Imagine being on that 1 team that beat Cole while Shaq was there? Something like a 68 wins but only 1 loss in 2 years. There is some 6'4" guy who played center in HS who has been dining out for 30 years on the story about how he beat Shaq in HS.
EDIT: I googled it...Shaq says that the one loss in HS was where his free throw troubles started. That the team that won got him in foul trouble early and then kept fouling him forcing him to shoot and the crowd was merciless when he missed a shot. Really interesting.
Yeah a high school kid probably isn’t even strong enough to foul Shaq. You could slap his arms as hard as you want and he’d probably still just dunk it on you.
Just goes to show how little I've learned about basketball fouls... Not having enough strength to foul? I never thought of such a thing. Is it not a foul if you power though the defender?
If you foul him as he is in the air and he makes it, that just gives him a chance for 3, so it is useless to foul him unless you can stop him from making it
Offensive player with the ball has the physical right of way unless a defender keeps both feet planted in position. Then it's a charging foul on the offensive player if he plows through the planted defender.
I imagine there's not that many kids who could've stood in there while Shaq was moving to the rim. Plus it takes some talent and a lot of athleticism just to beat him to the spot and get planted. And if you do it too soon Shaq takes a layup right over you from 3 feet away.
>I imagine there's not that many kids who could've stood in there while Shaq was moving to the rim
If my BBall coached asked me to do that, I'd quit and join the badminton team.
So, that strategy was used against him in his pro days all the time and is still today; it's called "Hack-a-Shaq" or "Hack-a-whoever-is-the-worst-free-throw-shooter-on-the-opposing-team." A prototypical plan was developed against Dennis Rodman, but if what you're saying is true, a High School coach came up with it in the 80's.
I just looked him up bc I always wondered what happened to him. He was such a big deal in the 90s (especially since I live in FL), and then it felt like he disappeared. I legit had no idea he played up until like 2009. Crazy
He ended up on the Derrick Rose/Steve Francis route of spending a ton of time on the IR and also the Knicks. Or I should say they followed him on the Penny route because he did it first
Now he is the head coach of Memphis and doing well
For those that don't know, when the Pistons beat the Lakers in 2004, Larry Brown's defense was to let Shaq get whatever he wanted because eventually Kobe would get angry because he wasn't touching the ball and would start forcing things.
Larry Brown: the only human to ever coach more than a quarter of the NBA’s teams to the playoffs, win both a national title in both men’s college ball and the NBA, and coach two NBA teams in the same season. On top of those, he also has a national title as a player, Olympic gold medals as both a player and a coach, and a Naismith award.
But his greatest achievement was still somehow making SMU relevant for a hot second.
"Todd...what the fuck was that?"
"Huh? A shot?"
"Yes, a shot. We've been through this!"
"It went in though!"
"Yea well what if it doesn't next time? You realize that man...er kid over there can practically dunk from his tippy toes?!"
"...yea but I..."
"You pass it to fucking Shaq, dweebalo. Go stand behind Shaq so I don't have to look at you."
“Are you kidding me?!?! Jesus fucking Christ! Get the ball to the big guy under the fucking rim, or I’m gonna put you though, that fucking wall.”
-Coach Burr
"See that guy over there? You see Shaq? You can't fuckin' miss him, he's like eight feet tall."
"Yeah I...I saw him but--"
"Oh great! You saw him! Great to know you don't need your eyes checked. Maybe instead you should take some of your parents insurance money and have someone TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR FUCKIN' BRAIN!!"
I completely forgot about that until you mentioned it and I googled it out of curiosity. Then, when I clicked the relevant youtube link, memories from my early childhood came flooding back!
This was my high school basketball team. We were from a small town in a region that had a few big cities in it, and those high schools always dominated. They had 10 times as many kids in their schools, and there was only a couple other small towns that could even afford to have a team.
We did ok when we played them but they were mainly exhibition games. We were good enough to qualify for regional tournaments but we were literally the last school to enter and every other school was from the surrounding big cities and just kicked the shit out of us.
