THE MAN OF APPEAL : From Love of Superman to Fondness for Toys, O’Neal Brings a Playful Touch to the Lakers

Shaquille O’Neal is shooting baskets in his underwear. That it also happens to be 3:40 a.m. and in downtown Los Angeles makes this either stranger or more acceptable.

White briefs, white T-shirt. They stand out in contrast to the black rubber thongs--Reebok, of course--the black pavement, the black skin and the black sky. There are so many dark shades that it’s difficult to tell that he has, indeed, painted his toenails, a tradition that started when he did it before a game against Minnesota in April of ‘94, then got 53 points and 18 rebounds. On this night--or this morning--he has red on one foot and purple on the other, because blood means life and because of the Lakers.

The immediate reaction, that this is another movie scene, would be wrong. Close, though. It’s between takes on a parking lot that has temporarily been turned into the base camp for O’Neal’s latest film--”Steel,” due out next fall--the place for the food wagons and tables for food breaks on these all-night shoots and where the trailers are parked for the stars and wardrobe.

O’Neal’s trailer is the one next to the portable basket brought in for such rest periods. Two hours earlier, it was a quick two-on-two with friends, which ended about the time his offensive rebound put-baq hit the asphalt hard enough to register at Caltech, punctuated by O’Neal raising his arms, breaking into radio-announcer voice and imagining: “Jack Nicholson’s going crazy! Shaq’s talking to Jack Nicholson!”

Now, at 3:40, he’s shooting fall-away 10-footers and practicing spin moves from the high post on a chilly Saturday morning in his underwear, a brief workout that ends when someone brings him baggy shorts. Reebok, of course.

Anyway, there’s this 2rm 1ba w/vu (of the Harbor Freeway) on wheels. Nice digs. It has a TV, a bed, a couch and coffee table . . . and a green rubber face like the one Jim Carrey wore in “The Mask,” another non-”The Mask” mask that’s more like one from a horror movie, a couple of small figurines on the desk and end table.

That’s nothing, kid stuff for the kid’s stuff. His 25,000-square foot lakefront home in the posh Isleworth community just outside Orlando, Fla., is stable to stupid things like cars--”three or four,” he says, as if not sure--and some really neato stuff.

There’s the Superman room. One day, O’Neal bought a ton of comic books, had the covers framed and put on a wall. Then he saw a Superman manikin in a store and talked an employee into selling it. There’s an old Superman pinball machine, bought from an arcade. And a Freddy Krueger glove, more figurines, more masks.

“Planet Hollywood in my house,” he says proudly.

That saying about whoever has the most toys when he dies wins?

Game over.

“I’m 24, but I like to slash 10 years off my age,” O’Neal says. “I believe I’m 14. I haven’t even gotten started yet. Haven’t even gotten started.”

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Shaq faqt: He’s either becoming the language or changing the language: The new comedy movie, “Swingers,” includes the term “Shaq” as a synonym for being soundly rejected, as in, “I was Shaqed before I could buy her a drink.” And, he insists, “Showtime is baq.” Not B-A-C-K. B-A-Q. “Because of the Q,” he says, wanting to make sure it’s correctly entered into the record. Cheq.

*

Shaquille Rashaun O’Neal used to be an Army brat. Really, though, he was just a brat, period. Fighting, talking back, bullying. Once, in sixth grade in Georgia, he threw a wad of wet toilet paper against the wall at the front of the classroom. Splat!

Someone told. O’Neal gave the informant a look and said something about discussing this little tattle-tale problem later. The kid took off running, O’Neal and his friends in hot pursuit. They caught him, held him down and began exacting revenge. It was cool right up until the kid’s eyes rolled back, he swallowed his tongue and a seizure kicked in.

“I was getting into so much trouble, I saw I was frustrating my parents,” he said. “They used to yell at me so much that I got to the point where I felt like they didn’t love me anymore. I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to stop. I got to change.’ That’s when I started taking basketball really, really seriously.”

The Army connection? O’Neal’s stepfather, Philip Harrison, was a sergeant. The family lived the nomad life of the career serviceman--New Jersey, Georgia, West Germany. . . . It was from Harrison that O’Neal learned cause and effect. ‘Cause he did something wrong, the effect was a spanking. ‘Cause he did something right, the effect was getting to watch the Knicks play or stay up late.

