"You’ve got unfinished business"- Despite being battered, Shaquille O'Neal's stepdad, Phillip Harrison, urged him not to retire
Shaquille O'Neal is a basketball legend who won four NBA championships. He was the first overall pick by the Orlando Magic in the 1992 NBA draft, went on to play 19 seasons in the NBA and retired at the age of 39.
His fierce mindset was forged by his stepdad Phillip Harrison, a former US Army sergeant.
In O'Neal's book "Shaq Uncut" from 2011, he recalled a time when his stepdad urged him not to retire:
"My body told me it was time to retire. My mom wanted me to stop three years ago. Same with [coach] Dale Brown. The only one who wants me to keep going is Sarge [Phillip Harrison]. He keeps telling me, 'You’ve got unfinished business. Let them fix your leg, come back one more year, then retire.' Sorry, Pops. I can’t."
This is just one of the incidents that portray the sort of figure that Harrison was in O'Neal's life. Harrison was a prime reason for O'Neal becoming the most dominant big man in history.
In fact, it was Harrison who first put a basketball in O'Neal's hand. O'Neal recalled the incident:
“My dad used to run a gym. One day he stole a little raggedy-ball from the gym. 'This is your ball,' he told me. ‘You play with it, you dribble with it, you dream with it. Don’t take it to school because I don’t want to hear from your teachers. Don’t let nobody steal it from you. And don’t dribble it in the house. I’ll kick your ass if I catch you messing up my furniture.'”
At the time, Phillip Harrison thought that basketball was their ticket out of poverty and the rest is history. Today, Shaquille O'Neal is worth a whopping $400 million and extremely grateful to his stepdad.
Shaquille O'Neal is thankful to Phillip Harrison for making him "the best big man ever"
Shaquille O'Neal is a celebrated NBA player and out of everyone who helped him get to where he is today, perhaps the biggest role was played by Phillip Harrison.
In a recent interview on "ABtalks," Shaquille O'Neal was asked to say a word to Phil. Here is what O'Neal said at the 48-minute mark:
"Thank you. He made me who I am. Looked at me at 7 years old and said, I'll make you the best big man ever."
O'Neal further described his stepdad as perfect and talked about how we are all flawed, but perfection lies in the eyes of the beholder. While his stepdad was hard on him, it worked well for O'Neal:
"He looked at a little kid that wasn't his and said 'you're going to be a bad man.' He looked at a little kid and when we used to ride around looking at cars he said 'man you gonna have 20 of them.' He looked at a kid and said 'you don't need to be afraid of Patrick Ewing in three years you're going to be going up against him and you're going to kill him.'"
This mindset that Harrison hammered into O'Neal clearly influenced his game and made him dominate the other players. It made Shaquille O'Neal who he is.