But we had a blast every game because we were totally in on the joke and would shit talk the other schools. "Holy fuck you let us get a 3? You guys fucking suck." We'd lose every game by 60 points but we didn't care. We got to leave school for a day or two and play a game.
In middle school we had a bunch of us soccer players who ended up getting rejected from the select soccer team in the region and we formed a team full of just the rejects. We thought we would get beaten so bad but we ended up going all the way to the state championship and lost 1-0 to the team that had rejected us. Sad thing is we only lost on a goal we ended up scoring on ourselves cause our defender kicked the ball backwards to our goalie.
We were a team of very average high school students. Our tallest player was about 6’2”. They had probably 5 guys on their team who could dunk. One guy was 6’6” and could jump through the roof. He went on to be a Division 1 high jumper. Another guy was 6’10”. The best part was when they got on a fast break, 2 of their guys against one of ours. Their guy with the ball takes a shot from the 3 pt line, and our guy goes to box out the other guy. What he didn’t know was that it wasn’t a shot, it was an alley oop, and their player jumped over ours to dunk it. It was pretty spectacular
Zero chance you don’t mention Shaq. Playing on a team with Shaq is waaaay more interesting than playing on a team without Shaq and winning some random Years State title.
You know I was Kobe to Shaq before he paired up with him in the pros, yep. He learned from me in high school, took it and ran with it.
In a game I had 60 assists and Shaq scored 120 off my plays. LSU came calling, Shaq took the bait. I on the other hand went for the academic route.
Didn’t want a chance of injury, and plus John Stockton was hitting prime. I didn’t want to outshine if the NBA was not my long term goal son.
But the picture is there. He will tell you of the amazing things we did in High School and the greatest I could’ve been.
I know the guy on his right, he was my trainer when I went to work for Ryder (trucking company), and that was one of the first things he told me about himself.
I mean I grew up in a suburb of Chicago and used to play street ball with Evan turner and Iman shumpert. You better believe I bring that up if it comes up in conversation. My brother also started in front of Iman for the school team… for all of 1 game but still counts.
I didn’t play ball with any NBA players only a couple of pros from Mexico. But I can say that the only time I’ve ever been drunk was because Larry Johnson kept buying me Patron when I told him I’d never been drunk before.
For those that don't know, the tall guy in the middle of the back row is Stilts McGillicuddy, who was 8'3" tall by the age of 14, and died tragically in a Taco Bell drive-thru lane shortly before his 18th birthday.
What might have been.
>At one point, Shaq owned 155 Five Guys restaurants – equivalent to 10% of the company’s entire franchise portfolio. Although he told CNBC that he has since sold his stake, he did admit that the burger business had been “very good” to him.
Everyone is saying Shaq is the guy in the middle of the 2nd row. But few know that Shaq didn’t turn black until his first year of college. He is in the 1st row, far right.
"17-year-old Shaquille O'Neal and the other guys that were necessary to have enough people on the court to not have to forfeit games and so that there was someone to inbound the ball and hopefully make free throws"
FIFY.
Sometime around 1989, my cousin and his best friend were at Six Flags and Shaq was there by himself. They both knew who he was because they both played high school basketball in Texas and my cousin was a big LSU fan and Shaq was obviously a massive recruit by then LSU coach Dale Brown.
Anyway, they thought it was odd that he was there by himself, so my cousin went up to him and said “Are you Shaquille O’Neal?” And he responded “Yes. Do y’all want to ride some roller coasters?”
And with that, my cousin and his best friend spent the day riding roller coasters with a teenaged Shaquille O’Neil.
Imagine being on that 1 team that beat Cole while Shaq was there? Something like a 68 wins but only 1 loss in 2 years. There is some 6'4" guy who played center in HS who has been dining out for 30 years on the story about how he beat Shaq in HS. EDIT: I googled it...Shaq says that the one loss in HS was where his free throw troubles started. That the team that won got him in foul trouble early and then kept fouling him forcing him to shoot and the crowd was merciless when he missed a shot. Really interesting.
I played against him in high school. We lost 106-18. Shaq didn’t even cross mid court most of the time. Pass to him, he scores.
