Before diving into a career involving signing million-dollar deals for athletes in the NBA, Aaron Turner had a basketball career of his own. He doesn’t speak about the same too often, but has experienced a moment that even greats today probably haven’t.
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NBA insider Brian Windhorst, in a segment that also included Turner, recently shed light on the moment Jonathan Kuminga‘s agent faced LeBron James, back when The King was in his senior year at St Vincent/St Mary. While that was special on its own, what was more iconic was the fact that Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant were in attendance to watch the high-school game.
Windhorst revealed that the Lakers were in Cleveland, playing the Cavs, and had an off night. Players do use that time to unwind. But Shaq and Bryant heading out together and bonding? That was as rare as a four-leaf clover.
“Do you think that they hung out on a lot of off nights during that time?” Windhorst asked with a smile, hinting at the off-court tensions between the two during their time in LA. “They get into the car, drive for an hour to Canton to watch you guys play.’
“Kobe and Shaq show up at your game. Like, you’re playing against LeBron, who’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated, like a couple of days before, and Kobe and Shaq at their height — well, maybe not Kobe’s height, but certainly Shaq’s height — show up at your game. What the heck was that? What were you guys saying on the bench?”
Expectedly, this stirred up Turner’s memory. He recalled how, during a timeout in that game, he realized it was the loudest arena he had ever been in. “You know, the Canton Fieldhouse, the way it’s built, 5000 people packed in, and you couldn’t hear anything that anybody was saying.”
“It was so loud, and it was in a timeout, so no one had any idea what our coach was saying,” Turner recalled. “Yeah, it was wild.”
Windhorst further added that the reason the crowd was so raucous in the middle of a timeout was that the Lakers duo had arrived late. Naturally, all the attention went toward them.
This was back in the early 2000s, when Bron, already a national superstar, was balling out in his final years of high school before ultimately joining the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA in 2003. It was also toward the end of the Kobe-Shaq era in Los Angeles, with the two guiding the Lakers to an incredible three-peat.
Turner didn’t continue to pursue a career playing basketball for long, but it must truly have been the highlight of his short time on the hardwood.
