NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal has played for six franchises during his legendary NBA career that spanned 20 years.The Los Angeles Lakers legend has been one of the most successful basketball players ever to play the game. He broke several records and earned numerous accolades cementing himself as one of the game’s legends and reached celebrity status.
While it may have been totally fine for some, Phil Jackson made it clear to O’Neal that he wasn’t having any of that when he arrived in LA.
Phil Jackson told Shaquille O’Neal what to do
In what turned out to be a great move, the Los Angeles Lakers appointed “The Zen Master” as the team’s head coach to achieve one thing – win the championship. They had the most unstoppable big man in the league, but they couldn’t win the chip for some reason. So, right from the jump, Jackson already knew what was the first thing to fix. He needed Shaq to focus and reach his peak form.
“He’s like, ‘Listen, you’re doing good but no more rapping, no more videos, no more movies. I need you to concentrate.’ I’m like, ‘Wow! I make a lot of money doin’ that why would I stop doing that?’ He said, ‘If you listen to me, you can get an MVP this year and we can win a championship.’ [I’m like] ‘Look aah, Imma give it a shot’. And it actually kind of worked,” O’Neal said of his first discussion with Jackson on “In Depth with Graham Bensinger” in 2015.
“The Zen Master” also came up with an epic mind game test to let Shaq know who was in charge and that he had to respect it:
“Phil said ‘Before you come in, I need you to move this log out the lake’. And I’m saying to myself, ‘I’m not moving no motherfuc**ng log out on no motherfuc**ng lake’. And then I said ‘It’s a test, I know’. Because it’s stuff my father used to do. My father was a drill sergeant and he demanded respect. Because Phil had a great resume, he also demanded respect,” O’Neal recalled.