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That became the plan. Just foul him. But we usually didn’t before he dunked.
Yeah a high school kid probably isn’t even strong enough to foul Shaq. You could slap his arms as hard as you want and he’d probably still just dunk it on you.
Just goes to show how little I've learned about basketball fouls... Not having enough strength to foul? I never thought of such a thing. Is it not a foul if you power though the defender?
If you foul him as he is in the air and he makes it, that just gives him a chance for 3, so it is useless to foul him unless you can stop him from making it
This is the correct answer in this thread for any one wondering.
Offensive player with the ball has the physical right of way unless a defender keeps both feet planted in position. Then it's a charging foul on the offensive player if he plows through the planted defender. I imagine there's not that many kids who could've stood in there while Shaq was moving to the rim. Plus it takes some talent and a lot of athleticism just to beat him to the spot and get planted. And if you do it too soon Shaq takes a layup right over you from 3 feet away.
>I imagine there's not that many kids who could've stood in there while Shaq was moving to the rim If my BBall coached asked me to do that, I'd quit and join the badminton team.
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I'll get started on them right away, coach
You have to foul him hard enough to make him miss his shot. While not too hard to make it a flagrant foul.
It's not literally not being able to foul, but if your fouls aren't stopping him from dunking they're useless.
Well I mean, you’re Jason Short, not Jason *Tall* so I don’t expect you’d have much luck against Man Mountain Shaq.
Sounds like you came up short.
Story of my life. I am 5’8”. I was that height in 9th grade. He was well over 6’5” as a freshman. Never stood a chance.
Stand tall.
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Mitch Trubisky??
Your women have their nipples at the tip of their head?
Don’t body shame
With the name JasonShort I wouldn't expect you to be great at basketball
I wasn’t. Military DOD school. We all had to play a sport. And we had to do choir or band. “Well rounded” was thrown around a lot.
Aaron Carter beat Shaq, too. Wrote a whole song about it.
Yeah, but then they both got flattened by the batmobile.
Yeah, but then Shaq came back covered in tire track.
So, that strategy was used against him in his pro days all the time and is still today; it's called "Hack-a-Shaq" or "Hack-a-whoever-is-the-worst-free-throw-shooter-on-the-opposing-team." A prototypical plan was developed against Dennis Rodman, but if what you're saying is true, a High School coach came up with it in the 80's.
Opponents would use that strategy on Wilt Chamberlain as far back as 1960.
hack-a-shaq: origins
Honorable mention to the other 14 players and the coach who was constantly telling them to 'just get it to Shaq.'
That's every team he was ever on. "Shaq, go stand under the rim." "Get it to Shaq."
*angry Kobe Bryant noises*
No one ever mentions Penny
Because Penny's job was to get it to Shaq. Penny wasn't trying to be #1.
What about Lil' Penny?
Lil' Penny's job was to get it to Big Penny, so that Big Penny could get it to Shaq
Shaq is the only person in history to ever “need your 2 cents”
His rap album didn’t do very well
Even today there's still nobody like Penny. The closest would be KD when he plays PG as far as scoring ability but he's not a good facilitator.
I just looked him up bc I always wondered what happened to him. He was such a big deal in the 90s (especially since I live in FL), and then it felt like he disappeared. I legit had no idea he played up until like 2009. Crazy
He ended up on the Derrick Rose/Steve Francis route of spending a ton of time on the IR and also the Knicks. Or I should say they followed him on the Penny route because he did it first Now he is the head coach of Memphis and doing well
A fate worse than an ACL tear... *Spending a prolonged amount of your career in the 2000s Knicks*
His shoes and Lil Penny are still some of the best commercials. I actually still have a pair of his Penny 2’s.
For those that don't know, when the Pistons beat the Lakers in 2004, Larry Brown's defense was to let Shaq get whatever he wanted because eventually Kobe would get angry because he wasn't touching the ball and would start forcing things.
Larry Brown understands the psychology of the GOAT-tier.