O’Neal, keeping his mother’s maiden name, needed to keep his grades up to play. He applied himself and brought home good reports. He built self-confidence. Just not enough.

By the time Shaquille was in 10th grade, Philip and Lucille Harrison and the kids were in Europe and Shaquille was still lazy, getting by on the court by being 6 feet 8.

He couldn’t dunk. But he wanted to learn. Imagine the good fortune, the opportunity of a lifetime, really, the day a big-time college coach, Louisiana State’s Dale Brown, visited the base as the final stop in a series of clinics for the Army.

Brown had finished and was packing up to leave the gym when he felt a tap on the shoulder. O’Neal told the coach of his predicament and asked Brown for some tips. Brown set down his bag, spent about 10 minutes demonstrating various drills, mostly to increase endurance, then went for a pen to get O’Neal’s address to send materials for developing a weight program.

Brown: What rank are you, soldier?

O’Neal: Coach, I’m not in the service. I’m only 14.

Brown: How old are you?

O’Neal: Fourteen.

Brown: Stop lying to me!

O’Neal: No, I’m 14.

Brown, no dummy: Where’s your father?

The sarge wasn’t much interested in hearing about anything that did not start with an emphasis on O’Neal’s education. Besides, Shaquille was still only a sophomore in high school.

The next year, the family was back in the States, in San Antonio. O’Neal attended Cole High, attracted some attention as a junior, then played in the BCI tournament in Phoenix, a regular stop on the recruiting trail for college coaches, before his senior season. He was still raw, but the talent, as enormous as his body, was obvious.

The letters poured in. O’Neal eventually narrowed his possibilities to Louisville, Nevada Las Vegas, North Carolina State, North Carolina and LSU. Brown talked about the team and O’Neal dreamed of a dynasty with Stanley Roberts and Chris Jackson--now Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. The people in Baton Rouge were nice. It was relatively close to San Antonio.

So he became a Tiger. He just didn’t become part of a dynasty. LSU was eliminated from the NCAA tournament in the second round in 1990, the first round in ‘91, and the second round again in ‘92, winning 69% of its games in those three years but the Southeastern Conference title only once, his sophomore season.

Along the way, Brown brought in Bill Walton as a tutor. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar paid a visit. Julius Erving stopped by and talked about conducting yourself with everyone watching. The young Shaquille already had some ideas in that area. This is the guy, after all, who, when he got to the NBA, took his ideas for charitable programs to the Orlando Magic’s public relations department, not waiting to be asked.

He would have been the No. 1 pick in the draft after his freshman season, but ended up playing through his junior year. Then he became the No. 1 pick, bound for Orlando after the Magic won the lottery.

For the longest time, it was great. The Magic surged, won the lottery again and used that pick to trade for another superstar in the making, Penny Hardaway, then climbed some more. The pinnacle was winning the Eastern Conference title in 1994-95, even if that was only the setup to the shocking sweep by the Houston Rockets in the finals. O’Neal had averaged 23.4, 29.3 and 29.3 points those first three seasons. He was 22.

But now there were problems. O’Neal had come to believe management was not sticking up for him, even as the front office saw itself as doing half-gainers to please, or appease, him. He battled with the media, becoming aggravated by what he considered a tabloid approach that focused too much on his personal life. Reporters considered him far too sensitive.

The great time was also a tough time.

“Next to the mouse, he was the biggest attraction to come to this town,” said John Gabriel, the Magic’s general manager. “Everyone is pretty grateful for what he has done for this town and this organization. He brought immediate hope at an early time and then thoughts of winning a championship. I don’t know who to point fingers at, but it just got to the point where fans and Joe Public maybe saw so much catering to a mega-star that maybe they started to take a dislike to it.”

Near the end, with O’Neal and the entire Olympic team in town for a final training camp before heading to Atlanta, the Orlando Sentinel asked readers if he was worth the $115 million the Magic was said to be offering. Although only about 5,000 responded, 91.3% of them voted no.

