Former LSU big, Shaquille O’Neal, was one of the best college basketball prospects in the early 90s. His 7’1 frame along with 300 pounds of sheer muscle separated him from everyone in the 1992 NBA Draft class. However, it could have been hampered because of the strict NCAA eligibility rules, which a young Shaq almost violated with a ‘phony’ phone. He wrote about it in his 2001 book Shaq Talks Back.
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Despite his awful shooting skills (especially from the free-throw line) he was projected to be the number 1 pick, something that would ensure a $17,400,000 rookie contract. However, just months before the ’92 Draft, an NCAA investigator paid him a visit for a possible rule violation.
Shaquille O’Neal almost lost his place in the 1992 Draft in an effort to impress girls
In a book that came out 9 years after his debut in the NBA, the NBA champ, Shaquille O’Neal wrote how he almost lost his place in the 1992 draft because of a fake cell phone he was using to impress girls.
“The NCAA was watching. They even paid me a visit one day. How about this story: It takes place before everybody started having cell phones—they were still expensive back then. I wanted to impress girls, so I had this big, clunky thing that looked just like a cell phone. It was called Cell-U-Clone. Whenever I’d walk through the quad, I’d press it and it would start ringing. I’d act like I was talking, ‘Yeah, what’s up?’” wrote O’Neal on Shaq Talks Back.
He went on about it in detail, revealing how it instead turned out to be an embarrassing moment for the investigator who probably came there to check whether Shaq was getting money from an agent.
“Well, Dale Brown called me in his office one day. Sure enough, there was an NCAA investigator waiting.
‘Shaq, you got a phone?’ Coach Brown asked.
‘Yeah, I got a phone,’ I said.
The NCAA dude asked how much it cost.
‘Ten dollars,’ I said.
‘Who did you get it from? Who’s paying your bill?’
‘I ain’t got no bill.’
‘How do you have a cell phone and no bill?’
I pulled it out and showed him my phony-ass cell phone. He was embarrassed for coming all the way down to the school. True story,” wrote O’Neal.
Imagine if he had bought a real cell phone. His exceptional NBA career would not have turned out the way it did. But his army-veteran father raised him well to do something so blatant.
Shaq stayed at LSU for an extra year following his father’s advice
Coming out of his sophomore year at LSU, O’Neal was a top-3 prospect in 1991. However, he stayed another year in college because his parents wanted him to do so, especially his father.
“‘So you been broke for 18 years, you can be broke for 19 years,’” Shaq has quoted on multiple occasions what Phillip A. Harrison once told him when he was thinking of coming into the NBA early.
The advice his step-father gave him, was just for his soon-to-be millionaire teenage son to learn how money works. Staying an extra year at school taught the $400 million worth man a lot, and he would not have it any other way.