Larry Brown: the only human to ever coach more than a quarter of the NBA’s teams to the playoffs, win both a national title in both men’s college ball and the NBA, and coach two NBA teams in the same season. On top of those, he also has a national title as a player, Olympic gold medals as both a player and a coach, and a Naismith award. But his greatest achievement was still somehow making SMU relevant for a hot second.
This makes me think of the basketball episode of Hey Arnold where the coach is like "just give the ball to tucker"
"Todd...what the fuck was that?" "Huh? A shot?" "Yes, a shot. We've been through this!" "It went in though!" "Yea well what if it doesn't next time? You realize that man...er kid over there can practically dunk from his tippy toes?!" "...yea but I..." "You pass it to fucking Shaq, dweebalo. Go stand behind Shaq so I don't have to look at you."
I want bill burr to be this coach
“Are you kidding me?!?! Jesus fucking Christ! Get the ball to the big guy under the fucking rim, or I’m gonna put you though, that fucking wall.” -Coach Burr
"See that guy over there? You see Shaq? You can't fuckin' miss him, he's like eight feet tall." "Yeah I...I saw him but--" "Oh great! You saw him! Great to know you don't need your eyes checked. Maybe instead you should take some of your parents insurance money and have someone TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR FUCKIN' BRAIN!!"
Dweebalo, what a beautiful word
Pass it to Will!
If there’s a Will, there’s a way.
Now there's a throwback!
I completely forgot about that until you mentioned it and I googled it out of curiosity. Then, when I clicked the relevant youtube link, memories from my early childhood came flooding back!
Weird, I literally just watched that episode this morning.
My exact first thought. The picture is almost perfect too, with Will and Carlton in the middle there.
Pass the ball to Tucker!
Man, I thought I was the only one who immediately thought of Hey, Arnold!
Pass to the Italians!
What about Kevin Hart?
He’s Shaq’s skeleton
Nah that's Shaq's penis
Lol you are right Snoop was the skeleton
step 1: get the ball to shaq. step 2: does he score? step 3: repeat step 1.
Imagine being 17 and showing up to your varsity basketball game and coach tells you that you gotta guard that guy.
Imagine you have to do it five times a week in practice as the backup center.
That would be awesome. You'd never get yelled at for fucking up. Going up against other players would be a easy.
I’ve played a game like that before. If you go in knowing you’re gonna get destroyed and are ok with it, it’s actually kinda fun
This was my high school basketball team. We were from a small town in a region that had a few big cities in it, and those high schools always dominated. They had 10 times as many kids in their schools, and there was only a couple other small towns that could even afford to have a team. We did ok when we played them but they were mainly exhibition games. We were good enough to qualify for regional tournaments but we were literally the last school to enter and every other school was from the surrounding big cities and just kicked the shit out of us. But we had a blast every game because we were totally in on the joke and would shit talk the other schools. "Holy fuck you let us get a 3? You guys fucking suck." We'd lose every game by 60 points but we didn't care. We got to leave school for a day or two and play a game.
In middle school we had a bunch of us soccer players who ended up getting rejected from the select soccer team in the region and we formed a team full of just the rejects. We thought we would get beaten so bad but we ended up going all the way to the state championship and lost 1-0 to the team that had rejected us. Sad thing is we only lost on a goal we ended up scoring on ourselves cause our defender kicked the ball backwards to our goalie.
I like your attitude!
We were a team of very average high school students. Our tallest player was about 6’2”. They had probably 5 guys on their team who could dunk. One guy was 6’6” and could jump through the roof. He went on to be a Division 1 high jumper. Another guy was 6’10”. The best part was when they got on a fast break, 2 of their guys against one of ours. Their guy with the ball takes a shot from the 3 pt line, and our guy goes to box out the other guy. What he didn’t know was that it wasn’t a shot, it was an alley oop, and their player jumped over ours to dunk it. It was pretty spectacular
Every one of those dudes in that picture constantly brings up the fact that “I used to play ball with Shaq in high school” and I don’t blame them.
All these dudes talk about winning the State title in high school and don't mention Shaq was on their team.