“I saw it,” O’Neal said of the poll. “Yeah, it kind of stuck with me. I was kind of saying, ‘These people down here don’t want me. Somebody else wants me, somewhere. Jerry West does.’ ”

Said one Magic official, “That poll the Orlando Sentinel ran may have shut the door. I don’t think it made the decision for him, but it may have shut the door because of his sensitivity.”

The next day, after a late-night meeting in Atlanta with West, the Lakers’ executive vice president, a new door opened. The one to Los Angeles.

*

Shaq faqt: He plays the lottery. Seriously.

“All the time,” O’Neal says. “Swear. I give my boys $10, $20, buy some tickets and scratch them off. I might get lucky. You never know.”

And win?

“Whatever. A soda. Thousand dollars. Fifteen million dollars.”

Scene we would like to have been there for: O’Neal stopping at a gas station in Orlando, seeing the tickets near the counter and asking the attendant for 20. “The dude’s like laughing at me.”

*

From Page 25 of the autobiography “Shaq Attaq!,” published in 1993, after one season in the NBA:

“Did I want to play for the Los Angeles Lakers?

“Man, what do you think? Of course I did. The Lakers were the Lakers. They had tradition, but they weren’t old and musty like the Boston Celtics. They had Magic Johnson, the Laker Girls, the Forum, Jack Nicholson hangin’ at the sideline, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, the beach. When I was in college at LSU, we wore purple-and-gold uniforms, same as the Lakers, so that would’ve been a natural. And I wanted to play there even more after spending a lot of the summer of 1992 in Los Angeles, chillin’ at the clubs, talking about deals with my agent, Leonard Armato, playing ball with Magic at UCLA, working one on one with Hakeem Olajuwon at some dumpy high school gym with no cameras, no spectators, no hype, only sweat and hard work.

“But, and this is a big but, did I ever say the Lakers were the only team I’d play for? Never. . . . I’ll be honest with you, though, Leonard’s first thought was that I should play in L.A. Right after I hired him as my representative, my dad and I asked him to prepare kind of a prospectus of my future. We wanted to see some things like a marketing plan, his ideas about public relations, and what he projected as my image as an NBA player. And one of the pages in Leonard’s outline was called, ‘How to Orchestrate a Trade to Los Angeles.’ (The Magic people might’ve had a heart attack if they had seen that after they won the lottery.)”

Armato says now that the issue has been blown out of proportion, that he was merely giving O’Neal options--”But if it was Minnesota, maybe it would have been best to get a trade.”

Even in his happiest moments with the Magic, though, O’Neal’s feeling for Los Angeles was never a secret. The lures were the weather and the opportunity to be just another big star, far more than his wanting to be closer to the entertainment industry.

It’s strange. One of the reasons O’Neal eliminated North Carolina during college recruiting was Dean Smith’s home visit. Smith talked about how O’Neal could carry on the great Tar Heel tradition--follow Michael Jordan, follow Sam Perkins, etc. He hated that. Sunny weather without humidity aside, he was no more interested in being the next great Laker center--following George Mikan, following Wilt Chamberlain, following Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Then one day, it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

“Now he’s matured. Now he’s grown,” Armato said. “He’s a man. He’s 24 years old. Maybe he’s better suited now to acclimate to a bigger city. Maybe it’s part of the maturation process.”

The irony is not lost. O’Neal liked Orlando largely because it wouldn’t be such a madhouse--he had chosen not to attend UNLV largely out of concern for how the glitz there would affect him--then wanted to get out, in part because life in small-town America was life in a fish bowl.

“You could say that,” Armato said. “You could say the reason he chose the city in the first place was ultimately one of the reasons he left.”

Said O’Neal, “I kind of let my ego take over a little bit. I wanted to start my own thing, in Orlando.”

So what changed?

“I just want to win now,” he said.

*

Shaq faqt: Teri Hatcher doesn’t love Superman this much. The appeal is obvious.

“That he was invincible,” said O’Neal, who has the logo and MAN OF STEEL tattooed at biceps-level on the billboard that passes for his left arm. “That he was unstoppable. I’m glad my name starts with an S, so I can put that S there. If my name was Todd or something, I don’t think I could do it. Todd O’Neal. No, I don’t think I could do it.”

