat on his visit.
Shaquille O’Neal found a 7ft scarecrow with a noose around its neck
In his 2011 biography Shaq Uncut, O’Neal detailed a deeply disturbing event. Back when he was just a high school senior who had become a top prospect, his school visited Texas to play.
On his way to the school, Shaq and his teammates saw the scary scarecrow. At first, O’Neal thought it was supposed to be a joke. The whole idea of it was so foreign to Shaq, so unbelievable, that at first, he couldn’t comprehend what was going on. When knowledge finally dawned, Shaq vowed to make the school pay for it.
O’Neal: “We played in Sabinal, Texas, a town about 90 ninety miles east of Del Rio, which is on the Mexican border. We’re driving there on a team bus, and I’m looking out the window and I see this huge scarecrow. We get a little closer and I realize it’s a seven-foot scarecrow that’s supposed to be me. It’s got a jersey with my number on it and a noose hanging around its neck. Everyone is so shocked nobody knows what to say, so it gets real quiet on our bus. Now I’m pissed. I’d never really dealt with much racism in my life to this point. My first thought was, Maybe they’re trying to be funny. But there’s nothing funny about a noose. It was probably racist, but I just didn’t want to go there. Maybe I just didn’t want to believe it.”
Imagine being so shocked that you refuse the obvious. Shaq, the clear victim here, was so disturbed by what he had just witnessed. He refused to accept it and instead considered it as a totally different thing.
Kudos to him for finding a way to deal with the anger and disappointment of it all. A weaker man would have turned to violence but Shaquille O’Neal knew better. Instead of violence, Diesel did what he did best. He absolutely dominated the team.
O’Neal took out his anger on the opposition team
In his book, Shaq wrote about what happened after. He claimed that the team they faced wasn’t all good and they were clearly scared of O’Neal. So, he added to their fears.
Shaq: “I go out there and I give them what they want. I act like a monkey. I’m dunking and I’m swinging from the rim and I’m screaming like a beast. You want it? Here it is. I was acting completely crazy. They think I’m nuts. So now I’m looking into their eyes and they’re scared. We got ’em. Easiest forty-something points I’ve ever scored.”
Shaquille O’Neal’s reaction shows he knew what was at stake. He could have gotten violent and trashed a few kids and no one could have stopped him. However, he recognized that his life had more to it than the disgusting scarecrow. He chased his dreams and won big time which was likely not the case for the people who made that scarecrow.
