During his prime years, Shaquille O’Neal was best known for his explosive performances, dominance in the paint, and board-shattering dunks. However, it wasn’t always easy for the big guy to charge to the rim with all furiousness. In his autobiography Shaq Uncut, Diesel admitted that he had trained hard physically and psychologically to dunk the way he did.
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When Shaq returned from West Germany to San Antonio, Texas, with his family, he was enrolled in Cole High School, where he was part of the basketball team. Shaq described Cole as a really small school that never won a championship until he arrived. The school had only 76 pupils and often played against other schools thrice their size in the tournaments.
When it came to dunking, it took Shaq a while to learn to do the same. Cole’s head coach, Dave Madura, whom the Big Man described as a ‘no-nonsense person,’ made him do squats daily to improve his flexibility, especially from the hips. In his book, the Big Aristotle wrote about his high school coach,
“My coach, Dave Madura, was a no-nonsense guy. He had me do leg squats in front of a mirror until they were burning. He was trying to improve my flexibility, especially in my hips.
However, Shaq always feared missing his dunks or becoming a laughingstock. Hence, Diesel started by dunking every other object to improve this psychological factor before coming to basketball.
“I just wasn’t sure about it. What if I missed?
We started out by dunking a sock. Once I got comfortable with that, I tried dunking a tennis ball. Next, it was a softball, then a volleyball, and then, finally, a basketball,” wrote Shaq, describing his experience of learning to become the prolific dunker that he was in his prime.
Indeed, if Shaq had never heeded the advice given to him by his coaches, he wouldn’t have become the basketball phenomenon that we regard him as today. Shaquille O’Neal further popularized the idea of dunking among fans and inspired several new-generation big men to improve their athleticism and dunking skills while coming into the league.
Shaquille O’Neal improved his vertical, thanks to an army man
Shaquille O’Neal became a prolific dunker after he was spotted by an Army officer while playing basketball in Germany. The officer, named Pete Popovich, noticed Shaq in the gym and wondered if he could dunk given his then 6’10 frame at the age of 15 or 16.
However, Shaq blamed it on his knees for not getting a better vertical leap. And, the officer showed him how to do calf raises, improving the Big Aristotle’s vertical from 18 inches to 42 inches. Reminiscing this experience in his book, Shaq wrote,
“I did those damn things until my legs felt like they were going to fall off. From the end of my freshman year to the end of my sophomore year in high school, my vertical leap went from eighteen inches to forty-two inches.”
Though Shaq led his high school to win a state championship, he admitted that he was never seen as a prospect while playing for his school in Germany.
Unfortunately, at that time, the big man was suffering from a condition called Osgood-Schlatter disease, which rendered his knees with immense pain and weakness. However, Shaq worked on his game and figured out his fundamentals, later stamping his name as one of the greatest centers to have ever graced the league.