*

Brown said most people don’t realize O’Neal has a degree of shyness, maybe because it’s sometimes hidden behind the silliness. Like when Shaq visited his coach in Baton Rouge and, with all eyes watching his entrance, he pretended to trip over the threshold.

Much of O’Neal’s charitable work has been publicized--at various times there have been Shaq-a-Claus at Christmas, Shaq-a-Bunny at Easter, Shaqsgiving meals for the needy at Thanksgiving, the distribution of flowers to hospitalized women on Mother’s Day.

Not so well known are the good deeds he does beyond those. Once, he and an intern in the Magic’s marketing department--a young guy not making much money--went clothes shopping. O’Neal picked up the tab.

He sent flowers to Helen DeVos, the wife of the Magic’s owner, after the family sent one of its private jets to transport the team’s players, coaches and staff to the 1995 All-Star Game in Phoenix.

The couple who owned a tiny restaurant in Gonzales, La., just outside Baton Rouge, wanted to see O’Neal play in the pros. He popped for the flight to Orlando, had them met by a limousine and put them up at a hotel.

The toys--OK, so he likes toys. He once showed at a low-key benefit for Athletes and Entertainers for Kids--Armato was the host--then practically fought with the kids over who got to play with the loot first.

What sometimes gets lost, maybe between the attention paid his brutal free-throw shooting and the criticism about the time he devotes to films and records, is that O’Neal works on basketball. The improvement in his game from, say, two years ago is obvious, especially his offensive spin moves. Walton, the Hall of Fame center, has called him one of the most rapidly improving players in the league.

“I think the people of Los Angeles will be, I don’t know if it’s surprised, with the dedication he does have for basketball,” said Brad Ceisler, a friend, sometime personal coach and former Magic scout. “With all the other distractions, maybe that hasn’t been something that has been evident to the fan. But he wants to come out here and win. He didn’t just make the move to make the move.”

Ceisler learned long ago that O’Neal doesn’t sweat for show. To be precise, he learned that at the end of the 1993-94 season, Shaq’s second as a pro. O’Neal had led the league in shooting, finished second in scoring and rebounding, and sixth in blocks. He was heading back to Baton Rouge to take some classes but asked Ceisler to put together a list of targeted improvements they could work on together.

“I’ll tell you what was interesting about it,” Ceisler says now. “I didn’t know what to expect from him. We walked on the court the first day and I handed him the ball and said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He threw it really hard back at me and said, ‘It’s not what I want to do, it’s what you want to do.’

“I knew from that response. I was prepared for what I was going to do, but knowing that he was willing to listen and learn, just by the ball coming back at me was all the answer I needed.”

Said Gabriel, the Magic’s general manager: “Attitude-wise, approach-wise, he’s all business.”

And from Walton, whose relationship with O’Neal has moved from teacher to friend: “If the rest of the young guys in the league had Shaq’s attitude, that would be a step in the right direction.”

*

Shaq faqt: He’d better have broad shoulders. Los Angeles is about to climb aboard.

*

“I don’t really believe in pressure,” O’Neal says. “I’m just going to go out there and do what I have to do. You see, my expectations are higher than anybody [else’s]. I’m not just going to take the money and run. I want to win, and I’m going to win. Like you said, I have to win.”

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Shaq Facts

COLLEGE STATISTICS

With Louisiana State

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Season FG% FT% Reb Pts 1989-90 .573 .556 12.0 13.9 1990-91 .628 .638 14.7 27.6 1991-92 .615 .528 14.0 24.1 Totals .610 .575 13.5 21.6

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NBA STATISTICS

With Orlando Magic

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Year FG% FT% Reb Pts 1992-93 .562 .592 13.9 23.4 1993-94 .599 .554 13.2 29.3 1994-95 .583 .533 11.4 29.3 1995-96 .573 .487 11.0 26.6 Totals .581 .546 12.5 27.2

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WHAT MONEY CAN BUY

The Lakers signed Shaquille O’Neal to a $120-million contract. A few things that can be done with that much money:

* Buy the Pittsburgh Pirates (estimated value: $70 million) and Hartford Whalers ($40 million)

* Pay President Bill Clinton’s salary for the next 600 years

* Buy Laker season tickets for the next 32,520 years.

* Buy 1,200 fast-food franchises.

* Buy 342 years of Internet access.