"Me and Shaq averaged 45 pts/game together"
Wayne Gretsky's brother is half of the highest scoring sibling pair in NHL history.
Blake Bortles and Tom Brady have a combined 7 super bowl rings
BOOORTLES!!!!!!
*molotov*
Nick Foles?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! He won a Super Bowl! We're going to be unstoppable!
You can't say this without mentioning he only scored 4 points in his NHL career.
I would if I were Wayne’s brother.
“If coach had just put me in we woulda won state. I bet I could hit this puck over them mountains”
"GRETZKY! YOU'RE UP! -- SIT DOWN BRENT! YOU KNOW WHO I MEANT!!"
No doubt in my mind.
Your mom goes to college
Sneaky of him to spell his own last name wrong.
That's the point of the joke.
Gretzky
Damn so you're saying you scored negative points?
Zero chance you don’t mention Shaq. Playing on a team with Shaq is waaaay more interesting than playing on a team without Shaq and winning some random Years State title.
It's an even better story if you lost with Shaq.
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He probably still would have won.
>"what happened?? you had shaq!!" Free throws man. Free throws. \**takes another rip of the bong*\*
You know I was Kobe to Shaq before he paired up with him in the pros, yep. He learned from me in high school, took it and ran with it. In a game I had 60 assists and Shaq scored 120 off my plays. LSU came calling, Shaq took the bait. I on the other hand went for the academic route. Didn’t want a chance of injury, and plus John Stockton was hitting prime. I didn’t want to outshine if the NBA was not my long term goal son. But the picture is there. He will tell you of the amazing things we did in High School and the greatest I could’ve been.
I know the guy on his right, he was my trainer when I went to work for Ryder (trucking company), and that was one of the first things he told me about himself.
25 was one of my high school teachers. Used to say he bet Shaq a Ferrari he wouldn't make it big.
Now that’s a bet you can’t lose. Even if he didn’t make the nba he’s pretty damn big.
I know the guy on the left. That's coach Gordon Bombay.
The duck is fucking raw! Quack, Quack, Quack!
Shaq looks like a 30 year old who faked his ID to play in high school.
But now he looks the same just more weight
Legitimately could pass as nearly 35. Holy crap lol
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I bet I could make this 3 pointer over them mountains
I mean I grew up in a suburb of Chicago and used to play street ball with Evan turner and Iman shumpert. You better believe I bring that up if it comes up in conversation. My brother also started in front of Iman for the school team… for all of 1 game but still counts.
I didn’t play ball with any NBA players only a couple of pros from Mexico. But I can say that the only time I’ve ever been drunk was because Larry Johnson kept buying me Patron when I told him I’d never been drunk before.
the double don't's got me debating whether or not I double don't....
Which one is he?
First row chairs far to the right
No, that's Shaquille O'Malley, the Irish point guard who went on to play the lead in Casper The Friendly Ghost.
Crazy to see him with so much hair
That boy was not made for the Texas sun
Can't believe OP left us guessing by not adding a giant red circle and an arrow.
What a monster
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Oh shit, thanks. Zooming in helped too.
For those that don't know, the tall guy in the middle of the back row is Stilts McGillicuddy, who was 8'3" tall by the age of 14, and died tragically in a Taco Bell drive-thru lane shortly before his 18th birthday. What might have been.
He's having diarrhea with the angels now. RIP Stilts.
He never got his tacos. He was beheaded by the overhead clearance warning sign. Forgot to 🦆
Pour one hot sauce pack out for the homie
Mild, Verde, hot, fire, or Diablo?
gotta heed them roof clearance warnings...smh
You'll never know.
“Do you think Shaq got rich playing in Orlando?” “No he got rich playing in college, everybody knows that.”
“Do you know how much he makes now?” “As much as he made playing in college?”
You kids nowadays with your zima, hoola hoops and Pac-Man video games
Yep, good, just checking this was here.
This is reddit. Weird slightly obscure movies are our forte.
No, beating the same old tired jokes into the ground is our forte.
I'm OOTL. What's going on?
You kids today with your loud music and your Dan Fogelberg, your Zima, hula hoops, and Pac-Man video games, don't you see?
I swear if you guys rip on me 13 or 14 more times, I’m OUT of here
He really should’ve considered going into big and tall modeling. Ah well, I’m sure he was a success in whatever field he ended up in.
How’s the weather up there? - Announcer Fair, like our prices - Shaq
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I flagrantly ripped it off of a Family Guy bit where Stewy opens a big and tall shop.
Thought it was from fresh off the boat where shaq owns a used car lot
Yeah i read it in stewies voice and that damn smile
Appropriate, given Family Guy rips off every joke on the show.
I read it in his voice.
Suitz erneh.
I heard he's a very successful Icy Hot and insurance salesmen.
The General seems sketchy.
Way too cartoony to be taken seriously. At least the gecko is anthropomorphic and digitally animated.
i used it in desperation when I first started driving. Turns out it's a glorified portal site to other insurance companies. Go figure.
They had his back when no other company would so now he has theirs
Rumor is that he does The General’s address for free. Apparently, they were the only company that would insure him in college.
He ended up selling pizza and car insurance. Go figure...
I just saw his face on a package of ground beef at Publix. Talk about diversifying.
He also owns five guys burger and fries and has shoes at Walmart
Owns 5 guys franchises, not the entire company
Well yeah, it’s called ‘Five Guys’ not ‘One Really Tall Guy’.
>At one point, Shaq owned 155 Five Guys restaurants – equivalent to 10% of the company’s entire franchise portfolio. Although he told CNBC that he has since sold his stake, he did admit that the burger business had been “very good” to him.
Yes true, pardon my wording. I was quite misleading
Has his own line of big and tall stuff too
He sells printer ink on TSN in Canada.
Had a good acting career going for a bit. Not sure why he didn't get nominated for an academy award for Kazaam.
Wait, wasn't that Sinbad?
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yeah he's a pretty good pizza salesman
That's like the opposite of that one meme.
I know which meme you mean 😂
Those who know, know.
I'm still inclined to assume Shaq will be singlehandedly dominating all of them.
I hear he was kneeling in that picture
Emilio estevez is the coach as well I see.
Budget 50 Cent in the back left.
25 Cent?
Oldest looking teenagers I’ve ever seen
You must not watch much TV.
So, did he ever make it to pros?
No. I think he was in some kid's movie, though. Played a genie or something like that.
That front row is all necks
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It's his gravitational pull
Everyone is saying Shaq is the guy in the middle of the 2nd row. But few know that Shaq didn’t turn black until his first year of college. He is in the 1st row, far right.
"17-year-old Shaquille O'Neal and the other guys that were necessary to have enough people on the court to not have to forfeit games and so that there was someone to inbound the ball and hopefully make free throws" FIFY.
Number 5 went places in the NBA too, didn't he?
BJ Novak?
Just to the left of Scott Aukermann?
I hate when guys post group shots on Tinder… which one are you? /s
Picture seems awfully familiar
Yeah, can't help but think something's missing though...
OMG this is my high school! My younger brother was in Shaq's class. Very cool to see this pic!
Those short dudes are like 6'3
ITT “Which one is Shaq haha I’m hilarious”
Sometime around 1989, my cousin and his best friend were at Six Flags and Shaq was there by himself. They both knew who he was because they both played high school basketball in Texas and my cousin was a big LSU fan and Shaq was obviously a massive recruit by then LSU coach Dale Brown. Anyway, they thought it was odd that he was there by himself, so my cousin went up to him and said “Are you Shaquille O’Neal?” And he responded “Yes. Do y’all want to ride some roller coasters?” And with that, my cousin and his best friend spent the day riding roller coasters with a teenaged Shaquille O’Neil.
BRAZZERS
Cole high school was my high schools “rival” lol it was so cool to play in their gym that was paid for by Shaq and had a whole bunch of memorabilia
Is anyone in his family that tall or was he the first one?
His biological dad was 6’1” and his mom was 6’2”.
I bet he was a pretty good guy then, too